I just looked up Best Bar B Q, since I didn’t know it, and found that in 2014 it had the highest number of cleanliness violations in all of Boston. That said, I’ll probably still visit it on my next trip to Boston.
Interesting. How did you find this out? Even when I Google them with “cleanliness” as an added search term, the information about 2014 (or any year) does not pop up.
Well, I use duckduckgo.com instead of google, so the results may be different. And I cannot find the page I saw yesterday, but I did find this: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/05/25/foodinspections/4tSbujB5qTGH8uo3Q8uJAJ/story.html and this: https://www.cityofboston.gov/isd/health/mfc/history.aspx?arg=EcB9fjfmCME=.
Thanks. We’re wandering way off topic here, but is there a master page from which one can search for restaurants? There used to be one, but lately (even prowling around your cityofboston link) I have not been able to find it. That website is spiffified now, and it is possible my browsers cannot see some things.
I think that this is the introductory page:
https://www.boston.gov/departments/inspectional-services/mayors-food-court
Thanks. A quick search of about fifteen Chinatown restaurants (perhaps this should be under “usual suspects”) found that they all had a few violations over the year that needed re-inspection.
Interestingly, upscale, non-Chinese restaurants that fringe the neighborhood (Teatro on one side, and O Ya, Les Zygomates and Troquet on the other) were all “clean” on every inspection.
(If this sub-thread gets longer we should probably split it off.)
Had a #4 from Gene’s (downtown X) the other day, with two lamb skewers. It’s a lot of food and when everything is on garlicky, cuminy song – as it was that day – this has to be among the tastiest sub-$10 options around.
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That’s a go-to dinner order for us (but from Gene’s in Westford). We do takeout so we can enjoy our food at home with wine, which admittedly breaks the $10 ceiling. Oops.
At the same time we pick up a container of the #10 hot and sour dumpling soup for another dinner. Another fine pick from Gene’s for less than $10.
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Not if you split a bottle of two-buck-chuck and leave a teaspoon of wine in the bottle. The cost pp will then be $9.99 for food and drink.
Yes, lots of good options at Gene’s under $10.
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I am going to remain in violation. 
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Denise, how do the noodles hold up to takeout? Do they get too gluey?
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We’re pretty close to the Westford location so we probably make it home in under 10 minutes. The drive is quick enough that the #4 noodles stay hot. I imagine that the results would vary with a longer drive.
The #10 dumpling soup we bring home and let the container cool with the lid off. After cooling, the soup keeps well in the fridge for a few days.
My experience is that these noodles are pretty sturdy as long as you do not reheat them. I often carry my #4 onto an Amtrak train, and between the walk to South Station, and the wait to board the train, it can be as long as 30 minutes at times till I get to eat them. They’re pretty tasty even when not tongue-burningly hot. (In fact, I think they’re tastiest when they’ve cooled for a few minutes.) The noodles I got today from Noodle King at Longwood also held up pretty well in the 30 minute Lyft ride from there to Cambridge. (I had some hot in that mall, then brought the leftovers home. Even now, when I tasted the remaining few that are at room temperature on the counter, they are quite edible.)
Xian, in NYC, makes a fetish of not encouraging you to take out their hand-stretched noodles, but I’ve found those, too, survive 20 minutes or so without huge damage. And I’ve eaten similar noodles that I’ve carried from Queens on a 45 minute ride on the #7, then the E, to Manhattan, and am still around to tell the tale.
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I can only applaud you – and shamefacedly confess that I washed down that particular $9 meal in the Amtrak cafe car with an overpriced $15 half-bottle of Chardonnay. Should have stuck to a $8 bottle of beer.
What do you drink with #4?
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A nebbiolo would be our favorite treat to pair with #4 if we’re lucky to have a bottle squirreled away. Something in the $20ish zone, not anything crazy pricey.
And I’m with you about the wine vs beer choice when dining en route. After, um, several ill-considered wine choices of my own in years past. A decent beer, in both quality and price, is so much easier to find.
Yep, friends don’t let friends reheat hand pulled noodles. I still ate the sad reheated noodles anyway when I tried it though.
fooddabbler and denise, thanks so much. That’s really helpful. Home Taste’s new Arlington location is about ten minutes from me so I’ll give it a try. Takeout from the Watertown locations got a bit gluey, but was still delicious.
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Were these Watertown noodles in broth/soup, or dry (and slicked with oil)?
Spicy hot oil-seared noodles. Wide and flat. Very tasty.
Yes, they’re tasty. I asked because I’ve found noodles in that category, including ones from the Watertown S&T, to be relatively immune to sticking to each other, at least (as I said above) for time periods of around 30 minutes (or even a bit longer). Noodles in broth, I think, are more likely to get “gluey.”
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