NYC’s noodle queen, Superior Motors team up for dinner
Simone Tong put mixian on the map in New York City two years ago, and she is hoping to repeat that feat in Pittsburgh.
The chef and owner of Little Tong Noodle Shop, who has championed the spaghetti-shaped rice noodle, is teaming up with chefowner Kevin Sousa of Superior Motors for a six-course Chinese New Year dinner on Feb. 5 at his Braddock restaurant.
Mixian [pronounced mee-sheeen], a native of the Yunnan province in China, is a humble and light rice noodle that has a special place in Ms. Tong’s heart for a simple reason. “I love it, and want to share it with people around me.”
When she opened Little Tong in the East Village in March 2017, she devoted the entree section to mixians, serving them with pork, chicken, shrimp or vegetables. When the mixian buzz spread, the critics raved, especially about the Grandma chicken mixian. The New Yorker called it “T.L.C. at its finest.”
In his two-star review, New York Times critic, Pete Wells, wrote: “Little Tong Noodle Shop plunges mixian into soups and sauces that make a definite impression” and called the Grandma chicken mixian “the most interesting chicken noodle soup in the city right now.”
Last year, she opened a second Little Tong location, which offers only counter service, in Midtown East. And in spring, she is opening a full-service Chinese-inspired restaurant in the West Village called Silver Apricot that will feature housemade cheeses, charcuterie and breads and give emphasis to wine, sake and beer, as well.
Ms. Tong’s life in the kitchen began as an English-Chinese translator for a French chef when she worked at her mother’s restaurant in her native Chengdu. Growing up she moved around to different cities and countries, and lived with her family in Macau, studied in Beijing and Australia and spent her teen years in Singapore. After she got her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in economics
and psychology, she returned to China.
In 2009, after watching an episode of the TV show, “After Hours With Daniel,” which featured chef Wylie Dufresne of wd-50, she was determined to work at the influential avant-garde New York City restaurant, which closed in 2014. She moved her way up the kitchen ladder from a prep cook to the “highest honor” of being the fish cook. “I dabbled in a little bit of everything at wd-50. That’s where I fulfilled my dreams and learned most of my techniques,” she says.
That’s also where she met and worked with Christopher Clark, who would later become the general manager at Superior Motors. “Ever since I met her, I thought she had a strong voice about food and knew how to extract flavors,” he says. “I thought she was a young cook who was going to develop into something special.”
Mr. Sousa and he were looking for fresh original voices for their dinner series, which debuted in December with an ice cream dinner with Sam Mason, who also worked at wd-50 as a pastry chef. And Ms. Tong, 36, seemed a natural fit.
Holding the dinner on Feb. 5 has a lot of significance for her.
“It is my dad’s birthday, and I wanted my Macau cousin who now lives in Pittsburgh to join in on the celebration. Only afterward did I remember that this year, the first day of the Chinese New Year also falls on the same date,” she says.
She says the Lunar New Year is like Thanksgiving, but on steroids as the celebration traditionally lasts for 15 days. “So instead of one Thanksgiving meal, we have 15,” she says, laughing.
Typically, revelers spend the first day paying their respects to the elders in the family and spending time with them, and so was it a sacrifice to be cooking for 150 diners in Braddock that night?
“Not at all,” she responds without hesitation. “For the past nine years, I have always worked on Chinese New Year’s Day, And I do get to celebrate it with my family — my restaurant family.” She adds that Mr. Clark had suggested holding the dinner later in February but she insisted on Feb. 5 — to celebrate her dad.
Mr. Sousa says he left it to Ms. Tong to chalk out the menu. “I’m excited to be exposed to the Yunnanese cuisine as I am not very familiar with it,” he says. “My goal is always to learn something from visiting chefs.”
The $85 dinner will have two seatings — 6 and 8 p.m. — and an optional wine pairing for $30. Sommelier Domenic Fiore will be pouring wines, which are from Artisan’s Cellar. Tickets are available at www.exploretock.com/superiormotors.
It starts with a cold Chinese broccoli salad stir-fried with the high quality binchotan (Japanese charcoal) oil, and tossed with pickled beets and caramelized cheese curds. Shaved housecured egg yolk is the finishing touch on top.
Beef tartare flavored with pickled mustard seeds, sundried tomato, fried shallots and served with a flaky rotilike pancake is the second course. It is followed by black truffle-filled chicken dumplings cooked in chicken broth and herb oils. A seafood course is next, where firm-textured tiger prawns are served with toasted almonds, chili, fried garlic and shiso, an herb that is the love child of mint and basil.
Ms. Tong’s signature mixian shows up in the last course before dessert and is served with premium Japanese Wagyu beef cooked with the flying saucer-looking pattypan squash and pixian chili bean paste.
Adzuki bean is for dessert, and that will be prepared by Mr. Sousa. He is serving the red mung beans with pickled pineapple, toasted rice sorbet, dark chocolate ganache with adzuki bean jam filling and a chocolate/sesame tuile.
When coming up with the menu at Braddock, Ms. Tong says she was looking for foods that people will enjoy eating in real time and “not be thinking of what it will taste like in some village in some part of China.”
“It is hard to replicate something authentic, but it is a lot easier to define something delicious,” she says.
So is mixian the next big Asian noodle in the U.S. foodscape?
Ms. Tong is confident it will resonate with people provided “the noodles are made right and the sauce is flavorful.” It might just take some time. After all, she says, it took ramen years to become mainstream on the Stateside even though it had been around for a long time.