for most of my life, i believed that tsim chai kee with its signature giant oversized wontons and cheap prices was my favorite small snack restaurant in the world. while the people over at chowhound and my mom argued more in favor of the favorite of both the rich and famous and time magazine/fodor’s and gosh near everyone else – mak’s noodles. luckily these two restaurants are located 20 feet away from each other.

jim tsai kee

mak’s noodles

we’ll start with mak’s, since it was open over chinese new year earlier than jim tsai kee. mak’s is almost universally praised for their soup base, great egg noodles and delicate wontons. they offer a much wider menu than their cross the street rivals, including things like beef brisket, beef tendon, fish balls and other varieties of accompaniments with one’s noodles.

i opted for some beef tendon beef noodles – wow, the soup was delicious – meaty and crisp with the right amount of beef flavor; the tendons were both pleasingly chewy and tender in the proportions one would expect – and the wontons were pretty much perfect.

beef tendon wonton noodles

unfortunately, the tiny proportion size (especially for the cost!) meant that i was still slightly hungry, so i ordered another bowl of the wonton noodles. without the beef flavor, the shrimp base of the soup came through stronger – if you like that sort of thing. again, the noodles and wonton were the right mix of chewy and tasty. really the perfect texture.

the masters at work:

so mak’s puts together an almost perfect meal. the drawback? the price. as you can see from the photos, mak’s is a tiny small snacks shop, but the beef tendon noodles (40 hkd) and wonton noodles (27hkd) – well, you can see their prices are quite high – especially considering the tiny portions. but the food is really quite good.

crossing the street brings you to jim tsai kee. as recently as 2-3 years ago, this was a formica round tabled place with bright fluorescent lighting open to the street. a coupe of years ago, the owners refurbished the place to this old chinese dark wood – it’s much nicer, but i think it’s lost a little bit of its formica soul.

i am, however, still a fan of the simple menu (three types of toppings: wonton, beef or fish balls, egg noodles or rice noodles, and some vegetables make up the entirety of the menu. even though they’ve raised their prices (when i lived in hong kong from 1997 through 2003, they were $10hkd for a bowl of noodles, now they’re $17), they’re still ridiculously cheap. and as the bowl is 50% larger than what you get at mak’s, and the noodles are equally as good, and the wonton are tasty, the value here is amazing.

tsim chai kee menu

the overly large wonton and a bottle of soy milk – $22 HKD

either one you choose, you can’t go wrong.

in shanghai, there’s a tonkatsu place located behind jing’an temple. i am part of this lunch group that meets on a semi-regular basis to, well, eat. on wednesday of this week we went to this tonkatsu place.

????
Bang Qi Pork Chop
??????176?(?????)
Jing an district, Jiao Zhou Road No. 176, Near Beijing West Road

here’s the review on dianping.com (which is china’s answer to yelp, but for restuarants only)

they served about 10 different types of tonkatsu, depending on if you liked curry, or lean or more fatty. i chose the curry.

but we were on our way back from lunch and we spotted people inside krispy kreme on wujiang lu, and we made our way in. apparently they’re doing an sms pre-opening promotion where you receive an sms and get a box of donuts.

since we weren’t part of the promotion, the american manager gave us each on hot sweet donut. mmmmmmmm.

here’s some photos of the fryer and glazer in action.

still opens on december 15. merry christmas!

i grew up – and still am – a fast food afficiniado. los angeles is really kind of a car culture, fast food town and accounts for some of the greatest brand names in fast food. in-n-out burger, bob’s big boy, tommy’s original, fatburger and mcdonald’s were all founded in the greater los angeles area (ok, well, san bernardino is close enough to la for most people).

this is where you point me to thisiswhyyourefat.com. . . i know i know.

anyways, for months or even years there’s been rumors of carl’s jr. opening in shanghai’s raffles city on people’s square.

and as the summer progressed, and the construction began, anticipation was high amongst my california friends here in shanghai.

then i received this email yesterday from the star of shanghai rush, brian yang:

my cali kids,

we really don’t need more fatty food temptation, but hot damn, it starts on thursday – Carl’s Jr. opens here. hallelujah!

hallelujah indeed. this morning i’ve already had 3 conversations about fried zucchini and ranch dressing.

notes:

1. i don’t know why this blog has become so food obsessed. don’t i do anything besides eat?

2. i realize the double western bacon cheeseburger used to be the king of horrible for you burgers, only now surpassed by various concoctions as the hardee’s thickburger etc. etc, but it is still 1,000 calories of pure fat. not advisable to eat on any diet