Still talking to myself (I can be seen at DTX, mumbling softly my song), Gene’s cumin lamb noodles were fantastic today. Subtly cuminy (not an altogether bad thing), but with noodles sitting in a delicious pool of spicy-ish, very tasty, oil.
Lamb skewers were great as always. How do they maintain this consistency?
I’ll sing along with you. We’re close to Gene’s Westford location. We get a couple of lamb skewers as a side when we have the hand pulled noodles (#4). Skewers are small but mighty in their cuminy, fatty, lamby richness.
And I believe the cumin lamb noodles (#9) that you mention are the better choice if we’re out and about with others or when returning to an office after lunch. The force of the garlic in the #4 is strong.
Yes, the garlic-force is indeed strong with the #4.
Just to note that the Woburn shop changed its schedule a month or two ago. This thread made me check the website. Tonight I was so ready to buy a quart of #10 dumpling soup, extra spicy, on the way home. Braved the Woburn Center traffic and the place was dark. Bummer.
It turns out that now their closed days are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They are also open a half hour longer (until 8:30) on Friday and Saturday nights.
https://sites.google.com/site/geneschineseflatbreadcafe/news/ourwoburnrestaurantstartnewbusinesshour
wow, that’s a lot of closed nights! good info, though. thanks for the heads up.
I was back at Gene’s DTX after a close to 4-year gap (3 of those for obvious reasons). Half the space is tabled off now, with just a couple of tables for those wishing to dine in. Nobody was while I was there. The line of tables acting as a barrier between you and the original ordering counter (and the kitchen window) is marked off with spots for pickups by Grubhub, DoorDash, ChowNow, and the like, and a small spot for direct online or phone orders. It was 1 p.m., and sadly they were not busy. I ordered a #4 – what else could I possibly do? – along with two lamb skewers and a tea egg.
The skewers were very good, but not the best I’ve had from them (slightly on the lean side). Seemed to be just batch variation, though, not a decline. The #4 was very good, and to steal @tomatotomato’s words, the force of the garlic is still strong with it. That worked in my favor, though. Nobody sat next to me on the train to NYC that I took shortly after.
In the years since my last #4 and this one I’ve had many #1s at Noodles King, a serious competitor (and there’s the version at MDM Noodles as another). Here’s a quick comparison:
Garlic coefficient: Gene’s by a long shot.
Vinegar piquancy: NK (although for both it and Gene’s you have to stir up from the bottom)
Spiciness: NK slightly, although both its and Gene’s versions seem muted compared to the past.
Complexity: NK, by a wide margin, with its greens and sprouts. (But, of course, you may prefer the simpler, blunter approach of Gene: Chewy noodles, garlic, a touch of vinegar, heat, more garlic, cilantro).
Noodlosity: Gene’s are thicker and chewier, NK’s, while by no means delicate, are slightly less rustic.
A couple of comments: If you order directly online for a Gene’s pickup, the only option is “in 15 minutes”. But they explained that if you place such an order, you can call them with an ETA, and they’ll accommodate you.
I was a little taken aback, I must say, at how deserted it was at a time when in the past they’d be mobbed. Later this evening, on arrival in NYC, I walked up 9th Ave to my pad in Hell’s Kitchen and the restaurants were slammed --on a Wednesday evening. They’re packed in the afternoons too. This is a good subject for another thread.
for the (sadly) uninitiated among us, what is the #4?
Another post-lunch train trip to NYC today, therefore another take-out lunch from Gene’s DTX. I think about these lunches ahead of time (perhaps a sad commentary on how exciting my life is these days), and I’d already made the tongue-wrenching decision to forgo the 4 in favor of the 10 (hot and sour dumpling soup). It was not on the menu at DTX initially even after it appeared at other locations. It did show up a few years ago, but I’d never had it.
As I headed to my date with dumpling destiny (first trudging up the long, narrow non-functioning escalator at the Downtown Crossing T) I passed Lotus Test Kitchen and decided on the spur of the moment to conduct a dumpling smackdown. I added a third contestant: dumplings from the Moyzilla food truck outside South Station.
As pure dumplingness goes, Moyzilla won. They’re gyoza-like and so have thinner wrappers, and the filling was flavorful enough to need no sauce. The Lotus ones were large, but that was all they had going for them. The wrappers were very thick and coarse and the filling had essentially no taste. Even dipping them into the agreeably vinegary dipping sauce wasn’t enough to counter their determined neutrality. What worked was to nibble a dumpling open at the corner and pour in some sauce, then to have at it.
Gene’s dumplings had flavor (and thickish wrappers, but not anywhere as thick as Lotus), but the sour, slightly spicy broth with its mushrooms and slivered vegetables and sprouts made the dish. The broth was perhaps slightly on the sweet side, and I’d have preferred a heftier kick, but an all-round winner despite these minor quibbles.
Random notes:
I consider all of us lucky that you didn’t get mugged for your lovely dumplings and survived to provide us this great report!! Thank you!
I play it safe. Amtrak has a club for those of us who (sadly) spend 25% of our lives on their trains, and membership comes with a sumptuous waiting room overlooking the main South Station Hall. You have to press the secret buzzer in order to be admitted upstairs. I rushed my loot there, then spread it out on one of their tables and indulged.
Continuing my exploration of Gene’s let me list their dishes by number and compare the availability of each at DTX vs Woburn:
#1: Lamb flatbread sandwich (DTX, Wo)
#2: Lamb handpulled noodle soup (DTX, Wo)
#3: Pork flatbread sandwich (DTX, Wo)
#4: Handpulled noodles [Yay, #4!] (DTX, Wo)
#5: House noodle soup (DTX, Wo)
#6
#7: Lamb stew (DTX, Wo)
#8: Xian cold noodles (DTX, Wo)
#9: Cumin lamb handpulled noodle (DTX, Wo)
#10: Hot sour dumpling soup (DTX, Wo)
#11: Lamb skewer (DTX, Wo)
#12: Tea egg (DTX, Wo)
#13: Sour spiced shredded potato (Wo)
#14: Five spiced beef shank (Wo)
#15: Spicy pork stomach (Wo)
#16: Hot sour handpulled noodle soup (DTX, Wo)
#17: Hot sour pork intestine noodle soup (Wo) [See this.]
#18: Pork intestine handpulled noodle soup (Wo)
#19: Hot sour handpulled noodle veg soup (DTX, Wo)
#20: Gene’s chilli sauce (Wo)
There was also a Westford location (see this discussion, with comments on many of these dishes), but although it is listed in the Gene’s umbrella website, there are no menus you can get to. Is it still around?
The biggest mystery is #6. What was it? (@greygarious , you were likely the first among us who went to Gene’s – any memories?)
The Westford location is gone. I think #6 may have been the special noodles that were only available and in limited quantity, on weekends.
Thanks. I’ve now read every post in the thread I linked to above (“see this discussion”) , and I note that the closure was announced there. The thread also records an interesting evolution in #10.
This is from a very old website of Gene’s that I somehow still have a link to:
Weekend Only
#6 Xi’an Chilled Noodles
…5.60
Hmm, the pic is there on the preview…
Weekend Only
#6 Xi’an Chilled Noodles
…5.60
Thanks. Your links didn’t work for me. Was #8 on the menu then and how did it differ from #6? For the other items available then did the numbering match the one I gave above?
(Not vastly important, but I’m not called consistencydabbler for nothing.)
I have a picture from Chelmsford with #6 Xi’an Chilled Noodles. There is also a #8 Xi’an cold noodles that have a lot of stuff on the plate.
That’s great. Thanks.
#6 noodles were incredibly thin, and very silky. Gene once told me they are a lot of time-consuming work. Something about soaking the flour for a couple of days so the starch separates from the something else, which then involves careful draining. I only had the #6 once. I remember the texture, but not what other vegetables it had - maybe bean sprouts. Colorless vinegar dressed the dish. My memory is of mild vinegar, silkiness, and it being a dish that’s VERY white.
That sounds like liang pi? Also called cold skin noodles.
