Excellent Pork Chop House: Anything but excellent, specially not the pork chops

Dear Food Diary:
Since it’s almost Chinese New Year, this coming week, I’ve decided to dedicate my upcoming posts to ma’ peoples! Ni hao chinese restaurant week! From cheap eats to well… more cheap eats. Rarely are good chinese places expensive, we are too honest and fair. Sometimes, I feel like telling them, with a little more hype and advertising/social media, you can charge double, but I refrain… looking out for all our wallets.
Excellent Pork Chop house is a total dirt cheap Taiwanese food spot. Very basic, no fuss with ok service and clean enough. However, nothing is truly excellent, specially not the pork chop. Ironic, I know. The pork chop is lightly fried, so it’s usually a little bit oily, as you can witness from the pic above. Tastes ok, it has a spice seasoning and it’s salted generously. Sometimes dry, but if you’re broke and need protein this is the place, an order of pork chops will only set you back $2.50, yeah, the dollar menus looks at this with shame. Add a couple dollars and you get rice, shredded pork and pickled veggie for a full meal.
I usually get the marinated seaweed and dried bean curd. I’m not crazy about the thick sweet sauce drizzled on top, but flavors aren’t bad and it’s only $3.50.
Stir fried noodle is ok, salty and kissed by wok fire, filled with pork and napa cabbage in this case. I usually get distracted by all the oil. I know stir fry usually required more oil, but this is way too much for me.

Funny, but my favorite thing of the Excellent Pork Chop House is their Shanghainese style Vegetable & Pork Wonton Soup. I love wontons and not the kind from your usual take out place, those have a super thick wrap and really nasty filling. This one is pretty authentic. With a nice clear soup filled with seaweed, scallions and strips of egg. It has a firm and perfect thickness wrap, filled with a bok choy and pork mixture. At $5 bucks, it’s a bowl of treasure for a winter day.
Another favorite is their Taiwanese Shaved Ice, awesome on a hot day (even though I’ve ordered it on a freezing day). Their ice is more of a coarse crunchy texture rather than a light fluffy snowy melt in your mouth, but they make it up with toppings. I love the red and white taro ball, it doesn’t actually have any taro flavor, it’s more like a mochi meets gummy bear texture, it has an addicting chew, slightly sweet and fun to eat. My combo is complete with small sweet red beans, black herbal jelly and of course you have to have condense milk, they make sure you have enough for every bite, after all an icy without it would be a crime. If your not into red beans for dessert, they have pineapple and yellow jelly (lemon flavored), or get the random mix, but be aware, beans will be present.
I revisited this place several times, mainly for their cheap eats. It might not be excellent, but it’s not bad for those rainy days and I do enjoy a couple things. I’ve heard good things about their herbal and pork soups, will try them next time.
P.S. Chubby’s RATING: (closer to 3, but not really)
3 Doyer Street
212.791.7007

Excellent Pork Chop House on Urbanspoon

5 Responses to Excellent Pork Chop House: Anything but excellent, specially not the pork chops

  1. Anonymous says:

    i.love.excellent.porkchop.house.

    http://www.undergrounddining.blogspot.com

  2. Anonymous says:

    With a headline like that, I'd imagine nothing more than 2/4! Pictures don't look that appetizing…

  3. Anonymous says:

    hahahaha hope street nj,
    it's actually out of 5 so about the same, it's not that things are bad, just not excellent =)

  4. Anonymous says:

    Couldnt agree more with that, very attractive article

  5. Anonymous says:

    One day, I was starving and ate here cuz I was craving pork chops but was disappointed w/ the pork chop. It wasn't really tender or flavorful and the dumplings were at best ok. Shoulda call this place mediocre pork chop house. Don't eat here.

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