Little Tong has been getting a lot of buzz since it's from a WD-50 alum and there's been a huge noodle trend in the city for the last few years. The food here is from the Yunnan province which is the southwest region of China bordering Tibet, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. Yunnan food hasn't really gotten quite the hype that Sichuan food has these days but I guess Little Tong is trying to change it.
Aarti and I actually randomly stumbled upon this place as we were walking around the city on a gorgeous Saturday. There was a bit of a line but since we weren't starving we were more than ok to put our name down and wait the 45 minutes they told us it would be. They have a very very small "bar" in the back if you want to wait. I use the term bar loosely because it's literally a communal counter top in the back and the wait staff pours either wine or beer for you. I would recommend you go somewhere else because it's a bit claustrophobic back there. But the waitstaff was super nice so it made sticking around not so bad. The place is rather small and there is only 1 large table in the front that seats groups of 4, so I would definitely recommend that you come in smaller groups.
The menu here is fairly basic: a handful of appetizers and 6 different kinds of noodles to choose from. We opted for the soy beans ($6), cucumbers ($4) and the ghost chicken ($7) to start and I got the little pot mixian ($16) and Aarti got the vegetarian version ($14). For some reason when I read the word soy bean, I didn't compute that it was basically just edamame, so when basically a bowl of edamame came out I was stupidly surprised. So you've been warned. The edamame was fine, it was covered in a fermented black bean paste which gave it a bit of a different taste to the kind you would normally get at a sushi restaurant. Next the cucumber dish was like a traditional chilled smashed chili cucumber dish with some heat to it and this one some had mint to it, which was a bit different. The ghost chicken was cold shredded chicken with pickled red onions and fresh herbs. It was a nice meaty cold dish to start the meal.
I had been torn on what kind of noodle to get but lots of people seemed to have gotten the little pot because it came in a copper pot filled with broth, so I went for it, but looking back I wonder if I should have gotten the dan dan noodles instead. Mixian noodles are basically spaghetti shaped rice noodles - they're softer and more slippery than your traditional noodles. The little pot was served with pork broth, minced pork belly, shittake mushrooms, garlic, chives, pickled mustard stems, pea shoots and a mustard vinaigrette. So in theory, it sounds like a really hearty noodle soup dish. Only it wasn't. It felt really thin and lacking in substance and needed more flavor and heat to the dish. It just felt like a very average noodle soup dish that wasn't super filling. Aarti's vegetarian version was similarly lacking and while we had been enamored with the service earlier, we had to flag down 3 different waitresses to get a side of fermented chili just to give her dish some flavor.
Overall, the meal wasn't terrible, just underwhelming. Maybe it was because I had just been to the Mala Project where the Sichuan heat and flavors hit you hard in the face but this meal felt a bit too delicate. Despite the staff being a slow with the chili, the service in general was excellent - very nice and pleasant people who worked there. With all the other great and cheaper noodle options in the city, I'm not sure I would run back to this place but if someone did want to try it out, perhaps I would try a the grandma's noodle or the dan dan noodle and give it another fair shake. Total bill: $34/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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