By Yana Krasnitskaya
Sometimes when I walk into a restaurant, I get a pleasant surge of awareness up my spine telling me that I’ve just stepped into a place where I’m not only going to eat well but also am going to enjoy the ambience. I had this experience recently when I visited The Tang, a Chinese restaurant located in Manhattan Valley on the corner of West 105th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
From the outside, it was quite unassuming, but once I pushed through the heavy wooden door, I found quite the vibe. The lighting was low and warm (which made photographing the dishes quite a challenge!), and the decor was minimal with an industrial vibe that made me feel like I was in a night club — but one that served insanely good food. Everything I ordered felt unique in its own right and representative of the Szechuan-style of cooking The Tang showcases. The standout, however, was a cold sesame noodle dish called Ma Jiang Mian ($15).
Depending on the region and restaurant, Ma Jiang Mian can be served cold, hot, or at room temp. The Tang serves it cold with a generous helping of finally shredded carrot, cucumber, and delicate pieces of white meat chicken, which are piled atop the chewy wheat noodles and smothered in a nutty, creamy, sesame-based sauce.
Trying to get a mouthful of those noodles was almost as much fun as tasting the dish itself. They banded together in a starchy ball that was impossible to separate into individual strands, so I just had to go for it – biting into the noodle sauce concoction and hoping I didn’t get any of the thick sauce on my clothes.
The first thing I picked up on was the delightfully al dente texture of the noodles, followed by the sauce, which stumped me at first. Right away I detected the nuttiness of the sesame, but then I started picking up notes of tang, presumably from Chinese black vinegar, which is a component of the sauce, and what lingered, as I crunched through the other accoutrements, was the salty, savory goodness of soy sauce. The sauce in its totality was a bit impossible to parse out – my dining companion at first mistook it for peanut butter; later we debated whether it was actually tahini we were tasting.
A quick clarification from our lovely waiter revealed an important distinction between the sauce in the Ma Jiang Mian and traditional Middle Eastern tahini. The base of the former is Chinese sesame paste which is made from deeply toasted sesame seeds, versus the raw or lightly toasted sesame seeds that are the base for traditional tahini. Toasting the seeds for longer gives the sesame paste a richer, almost smoky flavor, and when paired with a perfect, chewy noodle and some crisp light vegetables, it’s a bite —or in this case a noodle pull—that I won’t soon forget. I found the chicken that’s served with it to be a good source of protein but not entirely necessary. The dish would have felt complete with just the noodles, sauce and veggies.
Speaking of vegetables, The Tang’s hot and sour cucumber appetizer ($10) and dry-fried string beans ($18) are must haves. We ordered other dishes, too, but Ma Jiang Mian aside, these two vegetable sides were the winners. Crisp cucumber chunks are tossed with a mouthwatering tangy dressing composed of garlic, vinegar, and chili oil. Crushed chili flakes provide a textural component but the heat doesn’t overpower the delightfully zingy flavor of the appetizer. The same waiter who patiently explained to us the components of the sauce told us that the cucumber appetizer is specifically designed to wake up the palate and stimulate the appetite. It certainly did that for us. I’d also be remiss not to call out how delicious the dry-fried string beans are. The char on them is excellent. The skin is blistered and crispy while the inside is tender. And they’re perfectly salted. We also learned that the little crunchy bits that are tossed throughout are none other than mustard greens, which, our waiter told us, are used quite often in wok cooking.
Overall, my meal at The Tang was a fun expedition both in terms of flavor and location–there is much goodness in that stretch of Manhattan Valley, and The Tang–especially its Ma Jiang Mian dish– should not be slept on.
The Dish: Ma Jiang Mian ($15)
The Restaurant: The Tang, 920 Amsterdam Avenue (between West 105th and 106th streets). Open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with takeout available for order on the restaurant’s website during those hours — pickup only.
