Sweet, Not Sour

The part of the West Village that makes the least sense to me is what I call “Party Central,” roughly 14th Street to Houston from Sixth Avenue to Broadway, which includes the NYU campus—so you do the math. Think the East Village is eclectic? Not in comparison to this area.

Walk from the basketball court on Sixth past gritty storefronts, jazz clubs, raucous bars, and mall-like stores on Broadway, and you’ll soon move through the modern campus south of Washington Square Park, bordered on three sides by stately Georgian structures. The food scene here is equally eclectic, with everything from McDonald’s to hot Italian spots like Babbo, Carbone, and Il Mulino.

Eclectic all by itself is Uncle Ted’s, a stylish—yes, stylish!—Chinese restaurant serving better fare than almost anywhere in Chinatown to a mixture of local students, residents, and some very savvy Chinese New Yorkers. The interior is bright with a modern bar area in front that delineates the white dining room, accented with cloth wall sculptures (for lack of a more accurate term) and pleasant wooden balustrade. The wood-grained tables are surrounded by white metal bistro chairs. Sorry, but there’s not a guardian lion or Chinese lantern in sight.

The food at Uncle Ted’s will surprise and delight as well, if not quite shock and awe. I found the pastry wrapping each dumpling to be delicate, unlike the gummy dough found elsewhere. The roast pork buns are small, pillowy, and delicious, bearing no resemblance to the rubbery, tasteless sponge you might be used to. The fillings in those dumplings and buns are also very good if not way above average—the braised duck dumplings sounded better than they tasted—but sometimes it really is the outside that counts.

The hot and sour soup is excellent, and if the wontons are fairly standard, the wonton soup’s broth is also superior. I especially enjoyed the sizzling beef and scallops in oyster sauce, in part because the snow peas, carrots, and broccoli florets were crisp and immensely flavorful. These vegetables counterbalanced the savories instead of absorbing their taste and becoming mushy. That small miracle can also be found in the seemingly mundane chicken with broccoli, where the vegetable is terrific on its own and not influenced by the wonderfully prepared fowl and succulent sauce.

If this is eclectic Chinese, I’ll take it over traditional any day.