I've been sick for almost a week and a half. What a bore, I say (try saying it with a British accent, Professor McGonagall style). I haven't stepped out of my apartment unless absolutely necessary, and feeding myself was easy enough with foodler.com at my fingertips. One of my favorite places to order from is Spring Garden in the strip mall at 16th St and Spring St in Silver Spring. They're consistently fast at delivery and their food is mostly decent.
I always get soup, and my favorite is sweet and sour - good flavor and lots of vegetables and tofu. The wonton soup is alright, but the broth is a bit bland. My second favorite soup is the egg drop soup - I know, it's so boring, but I love the tissue paper thin sheets of eggs floating about the gently viscous soup. I usually add a bit of soy sauce and just a touch of sesame oil to it and it makes a pretty good soup about 10 times better. Now, I ordered their seafood soup as an experiment one day, and it was blech, gross, ew. It had quite a bit of shrimp, scallops, imitation crab meat, and calamari, as well as water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, carrots, and celery. But the broth was so boring and no matter what kind of condiments I added to it, I couldn't make myself eat the damned thing.
Their lo mein is pretty good - I have tried their beef, chicken, and shrimp lo mein, and I think shrimp is the best. Overall good seasoning, not too oily and the noodles have a good texture. Hunan chicken's pretty good also - lots of veggies and chicken doesn't taste as fake as some other Chinese delivery places. I don't know if you know what I mean, sometimes the chicken seems synthetic in texture and flavor - same goes for beef. I wish the hunan chicken was a bit more spicy, but that can be amended with some red chili oil or sriracha. My favorite thing about their food is that their sauces don't have the thick, goopy texture of sauces that most Chinese delivery places have - one can almost convince oneself to believe that they don't come in a gigantic tub labeled "brown sauce."
They also have sushi on the menu, so I decided to try it. After browsing through a bunch of items that you can find everywhere, my eyes stopped at crazy roll. It was salmon, avocado, and cucumber rolled in nori and rice, tempura battered and fried, then cut into 8 pieces, and sprinkled with chopped scallions and tobiko. It looked pretty good, but it didn't taste so good. Actually, it was pretty nasty. It was squishy and mushy in texture and there was no flavor - the salmon was pretty flavorless, and the rice was too soft. Even after being dunked in way too much soy sauce it was bland. After 2 pieces, I was forced to throw it out. It's called crazy roll for a reason, you have to be crazy to eat it!!
The almond cookies that I got for dessert was quite good. Nice and crispy but not hard, and you can definitely taste the almonds. I love that it's not that sweet - it goes perfectly with a cup of coffee. There are 4 cookies in an order and out of tonight's order, it was my favorite item.
If you're ever looking for food to be delivered, check out foodler.com. And if you're looking for Chinese food in Silver Spring, definitely give Spring Garden a try, but stay away from crazy roll. Seriously. Do try the lo mein and the almond cookies. Tasty tasty!!
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www.foodler.com/MD/Silver-Spring/Chinese/Spring-Garden/1507.html
Have you ever seen the Jackie Chan cartoons? They're always yelling, "Uncle, uncle!!" Except it's more like, "Awn-cooh, awn-cooh." Well, that's what I want to say when I see the noodle guy in the window at Chinatown Express. Never been there? It's pretty nifty. There's a very nice looking middle aged gentleman who stands in this window, surrounded by barbecued meats, and he makes noodles by hand. He slaps and twirls and swings dough around (I think all day and all year, as I have never seen a different noodle guy in the window) and produces these chewy and delicious fresh noodles. He will wave and smile at the gawkers, and people like me who takes pictures of anything and everything. So, I dub him my awn-cooh.
Nari and I were pretty excited and hungry when we got there. There were sounds of people slurping away everywhere, which just raised our excitement level. We got the mixed barbecue plate to start with, which was delicious, but also pretty greasy. I think I ate about 4 pieces and couldn't really handle anymore, even piled with the ginger paste and the red pepper flakes. The mixed plate comes with duck, chicken, pork, beef, and squid, garnished with steamed broccoli. It's pretty to look at as well as yummy in the mouth, if you don't care about your stomach screaming in protest.
We didn't have to wait long for the noodle soups to arrive, steaming and enticing. Nari had the beef noodle soup and I had the seafood noodle soup. It seemed that they put different toppings on the noodles and then poured the same stock/broth over them. The soup is kinda bland, so I added in copious amounts of soy sauce, ginger paste, and red pepper flakes into it, which made it super delish. The fabulous noodles - the texture is perfection.
I'm sure that the other items on the menu are good too, but it seems that the majority of people were there for the noodles. I guess that's pretty obvious that's what they're letting us know is their specialty, by showing off my awn-cooh. I'll go back anytime for their noodle soups - I forgot to tell you, they're super cheap around $6, you can't beat that. Tasty tasty!!!
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