In our ongoing quest to quell our readers’ thirst for the best in Chinatown snackery, we just wanted to file the briefest report about our noodle soup this past weekend. One of our favorite holes in the wall for hand-pulled noodles — meaning the northern Chinese pasta made by stretching, cutting and stretching the dough into five different sizes by hand, as shown here — is Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodle, Inc. at the auspicious address of 1 Doyers Street, the curvy little lane just off lower Bowery.
This time we opted for knife-peeled noodles, where the ragged, rustic shreds of pasta are cut from the dough instead spun between the noodle king’s fingers, and instead of lamb or roast duck or beef parts, the $4.50 pork bone broth. At other hand-pulled spots, we’ve had the pork bone broth arrive in a stainless steel bowl the size of a steering wheel, a vat of soup with a pound of noodles, a sprinkle of tart pickled cabbage and a massive bone with a few shreds of meat still clinging to its craters.
At Tasty, the noodles and regular soup stock and cabbage came in one large bowl; the pork bone and it’s light, wonderful consomme like-liquid in another. (Our tablemates looked so sad with their one-bowl orders: Not a bad result for ordering the cheapest noodle dish on the menu.) Our approach was to spear a bite of noodles and slip them into a spoonful of bone broth, adding a bit of Tasty’s spicy sesame seed chile oil and some of the chopped chives and cilantro set out on the table. It’s excellent fare for a frigid day, and despite our addiction to Tasty’s powers with pasta, we’d gladly take home the boney broth bowl all by its lonesome one icey cold afternoon.
