With the fam in town for the holiday weekend, we took a jaunt into town Saturday so that we could go to the U Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Before looking at that really old stuff, we stopped by chinatown for a bite to eat. I took us to the Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House. It’s a pretty tiny spot ,and yes, they do make the noodles here, by hand. I saw it myself.
There are some appetizers, but most of the menu is noodle soups. And they’re all under $6. Score. My bro got the beef brisket noodle soup. Hunks of meat in a beef broth, with some greens thrown in. There was some random pickled cabbage in there too.

The sis-in-law got the egg and vegetable noodle soup. Good guess if you figured there would be egg and veggies in this! This came in a chicken broth. It was very light.

Mom got the seafood noodle soup. It had some shrimp, scallops, clam, and fish balls in it. Oh yeah, all the soups came with a whole bunch of cilantro thrown on top. Mom hates cilantro, with a passion. She can’t stand it!!! We had to help her pick out every last bit. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Cilantro rocks!

I got me the braised ox spare ribs noodle soup. Big name, big soup. You get tons of food in these economic buckets of soup. And these noodles? They really are delicious. Like no other noodles I’ve tasted before. Just say no to dried noodles!

Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House
927 Race St
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 923-1550

More fun with macros! We had a small going away for one of our designers. It’s quite the good excuse for cupcakes. Ok, so these were from Genuardi’s, but these were damn good. Simple cupcakes with a giant squeeze of icing and sprinkles. It’s good icing people! So maybe ordering 80 cupcakes for 15 people wasn’t the best idea. And it ended up that half the office was empty because of it being the friday before memorial day and all. Oh well, I ended up taking tons of these puppies home!

I went to a show later this week and stopped by Grace Tavern for a pre-show bite. I’ve been wanting to go here for awhile since I’d heard about the blackened green beans. I knew I was going to be getting these. D got the kelly burger, which came with bacon and cheddar. Also, a side of delicious fries with Monk’s bourbon mayo. Once again, I let D be a guest blogger.

“That’s good burger, very tasty. Those are good fries. They’re spicy fries. If I didn’t like spicy fries, I wouldn’t have liked these spicy fries.”

Yeah, he’s right, they are spicy fries. And they’re good spicy fries. Oh baby.

Our waiter looked straight out of 80′s glam band Faster Pussycat. It was freakin uncanny, and his pants were so damn tight. I asked him for a recommendation and he recommended the jambalaya. So I went with it. Not bad. Certainly not great, but not bad. Shows you what happens when you trust the opinions of a glam metal guitarist. The garlic bread was pretty good too, but perhaps a bit too crunchy.

Onto the best part of the meal… Behold the blackened green beans! Fresh green beans smothered in magical blackened spice. They were certainly spicy, and certainly crunchy. I really enjoyed these. Your fingers get blackened too, and probably your teeth. It comes with the same Monk’s bourbon mayo, and it’s a nice thing to dip into. I got the small order, but it came with a decent amount of beans. Next time? I’ll just get a big thing of beans and a big thing of fries.

Other than his overly tight pants, the service by Mr. Faster Pussycat was just fine. The place is really dark and pretty small. Most of it is bar, and there is a very tiny dining area with probably about 16 seats. It really filled up right after we got there. So good luck getting a table!