Midtown Lunch

For the end of Passover, I had noodles on the brain. It seemed about time to finally check out Nan Zhou- Chinatown’s destination for hand-pulled noodle soup (recommended by Profiled Lunchers Earl and Ashley). Besides a few appetizers (think pig ears and tendon) the menu is all soup. So you better believe they know what they are doing. The soups are as follows: broth with wonton or beef/fish/meat balls, shaved noodles, or hand drawn noodles. Heat wave be damned, I decided on the beef rib soup with the hand drawn noodles, listed as “Braise Ox Spare Ribs Noodle Soup.” This set me back $5.75 plus I threw in a fried egg for an extra dollar.

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For a more traditional Passover lunch, it had to be Famous 4th Street Deli. Famous 4th’s is known for their Jewish specialties, including enormous sandwiches, smoked fish, and soup. The original location  on 4th and Bainbridge opened in the 1920’s, but a new location conveniently opened this year in Rittenhouse Square.

I walked away from here suspecting that back in the day, someone’s grandma helped out creating the solid recipes that they still use daily.

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Pho Ha is one of the many traditional Vietnamese noodle soup (pho) joints located in the shopping plazas of  Washington Ave. What I like about Pho Ha is that the menu is user friendly and each ingredient can be customized to your preference. Ha’s menu clearly lists the meat components in their pho from least to most scary. The “small” pho starts at a mere $5.60 and is HUGE. Since these restaurants deal with such high volume of similar pho orders, they are prepared to get it to the table incredibly fast.

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