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2015-09-11
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This place has been on my wish-to-go list since I moved to Hong Kong, but somehow I've never made it. Now that the semester has started, my chili-head friends are back in town so we decided to give it a go.Some information to get started: I think there are 14 locations of this chain around town. There were 14 phone numbers at the bottom of the placemat next to what looked like addresses, and an article I read said 18 locations. I read a bunch of stuff before going here, and not all of what's tru
Some information to get started: I think there are 14 locations of this chain around town. There were 14 phone numbers at the bottom of the placemat next to what looked like addresses, and an article I read said 18 locations. I read a bunch of stuff before going here, and not all of what's true about the other locations are true of this one.
So here's what you need to know: Yes there are English menus. Yes there is beer (not byob). The names of the spice levels are not on the menu as far as I could tell-- check your placemat! Finally, bring lots of tissues with you.
Let's talk spice. I am a little crazy about it. One of the things that motivated me to go to Heartbreak Noodles was my recent trip to DanDan Soul Food from Sichuan. That soup was good, with great noodles and everything, but even at "Sichuan spicy" it is not very spicy, and it does not have much numbing flavor.Here, I got the highest heat-level noodles (lvl 5, I think it's "extra spicy" on the noodles). I found the broth impossible to swallow, not because it was too spicy, but because it transported chili bits to the back of my throat and made me cough and sniffle. That's not to say it wasn't spicy! My three companions are some of the most serious spice-eaters I know, and they all got heat lvl 4 and said they would, if they were to come back, get lvl 3 instead. Now that I've braved the challenge of the lvl 5, I think I'd get 3 as well.
The broth-- and this is an issue at DanDan as well-- is altogether too oily. Even if it wasn't spicy, I wouldn't actually recommend eating it. My strategy was just to eat the stuff in the soup, not the soup itself. I still think I must have consumed 2 tablespoons of oil.
The noodles are really fantastic. I don't know what makes them so sour, but combined with the spice and grease and numbing peppercorn (strongly flavored, I might add), they are a taste powerhouse. As others have mentioned, they are very difficult to bite through. I found myself lifting them into my spoon to collect and then spooning them home, as picking them up with my chopsticks and trying to bite through them didn't work very well. The other stuff is mostly peanuts, cilantro, and pickled vegetables.
Often when you get the Sichuan "boiled" dishes, like boiled beef, you're given a spoon with holes in it. I take it that you're just not supposed to eat the broth, because it's largely oil and isn't very good for you. I would conceptualize this dish in the same way. Think of it as a noodle dish, not a soup dish. Eat the noodles, leave the soup. It's very good that way, and easier to manage the higher spice levels and the calorie load.
Here's a bad idea: order really spicy noodles and then order really spicy everything else. What are you supposed to do when your mouth is on fire? Anyway, somehow we ordered lvl 4 for all our vegetable sides, but I will say that lvl 4 for the veggies is easier going than the soup. Here are the shredded potatoes. We liked all the sides, but they were pretty standard versions of the relevant dishes. (Except that sometimes "standard" isn't spicy, but here it was.)
Grean beans. Look at how much oil they're in! And almost more pork than beans.
The cabbage was the table's favorite, so I recommend that if you go. Similarly oily.
The last thing we got (and we had to remind the server we'd ordered it) was fried tofu w/ cheese. This was a crispy fried tofu thing with a processed cheese-food filling. It wasn't spicy. A little bit of a gimmick, it was worth a try, but not worth a second try. (Note: only 3 pictured, the other 5 were gobbled by people who needed something non-spicy to consume.)In conclusion, this is my kind of place. It's not really going for any sort of class or even quality. Just lots and lots of grease and lots and lots of spice and lots and lots of Sichuan peppercorns. It's as simple, unhealthy, and exhilirating as food can be. If you asked me for a Sichuan recommendation, I would not tell you this place (I'd say Yu Chuan in Wan Chai). If you asked me for a soup noodle recommendation, I would not tell you this place (I'd need some follow ups to determine where to recommend though). But if you said you just wanted to be punched in the mouth, repeatedly, by angry flavors, and on the cheap, I would tell you that I had just the place for you.
This was out in front of the restaurant: "Celebration of the Unknown, the Mysterious and the Uncontrollable". I don't know which restaurant, if any, this was an advertisement for, but I will say that the next day, my bowels felt "unknown, mysterious, and uncontrollable."
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