01.03.10
Review of Shanghai Mong, Friday October 2009
30 W. 32nd St. & Broadway/5th Ave., 212-629-6450
Great for: noodles, eating non-Korean late in Koreatown
This was a really big day for me. I shot my first feature film (I play a gangster who stabs a girl after helping kill her fiancé) and had my first date with the New Boyfriend!
He got spicy noodles with chicken substituted for seafood, and it was quite tasty. The lovely round noodles were silky and slightly chewy. The sauce was a bit sweet, but pleasantly so. My Szechuan chicken was an absolutely giant dish. It was only medium spicy, with far too many mushrooms. The sauce was also on the sugary side without being annoying.
It’s a decent Chinese restaurant, and certainly a better bet than some of the Korean joints on the street. I love barbecue and regular Korean food, but it’s so easy to walk into a random place and end up spending $60 on maybe two plates of raw meat and wondering why we’re still hungry. (True story, at Won Jo.) Plus, this place seems to stay open forever – we left around 5am and there were still people coming in – and you won’t smell like barbecue when you leave. (Though personally I am always delighted by that smell.)
Rating: 6.5 / 10
Our cost: $30
Noise level: it’s pretty large so I imagine it’s not quiet when full
Chance of walking in: not bad.
