Spicy Food in NYC: 2016

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Tan Tan Ramen from Nishida Sho-ten

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶

Tan Tan Ramen is a Chinese-Japanese hybrid, a noodle soup with a deep broth flavored with sesame and a bit of chili-pepper heat.

This dish is served with a really spicy soup that uses the chiken soup as a base. This spicy ramen is made from an exquisite balance of Chinese cuisine’s tan tan noodles and ramen. For the toppings, the soup and noodles are accompanied with seasoned ground meat, bean sprouts, spring onion, bok choy, and finally, it is garnished with ground toasted sesame seeds. Nishida Shoten’s special curly noodles are great match for the spicy soup, allowing you to appreciate the spiciness and good flavors at the same time. A lot of the customers often drink down the whole of the spicy soup, unable to stop themselves drinking it after they’ve finished their ramen. The ramen that you just can’t stop eating: that’s Nishida Shoten’s Tan Tan Ramen.

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Location: 302 E 49th St NY, NY 10017

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/nishida-sho-ten-new-york-2

Menu: http://nishidasho-ten.com/menu/

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Gamjatang from The Kunjip

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶🌶

Gamjatang is a spicy pork bone stew that is considered a traditional Korean dish which is hearty and rich in flavors. In translation, the word gamja normally means potato in Korean but in this particular dish, it is actually referring to the pork bone itself. So unlike its name, the main ingredients are not potatoes but the hearty, complex taste of the rich broth which is made from boiled pork backbone. In full translation, this dish is called pork bone stew as tang means stew in Korean.

This stew is assorted with vegetables such as cabbage, mushrooms, parsley, green onions and bean sprouts. And it is heavily seasoned with garlic, red chili peppers and roasted perilla seeds. The additions of perilla seeds are optional as it gives a more delicate flavor to the dish, taking away the greasy taste of the pork. All gamjatang dishes may be similar in appearance, but the taste varies from one restaurant to another. I personally think the one from The Kunjip should be the best in NYC!

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Location: 32W E 32nd St, New York, NY 10001

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-kunjip-new-york-2

Menu: http://kunjip2013.virb.com/entree

Friday, November 25, 2016

Chongqing Noodles from China Green Dim Sum

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Savory Chongqing noodles is called XiaoMian in Chinese, is a popular spicy and numbing noodle originated from Chongqing and popular in the whole country. Chongqing is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, locates in southwest area. Hot pot is the first label of Chongqing. However a new treading is the plain Chongqing noodles (XiaoMian). Xiaomian refers to a group of plain noodles seasoned with vinegar, sugar, red oil, ginger and scallion. Sometimes the noodle may topped with braised beef, braised beans, braised pig’s large intestines, fried meat sauce.

The Chongqing noodles from China Green with Ribs (as the picture shown above) should be the best XiaoMian I could find in New York. Give it a try!

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Location: 368 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/china-green-dim-sum-new-york

Menu: http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/china-green-dim-sum/

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Spicy Chicken Wings from BonChon Chicken

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶

The crisp, tawny pleasures of Korean-style fried chicken aren’t new to New York. But this year, what had been a low-frequency contest between two chains based in South Korea, with a few local branches, intensified as each opened a flagship within a few months and a few Midtown blocks of each other.

BonChon shines when the sun does: the garlic-and-soy wings are crispy and tangy, while the spicier version has a subtle heat that sneaks up on you at about the third wing. They’re made fresh, which means you cool your heels for about 20 minutes before you eat.

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Locations: 207 W 38th St, New York, NY 10018

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bonchon-new-york-7

Menu: https://bonchon.com/korean-fried-chicken-nyc-38th-street-ny/

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Spicy Grilled Pork Tonsoku from Hakata Tonton

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶

A few years back, Fergus Henderson of London's St. John restaurant introduced the glory of sticky, rich, pig's foot broth to the masses. Chef/owner Himi Okajima of Hakata Tonton in the West Village agrees with Henderson's unbridled love of trotters—so much so that he's built an entire restaurant out of it. Nearly every item on the menu (save for dessert) features tonsoku broth, or collagen-rich nuggets of braised foot.

The signature dish of the house, Grilled Pork Tonsoku, is unforgivingly porky with a rich, gelatinous texture. Charring gives it a crisp, blistered surface great for smearing with yuzu-kosho.

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Location: 61 Grove St, New York, NY 10014

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hakata-tonton-new-york-3

Menu: http://www.tontonnyc.com/our-menu/

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Spicy Roast Fish from Zest Szechuan

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

Spicy roast fish is from Chongqing, a city in the southwest of China. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, here are a few facts you should know about this city. The city is famous for its hot pot, the super hyper spicy kind. For most other food in the city, people add more chili pepper than other seasonings combined. Chongqing has a humid subtropical climate, with four distinct seasons. According to traditional Chinese medicine, humidity is bad for the health, but spicy food will solve the problems caused by it. The city is also famous for having particularly hot girls (Sorry, I don’t have a picture for this…). Food in Chongqing is spicy, but is a different kind of spicy as compared to Szechuan food.

If you are a spicy lover who loves fish, you should try this spicy roast fish from Zest Szechuan!

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Location: 45 W 39th St, New York, NY 10018

Yelp Link: https://www.yelp.com/biz/zest-szechuan-new-york

Menu: http://zestszechuan.com/menu/

Monday, November 14, 2016

Hot Pot from Lion Pavilion

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶🌶🌶

The main reason why I recommend this hot pot is that this restaurant provides customers with beef tallow. This is really rare in the US. In China, two places, Chongqing and Sichuan, are famous for spicy food, especially spicy hot pot. Hot pot from these two places are better than any other places because it contain beef tallow, which makes the flavor better than just being spicy. It is a kind of butter that is not making pastry cream, but with the fat of cattle brewed out of butter for spicy hot pot adding flavor. In the picture shown below, the white part is the beef tallow (before melting into oil).

Hotpot with Beef Tallow from Sichuan

It is not easy to get the beef tallow here. Lion Pavilion should be the only hotpot restaurant in New York that provides beef tallow, so I strongly recommend spicy hot pot lovers to try the beef tallow hot pot there.

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