Finishing up the last of what I brought home. Radish cakes — a bit pasty, but flavorful, and a heck of a lot easier than making them.
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wheres the oyster sauce? I love these.
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On my plate!
But even more LGM on top of that (not the crisp – the one with preserved vegetable – you might like it, reminded me of what was in the spicy sauce on the dumplings).
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Here are the rice rolls made with chow fun noodles. These are pretty hefty and take some getting used to vs traditional Cheung fun.
It occurs to me one could purchase the noodles from Wong sun, youtiao somewhere else and easily make cheung fun youtiao.
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My favorite banh mi, of the three we tried, was the first, at Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich. I’d make a meal just of those meatballs. As for spiciness, perhaps I should have added that new menu item at Banh Mi Co Ut to our order: the five spice pork offal banh mi, which also offers optional shrimp chili oil — “highly recommended if you like spicy.”
I had some shrimp jerky not long ago from Ling Kee, another well-known shop in Manhattan Chinatown. It’s unlikely that Ling Kee’s jerky would move the needle for anyone who was less than thrilled with the product at Malaysia Beef Jerky. A better option, at one shop or the other, might be to buy some fresh off the grill.
When folks are ready, we can certainly coordinate a rice roll crawl where all our chow will be made to order.
“Easily” perhaps not, but certainly more easily than making the components 
The ho fun I bought were in sheets and not sliced, as they have previously been from other places, but it was a bit fiddle to warm them up so I could separate them, and when separated, they were folded / kinked, so rolling around the youtiao might have been a bit tricky.
Maybe one of the other kinds would be a better choice if you wanted to roll them around something later. (like the ones that are rolled into long ropes in the middle – that the lady told me I didn’t want 
).
Though the sheets aren’t hard to make in small quantity either.
I sliced them up for chow fun and pad see ew, so the kinks weren’t an issue.
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Ling Kee was the other one I came across that looked Malaysian-style (vs Chinese dried jerky) – but shrimp jerky? Hmmmm.
(At the moment I am contemplating trying to make my own, inspired by old posts from @naf and @ccj.)
Agree, my favorite was the same, but then I’ve never tried the meatball sandwich at Banh Mi Saigon, seems like an oversight to be fixed soon.
I’m all for a rice roll crawl, maybe concluding at Kings, so then we can get a couple of clay pots too. Though we never end places we plan to (Bo Ky!) so maybe start there .
There are also the Viet steamed rice rolls / banh cuon (made from the same kind of batter), so we could even go cross-cultural.
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That’s my favorite, too. But I always take the House Special. Do you recommend a meatball version?
This photo you added reminds me of kue lapis, an Indonesian (and Brunei/Singapore/Malaysia) sticky rice cake. Sometimes, I had them with chocolate, others with pandan. Either way, good times. Did you like it?
Now you’ve got me wondering if cucur, or bika ambon can be found yonder. (If anywhere, those Queens Indonesian markets would be the most likely suspects, alas I’m rarely around for them.)
I’d thought that our foursome might get a house special from each of our destinations, then compare and eat them side-by-side, but we decided to mix it up, and to eat each sandwich as we got it. What attracted me to the number four at SVS was the description, on the overhead menu board, of a “meatball of pork & water chestnut.” True, the smaller menu beside the counter cited only pork, but either way my quarter-sandwich included most of a very good meatball. Next time I’ll get one for myself.
that was a delicious meatball sandwich! what worries me is that the two other places had long lines but SVS was very quiet at lunch time. And their food was so good, based on this single sample… Go and see, Id say
These were, to be gracious, very mildly flavored.
Bika ambon makes frequent appearances at the various Indonesian bazaars in Queens, cucur, a little less frequent. If you can’t manage a visit to one of the bazaars, you might find bika ambon or cucur on offer at Indo Java, in Elmhurst.
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The House Special at SVS is a cold cut sandwich with ground pork (what is called grilled pork on the menu but the owner said is pork crumbles).
The reason we didn’t get that sandwich from every place is so we could taste what else they were making in-house (ie it’s unlikely they are making their own cold cuts, but they are marinating and grilling the pork and chicken and making the meatballs).
I’d posit that the meatball sandwich from either BMS or Co Ut will also be better than the cold cut sandwich at either of them, because the meatball just has more flavor. (But the grilled pork at BMS is strips of char siu-like pork, so it holds its own.)
Btw I thought the balance of radish & carrot pickles was better at both other places than at SVS, and the cucumber was a thick chunk, which may have affected balance too.
If you usually get SVS, I’d venture over to BMS next time.
Had a banh mi from Banh Mi Saigon several years ago and disliked it. What I wrote to a cousin in 2011 was that the banh mi at Banh Mi Saigon was “drowned in bread” and didn’t have the taste of all the elements in each bite. Don’t think that I’d go back.
Looking over the menus, I was struck with how many banh mi fillings I haven’t tried yet. Typically as a family we started our crawls with ground pork, meatball, cold cut and/or pork chop. I haven’t tried sardine, curry chicken, sautéed shrimp, sausage or roast pig.
Looking forward to continuing our banh mi, rice roll and what have you exploration!
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A group of were back at it today, in a different part of Chinatown.
Kopitiam
— Pandan chicken
— Lobak (fried five-spice pork rolls)
— Nyonya Bak Zhang (sticky rice in lotus leaf)
.
Fong On
— Ssvory soft tofu
.
Harpers Bakery
— Portuguese egg tart — no pic
.
King’s Kitchen
— Youtiao and shumai cheung fun
.
Nuan Xin Rice Roll
— Braised pork and preserved vegetable
— Duck etc
.
New Spicy Village
— Big tray chicken & noodles
— Beef and pork sandwiches
.
Lucky King
— Steamed cake
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My favorite bites of the day were the cheung fun with youtiao and shumai, the other rice roll (fan tuan) with pork (though the duck was pretty close), and the Portuguese egg tart from Harpers (@DaveCook and @vinouspleasure are converting me from an egg tart agnostic).
The steamed cake was also an unexpectedly (to me) tasty bite with a bit of molasses flavor.
On the subject of New Spicy Village, it’s definitely cleaner and much more pleasant of a space to be in than the original, but my memory of the food from the original is better than what we ate today. That said, it’s been 5 or 6 years, so I know it’s an unreliable comparison.
ETA
The beef cheung fun I brought home for dinner from King’s was good, but overshadowed by the crunchy shumai one we ate earlier
And Lucky King now holds the title of my favorite sponge cake in the area — I feel guilty now for not having shared it 
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The Youtiao shumai cheung fun was my favorite bite but I’d happily hop the q back to Chinatown tomorrow and eat it all again. My last visit (pre-pandemic) to spicy village was disappointing, I thought new spicy village better in every way but I suppose to be fair, I need to get back to the original spicy village for an up-to-date comparison 
it was a great decision to spend our day in this part of chinatown, well done @Saregama and @DaveCook! It was hard to pass up carols bun for fried baitfish and it’s good y’all nudged me away from nasi lemek, kaya toast and soft boiled eggs at Kopitiam.
best,
ps I took home 1/2 soy sauce chicken and honey roast pork from hay hay on mott, the chicken was very good but the roast pork a little too sweet. Probably back to big wong or ny noodletown next time.
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… I brought home a takeout menu for my files, as I often do. The restaurant uses these menus in-house, too, and when we were ordering I noted that the two phone numbers on the front were crossed out and a new number written in. I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the name on the menu read, simply, Spicy Village rather than New Spicy Village. And I certainly didn’t notice, till I was about to file away my menu, that the address was 68 B Forsyth St., the address of the original Spicy Village.
When New Spicy Village was opened in 2021 by a brother of one of the original restaurant’s owners, the perceived similarity between two restaurants under separate ownership raised some concerns:
I’m not sure where this takeout menu might fit in to that story. At one time, New Spicy Village did have its own takeout menu (as I see in my files), albeit one still very similar to the menu from the original restaurant.
On our visit today, I did like the food, and the service, and the setting. And, of course, the company.
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The Grub Street article later that year was a bit more sinister about the new one telling fake tales about its connection to the original
