I hadn’t been to New World Mall in over three years, but have now been twice in five days. It’s been a mixed bag:
Visit 1:
-
Dapanji (big plate chicken) from my long time usual, stall #28 at the far right corner as you come down the escalator. This had been my favorite rendition in years past, but it was a big let down this time. There was an agreeable bite, and an even more agreeable Sichuan peppercorn tingle, but none of the aromatic complexity (star anise and so forth) I’d come to expect. Worst of all, the potatoes were tough. How do you achieve that? The pricing was interesting. In the past there was just one version. For $12 you got essentially a whole chopped chicken. Now there are sizes. I picked the “small” which gave me roughly half the chicken for $11.50.
-
Skewers from stall #8(?). That’s the stall with all kinds of refrigerated skewers on display, but few were good. The lamb was terrific, the chicken and chicken gizzards decent, the pork tough, the squid chewy, and the beef unconscionably gristly. I’ve eaten their food in the past and it was a lot better than this.
-
An excellent samsa from stall #5, Tarim Uyghur Food. That was the best bite of that visit.
Visit 2:
Inspired by my first visit, and by the reports above, I went back to NWM today and focused almost exclusively on Tarim:
-
The lamb skewers were really, really good – perfectly grilled and tender. They asked if I wanted them spicy. I said yes, and so should you.
-
The samsa was great again. (They told me the filling is the same as in the “gosh naan”.)
Things went south after this:
-
The big plate/tray chicken had even less complexity than the one at stall #28 (or other competitors), less tingle (although there was an occasional green Sichuan peppercorn here and there).
-
The big tray lamb was even blander, and the lamb chewy.
-
The biggest letdown was the chopped noodle dish, much praised above. It was undersalted, underflavored and underwhelming. To add to these problems there were large flakes of tasteless dried red pepper that my teeth were unequal to. I grimly chewed and chewed, and eventually spat. I had to do a similar chewathon with the small, dry chunks of lamb that flecked the dish. I recognize others might have gotten better, but this is what I got.
While I waited for my order from Tarim, I wandered around, navigated the always semifunctional, mostly semiclean, always inadequate bathrooms at NWM – ye who food crawl so extensively, have ye no bladders? – and got a container of peanuts from stall# 29.
Now, stalls come and go at NWM, but I think Laoma Malatang aka(#16-17) has been there for a while. I’ve had many a happy hotpot from them in the past (dry), but also fantastically wonderful, wonderfully tingly Sichuan peanuts. The ones at #29 were not even close.
