Tang Tang Noodle

1328 Third Avenue [map]
New York, NY 10021
212) 249-2102

FACTS

Cuisine: Chinese, Dim Sum, Noodles

5 words: Fluorescent-lit neighborhood noodle house.

Hours: 7 days; 11:30am-11pm

Delivery: Yes - $7 min ($15 min over 10 blocks)

PICKS

Enjoy: Cantonese wonton soup with roast pork, turnip Cake, BBQ spare ribs, roast pork bun

Avoid: Steamed short rib in black bean sauce

In a neighborhood where Chinese food options can be limited and disappointing, Tang Tang Noodle's menu hides authentic Chinatown dim sum in an uptown General Tso disguise. Look past the standard approximations of Chinese grub - the orange beefs and chow funs in the paradoxically-titled "Specials" section - to the more authentic dim sum and BBQ items. And, of course, the noodles.

Tang Tang serves what is referred to on US menus as "Hong Kong style" food; dishes typical to the southern Chinese Canton region, where ingredients and spices are diverse, and dim sum, slow-cooked broths, and roasted meats are popular. On the dim sum end, Tang Tang offers an impressive roster of fried or steamed buns and dumplings filled with shrimp, seafood, vegetables, or pork. Steamed little juicy buns with pork ($4.75) are savory and juicy, though the shell was slightly overcooked one night, which made it gummy. Vegetable dumplings ($3.75, pictured below), on the other hand, were consistently succulent and tender.

Tang Tang's roast pork buns ($1.25) are softball-sized pillows stuffed with sweet, slow-cooked pork chunks, and turnip cake (two for $2.50) is a mild, pan-fried patty with a similar texture to polenta, served here with thick sweet plum sauce. The real stars of this menu, though, are the barbecued meats. BBQ spare ribs (small $6.50, large $9.50) are served alone, with a traditional sweet red braise, while the same roast meat is amazingly tender in wonton soup ($4.95, below), where it is allowed a long, slow boil after roasting, and accompanies egg noodles, slippery wontons and crisp flash-boiled greens. The title dish, Tang Tang noodles ($4.75), is pretty much a nest of noodles in a big tub of tasty broth with a couple of spring onions and mushrooms thrown in. Nothing earth-shattering, but there's something to be said for a five-dollar dish that easily serves three.

The dining room is a tiled, fluorescent-lit square with a brightly uninteresting view of Third Avenue, and servers are sort of charmingly inconsistant - one night, for instance, we got juicy pork buns instead of vegetable, and our server attempted to deny the presence of vegetable buns on the menu. Tang Tang is an awesomely unpretentious and satisfying Low Brow haven in the cheap food wasteland of the Upper East Side.