H Noodle House opens in Jericho
Minced pork noodle with soybean paste, sauteed baby bok choy and cold five-spice beef from H Noodle in Jericho. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
The H Mart shopping center in Jericho has become an even more powerful culinary draw since H Noodle House (no relation) opened at the opposite end. The stylish little Chinese restaurant has a handful of tables but is poised to become a must-visit takeout stop for H Mart shoppers.
I’d been stalking this place for well over a year. The sign went up and then … nothing. When it finally opened in November, I found the wait times sometimes unpredictable, and they kept running out of the dumplings I wanted (pork-leek). But now, H Noodle is firing on all cylinders and is, without a doubt, one of the best places to get Chinese food in the Jericho-Hicksville-Westbury area.
The menu here serves a wide variety of regional Chinese specialties, and relatively few dishes from the Chinese-American repertoire. (If it’s Cantonese or Hong Kong cuisine you’re looking for, you’re better off a mile up the road at Orient Odyssey.) Among starters you’ll find Shanghai soup dumplings and stubby, Northeastern-style boiled dumplings with various fillings; cold dishes such as sliced, five-spice beef, drunken chicken and marinated jellyfish.
Noodles abound, from hearty soups such as braised beef and shredded pork with pickled cabbage to the non-soupy minced pork noodles with soybean paste, cold and spicy Sichuan noodles, lo mein and the enigmatic special large intestine noodles. (I mean, when are large intestine noodles not special?) There are dozens of mains — from Sichuan boiled fish fillets, grilled sea bass in chili sauce, tea-smoked duck and kung pao chicken to stir-fried cumin beef, lamb with scallions, shredded pork with celery and dry bean curd and pork meatball in brown sauce. Vegetable dishes include sauteed baby bok choy, eggplant in garlic sauce and dry-pot cauliflower.
On Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., H Noodle serves a "weekend breakfast" menu that includes fried dough twists, filled buns, congee (rice porridge) and some special dumplings and sweets.
The interior of the restaurant is charming, and there’s a big window that allows you to look directly into the kitchen. Often, someone is filling and crimping dumplings just on the other side of the glass.
H Noodle House is at 336 N. Broadway, Jericho, 516-933-8808.
