The first thing you should know about Mission Chinese Food is be
prepared to wait. The second thing you should know is that the food
is really really good and is totally worth waiting for. This isn't
greasy, Brooklyn style Chinese food (which is wonderful in and of its
own right). You're not going to order a quart of wonton soup and a
pint of beef mei fun and be out of there in 10 minutes. Annie and I
got to the tiny lil walk-down store front around 6:45 and were told
there would be about a 90 minute wait. Gotta give them this
though, they're pretty cool about the waiting thing. The lil Asian
guy took our phone number and said he'd call when the table was just
about ready for us. Which left us to choose from one of the plethora
of bars in the area for us to bide our time. We skipped past the
“BRO” bar on the corner and settled in for a couple of pints at
some Irish joint on the next block. When we did get seated right
around 8:30 or so, the wait was up to 2+ hours and people were gladly
waiting. As an aside, there was a giant gaggle of what we took to be
“Woo” girls in the Irish joint. I became somewhat obsessed with
the idea that they'd be on one side of the room and the Bros would be
on the other and just shout “WOOOOO”...”BROOOOO” at each
other. I'm still laughing at that image in my head.
When we were eventually seated I was struck by the fact that the only actually Chinese person in the joint was the “maitre'd” (Which is a real stretch of the term being that he was wearing cargo shorts and a retro Batman t-shirt.) All the cooks (you can see into the kitchen on your way into the dining room.) were white guys. The wait staff is all white girls...even the bartender was a white girl. I couldn't get over that our waitress looked very much like she just woke up in the basement and stumbled up the stairs and started her shift 15 minutes before we got there. She was wearing pajama pants and crocs and she totally had bed-head and covered it with a backwards baseball cap. Considering how small the dining room actually is, they could probably hold a maximum of 40 people in there, I was surprised that it was tight. Annie and I had plenty of room to enjoy our gluttonous ways.
Since we went to Surfish a couple of years ago, Annie gets a little excited when she sees beef heart on the menu. So we started with Beef Heart and Scallop Sashimi. I wouldn't have expected those ingredients to be almost refreshing, but they were. There was some citrus from I think grapefruit and a bit of heat from peppercorns. Quite good, although I wish there was more of it. But that will happen when you're sharing appetizers.
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| I want more dumplings. |
The last appetizer we had were the Pok Pok Pig Tails. How could I not try pig tails? It had to be done. The verdict is I won't be doing it again. As it turns out, pig tails are mostly fat and vertebrae...that's not good eating in my book. The Wo Hop-like tar sauce (that's what Annie calls the Wo Hop dumpling sauce) that came with the pig tails was a bit too salty for my taste too. Although when you got all the components together (pig tail, tar sauce, pickled radish) it wasn't bad but not good enough that I'd order it again. But at least I can now say I've eaten pig tails. I want to go back and try pig's ears. I wonder what that's like.
Since we went ahead and shared 3 appetizers between us, we figured we should share 3 entrees too. It's Chinese food (even if it was a very stepped up version), we could just take any leftovers home. So we started with Combination Fried Rice which had dungeness crab, BBQ pork jowl, pickled pineapples and curry. One day I'll figure out how to properly eat rice with chopsticks, but this wasn't that day. In the end I wound up using the soup spoon to get at the yummy rice. Overall it was pretty good although I thought the crab was a touch dry and there could've been more pineapple to provide counterpoint to the curry flavor. We took the majority of this home.
The Spicy Scallop Noodles needed some scallops. There were none. I'm pretty sure it was an oversight in the kitchen of some sort. But really, we were halfway through eating the dish before we even noticed there were no scallops. The noodles were perfect and spicy as hell. But so so so tasty. I knew it would hurt and I still couldn't stop eating it. Annie quit on them after I couple of bites. These noodles literally made me sweat. (Yeah, I know “literally” is now a meaningless word, see Steve and Mike Save the World – Episode 49, but I had to do it.) My lips were still burning an hour later and I'm good with that. When you manage to get the peas wrapped up in the noodles they provided a nice sweetness to counteract the chili oil. But here's a warning...you know when you order Chinese food and they put the “spicy” dishes in red on the menu as an alert. Then you order General Tso's chicken or something and expect heat and almost laugh because there is none. When Mission Chinese Food warns you that something is going to be spicy, they ain't fuckin' around! On the menu they have little flames next to the spicy dishes. One flame means “Spicy”. Two flames means “Very Freakin Spicy”. The noodles had 1 flame and they were VERY FREAKIN SPICY. They have a dish called Kung Pao Pastrami that has 2 flames and I HAVE to try that. I've just got to know what the second spicy level is like.
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| Such glorious soup |
The star of the show at Mission for us had to be the Mapo Ramen. This was just plain wonderful. The pork fat broth when mixed with the broken coddled egg was just a bowl full of rich, almost pornographic goodness. The noodles, were again, absolutely perfect. I even liked the tofu, and no one in their right mind “likes” tofu. I gave some serious thought to just slamming my face into the bowl and eating it like that much like I'd imagine Animal from the Muppets would've done. I didn't think Annie would approve, so I didn't do it. But I wanted to. I almost regret not doing it. I wish I had a gallon of that soup to eat for dinner right now. Of all the stuff I ate, that's the one dish that I'll almost certainly order next time I go. I liked and/or loved everything else besides the pig tails, but I NEED to eat that ramen again.
3 appetizers and 3 entrees cost us about $50 each, not too pricey at all considering this is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the city. Wasn't even that hard to find parking down there. They only take a few reservations and I think they have to be 2 weeks in advance. But who cares? Just make sure you allot enough time...leave your name and go knock back a couple of drinks somewhere like we did. AND if you really can't bring yourself to wait once you get there, you can always go around the corner to Katz's Deli. Or what we should've done, gone around the corner and gotten brisket or pastrami sandwiches to go for the next day...DAMN IT, why didn't I think of that then. Oh right, because I was completely stuffed. No big deal, if you can't tell from this review, I'll definitely be going back there again.
Mission Chinese Food
154 Orchard Street
NY, NY, 10002
212-529-8800
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