Nom Wah Tea Parlor + Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
Last week my friends Jim and Katie and I decided to meet for dinner in Chinatown. Katie works downtown, and wanted to shy away from the crowds in Little Italy, and I jumped at the chance to suggest the Nom Wah Tea Parlor. I had been wanting to go for a while, both for the food and the décor. The Nom Wah has been on Doyers Street since 1920, and was the first dim sum parlor in New York City. I had never had dim sum before, and I figured if it had been around for nearly a hundred years that it had to be good.
In 2010 they completely remodeled their kitchen, but you wouldn't know it from the stuck-in-the-past dining room. The place has the feel of an old diner, and is definitely worth visiting just for the atmosphere. I love any place where you order by checking off boxes, which limits both human interaction and potential errors in communication. We ended up ordering way more food than any of us could eat, but it was mostly delicious. They tell you what each dish is as they bring it to you (everything is made-as-ordered), but I'm still not entirely sure what each thing was that we ate.
Two of the dishes were much too slimy for my tastes and the tofu skin roll was a bit bland (not to mention the off-putting nature of eating anything with the word "skin" in it). But the original egg roll was delicious and it's on my list of things to definitely order next time. The star of the meal, however, was indisputably the pork bun. They're number one on the menu for a reason, and my only regret is that they came out last — I was pretty much full by the time they arrived. It was the first pork bun I'd ever had, and it was fluffy, flavorful and incredibly filling. I would be satisfied just ordering two and calling it a meal, and at only $1.95 they're a total steal.
I will definitely be returning to Nom Wah, a little more seasoned in the ways of dim sum, but probably still no better at effectively using chopsticks. I eventually resorted to just spearing my food, like an embarrassing American, which I'm not proud of, but it got the job done.
Even though we were all super full after dinner, we couldn't resist checking out the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, which had also been on my to-do list for a while. It's right around the corner from Nom Wah and open late even on weekdays. They have all sorts of interesting flavors, all of which you can sample. I sampled the almond cookie and cherry pistachio, with the almond cookie being the clear winner. Almond is one of my very favorite tastes. The ice cream version was so, so good — seriously one of the best scoops I may have ever had. I sampled Katie's pumpkin pie (amazing) and Jim's red velvet so I mean it when I say that I don't think they even sell a mediocre scoop. They have so many flavors (red bean, black sesame, ginger, lychee, etc.) that I obviously need to return quite frequently, although it might be hard not to become married to the almond cookie.
The sweetness of the ice cream was a perfect complement to the saltiness of the dim sum (aka the gallons of soy sauce I poured on everything), so it was a pretty perfect night. I also noticed that most of the open-air fish markets (aka what I hate most about Chinatown) were closed at night, which made our evening that much more pleasant and redeemed the entire neighborhood from my last less-than-thrilling experience. Any place that produces a pork bun that delicious deserves a second chance, for sure.
