TimeOut

'The Best Little Restaurant'

 

With a name like this, you can get a little suspicious if it's any good or not.  'The Best Little Restaurant' is located in the heart of Boston's Chinatown on the busy Hudson side street.

Parking on the street is hopeless, very few spots are available.  I wouldn't recommend taking a nice car here as the streets are narrow and I would expect a lot of door dings and bumps. 

It's received quite a few accolades from the local print media but the main thing is that this place is highly regarded by our friends who are local to the area.

The restaurant is small, just a few tables downstairs but the action is on the second floor.  There are 4 large round tables that can accommodate 10-12 people per table.  Family is extremely important in Chinese culture so it's common to have a large group dining together and share a meal.  It's busy and hectic but everyone seems to be enjoying the food.

Let's take a quick look at the menu while they serve some fragrant hot tea.

Our first course is a House 'Lai Tong' soup, a rich broth slowly cooked to concentrate all the flavors from the chicken bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices.  Served piping hot, this was a nice way to start the meal.

A specialty of 'The Best Little Restaurant', braised Chicken Feet:

A wok stir fried pork strips, fish cake, and Chinese 'Gow Choy' vegetables..

Lettuce Wraps...

They use a diced Long Green String Beans mixed with pork, scallions, preserved turnips, and dried shrimp 'Ha Mai'.  Every restaurant does a variation of this, their version was excellent!

Another Chinese staple of a family dinner, House special Steamed Chicken with a oil, ginger, and onion dip sauce.  Very tender and moist and not too salty.  Not much fat on the chicken either, which is a good thing.

Deep Fried Squab is up next, perfectly fried with a crispy skin but the meat was very moist.  It comes served with a salt mix, probably added some msg.  I don't care too much for squab but I had no problems enjoy this!

Well, since we are in Boston, you gotta have lobster. IMO, the best are the ones that are 2-3 pounds, the meat is much more tender and flavorful.  Since there is quite a few of us we ordered 3 whole lobsters cooked in their 'House Ginger and Onion' sauce.  WOW, this was amazingly good!  They cooked the lobster perfectly and the sauce was seasoned right.  The ginger and onion was mild and didn't over power the succulent taste of the lobster.  I would definitely stop by Boston just for this at The Best Little Restaurant'.

The Vermicelli Glass Noodle with Bean Sprouts and Gow Choy was fantastic.  Usually the noodles are hard to cook, many places use too much oil making this dish greasy.  Also the texture of the noodles can be mushy if overcooked but the chef knew what he was doing and this came out tasting great.

Gotta have some greens so we went with the Snow Pea Leaves sauteed in minced garlic, delicious! 

The Yang Chow Fried Rice, another fine dish that was just as good as the other items we sampled.  The rice was fluffy but not too hard with the right mix of meat and veggies.  These guys know how to fire up a wok!

The last dish (and one of my favorites) is one that really stood out.  I saw others ordering it and was hoping to try this.  I was hoping that the fried nature of this dish wouldn't dry out the meat.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was tender with that fall off the bone texture that results from perfect cooking technique.  In addition to the lobster, this was amazing and really stood out.

So is this the best little restaurant as the name implies?  Well I'm not so sure but what I can be sure of is that 'The Best Little Restaurant' in Boston is what I call a real and authentic Chinese restaurant, which many cities in the U.S. outside of L.A. and San Fran do not have.  This was a fantastic meal and happy to know that Boston has a great place for Chinese food!

-MW