 The Chiang Lai fish ball cart over on Canal Street. Galay Yudan. Ho-yo Yudan, okay. Ho-yo Yudan. Show us. Show us. Okay, show us what you get. He opened his own spot now. Espresso martini via style. Did I feel that burn afterwards? Man, that's pretty good, guys. Here, rice rolls. Probably top three in Chinatown. It's pretty good. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And we are gonna be cooking the cha-ki, house-special seafood fried rice, but with the added small eyes. Leading off this brand new episode of Chinatown Cheap Eats, straight on Doryer Street, we have Mapo Hong Kong Cafe. Brian, you're from Hong Kong. What does that say? It says ma-fo bingsut, and ma-fo means linen. And bingsut is just the old school way to call cha-chan-tan. Hey, guys, I heard they have a ton of Hong Kong memorabilia. It's actually a chain from Toronto. Let's check it out. Art, you guys. Brian, are we in Wong Kong right now, or where are we? We're probably in Wong Kong or Wanchai right now. Okay, all right. The thing that immediately stands out to me is this old Hong Kong-style pork cracklings over rice. What is this called in Chinese? It's called Juyang Lo Fan, essentially. So you're mixing lard with rice and with some soy sauce on top. Fucking delicious. I'm not gonna lie, guys. I've never had it before, so today's gonna be my first time. All right, here at Mapo, they do do some innovative stuff, right? Yeah, so if you look at this, satay beef, like satay beef noodle is my go-to breakfast, but now they're combining that with bolognese. So is that something you can't even find in Hong Kong right now? Is this even more but you're lying? Not that I can recall, not that I can recall. And not only that, look, they got the strawberry, milky, cream, French toast, sauté, that's, I feel like that's me, too. Yeah, I respect that. Real quick, I gotta give a shout out to the sponsor of today's video, Smala. It's actually also our own chili oil. We've been working on, guys. We're super excited about it. It took us like 14 months. It's super high quality, very flavorful. It has real truffle in it, but it also has the mala numbing spice. It's just great. It goes good on everything. For more information, you can check it out on SmalaSauce.com. You can also pre-order yours today. Pre-orders are ending soon, so please do so. Thank you so much. What you guys, here we got round one at Mapo Hong Kong Cafe. This is called what? Juyo Lo-Fan. Juyo Lo-Fan, you guys, this is fried lard over rice. My God. And of course, over here, we've got coconut durian hot pot with gong-tai-min. Gong-tai-min is this actual instant ramen here at the bottom. This is coconut milk. There's seigo, there's red bean paste, and some grass jelly. Oh, wow! Look at the bear. The bear, it won the bet. The bet is like the condensed milk. So cute. So cute. Fried lard over rice, Juyo Lo-Fan. Now, Brian, this is a little bit more of a heritage Hong Kong cafe dish, right? Like it's a little bit more for the older generation, 60, 70, 80 years old. Yeah, you don't see that a lot nowadays in Hong Kong, but my dad used to eat this growing up. This is a coconut chicken durian hot pot right here now, guys. I've never had this before. I know that coconut chicken is a very trending flavor in the Guangdong region. Whoa! Whoa! It's durian coconut chicken soup. She said there's a surprise inside in this strawberry cypress. Wow! Wow! Yeah, very surprise. Very surprise. You guys, $9 for the condensed milk ice bear. Chop this nose off with the Hong Dao and the other things going on with the mangoes, the mochi. That's good. It's two dishes for $16 and $12, respectively, Brian. What are we looking at? This is hachong lozi si guk fin, which is black truffle cheesy pasta with chicken. Wow! Guys, I know, as you guys know, Hong Kong food doesn't always have a lot of Chinese flavorings to it, but the combination is very Chinese, very ancient. All right, here we have a bowl of bao sandwich. We have spam. We got pork cutlet here. An apple bun sandwich, $11.99. And the bowl of bao is very, very sweet. Maybe I wish the bun was a little bit softer, less crumbly, but overall, man, if I put a little hot sauce, we got a little sriracha, maybe. I know some people come to Hong Kong cafes and might look at the baked macaroni cheese pastas as kind of like something kiddy or too Americanized, but let me tell you this, the whole combination and the fact that you're eating it here is very HK. Yo, this is good. And we're looking at two sandwiches, but this one's for dessert, and this one's not. What are we looking at here? This is diwitang lai wang bao, which translates to caramel custard bun. This one's actually really good. I would say this is a 4.5 out of five on the nice and creamy scale. This is a satay beef and egg bolo sandwich. No, it's only $9. $9, oh my God. Oh, shit, this is a steal. This is a Chinatown cheat beat right here, $9 for that. It feels like having the whole bowl of satay noodles all mixed up in your mouth in one bite. I like that over the other sandwich we had. That's got flavor. Get that one, $9. Ending off our very funky and kind of new school meal here at Mabu, we have the po-tup guy, mean bao wun, okay, AKA po-tup guy bread bowl. Po-tup guy is creamy sauce with chicken. Po-tup guy, mean bao wun is $20. Hey, they do not got this at Fairwood and Maxim. They are doing things differently, but let's see if the taste lives up. Very carby. I would have liked a little bit more baking on top, but overall, that's pretty solid, guys. All right, HK Brian, we're wrapping up our meal here at Mabu, this is for Chinatown Cheap Eats. I would say price-wise, it's not the cheapest and cheap, but it's really not that expensive. I mean, the top dishes are $20, so that's pretty fair, but you can get a lot of great dishes for $9 here, so definitely check it out. There's still some cheap-eat items here. Brian, what did you notice about this being from Hong Kong? I see a lot of familiar dishes, but I also see a lot of creative dishes, and I respect that a lot. You know, a chain from Toronto, so you know from Toronto, I don't know. They're pretty chill out in Canada. That's true. They're chill, and this spot's chill, bro. Saga Man's out, peace. Guys, our old friend who was running the Chang Lai fishball cart over on Canal Street, and we did a video with him a long time ago. That's the come-up! He opened his own spot now! Is that Kale Yudan? Kale Yudan. Kale Yudan. Kale Yudan, okay. Kale Yudan. Show us what you got. Okay, show us what you got. Okay, show us what you got. Thank you, thank you. Congrats. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Can you show us what you got next? The cart is very difficult to carry with you. It's very complicated, right? Yes, yes, yes. Alright guys, we're going to try. He went from the cart to the brick and mortar. He said it was a lot more complicated. It means a lot more complicated. Yes, of course, of course, but he's made it, so you know, we're going to come here to support. Let you guys know this is very much a Chinatown journey. There's something new, right? Let's see if the guy will use the same. The chicken wings. Yeah, yeah, chicken wings. You got chicken wings now, see? He didn't have chicken wings off the cart. Alright you guys, we're at the brand new brick and mortar location of Chang Lai Fishballs. Like we said, they used to be a stall on Grand Street, Andrew. Just to come up. Yeah man, brick and mortar guys come out and support. So they specialize in fishballs, rice rolls. This is a dish that you would get off the cart. They have some new dishes here. Obviously, chicken wings and the fried mantou, they didn't have that off the cart. But let me go try in this. Guys, definitely a Chinatown cheapy. Just look at the menu. Everything's Hong Kong style though. Oh, no. Fishball's still good. This is a fried mantou, egg a mantou. A lot of Chinese people like to eat it with condensed milk. Man, honestly, I might eat the rest of this. These fishballs, because they're a little bit fried on the outside and they actually have a little bit of the curry flavoring. Why don't you wash that down, my brother? Oh, with a nice hot Lai Chao. Dong Ling Chao. Oh, that's hot. This is the dish that helped them get the store. Still banging. Yo, when I will say this though, look at this chicken wing. Look how you see the width of it. Not gonna lie, it's pretty thick. And it's freshly fried. That wing is a munch. All right, man, my man said we gotta put the Lai Chao churren bean. Okay, this is the fresh tripe. Tripe, man. Fresh tripe. I'm going with the rutabaga. I like the big tripe. For me, I like tripe that's even the one you get in full, the tiny one, or the big honeycomb one. All right. Man, we eatin' like some 95 year old. These fresh fishballs, I could tell because they're not perfectly in ball form and I like that. It shows that it's organic. It's not like made out of a machine, you know? Oh, you guys, if you've ever been to the Chiang Lai fishball cart, come to the brick and mortar. It's even better. All right, our next spot on Chinatown Cheap eats is A1 Seafood here at the corner of Christie and Grand Street. Prime location, lots of stuff going on right here. But I got the lunch special here, of course. But they have a lot of other great dishes here. But I'm gonna focus on these dishes which are only $10. They also have lunch puzzles for $13. Here, I got the fish filet with bean curd, lots of ginger flavor. This is actually very, very delicious. You get rice, you get the soup. Bam, check that out. We just, little sip. Ooh, look at all that veggies. Mmm, now you got scrambled egg with baby shrimp. Now, what I think is really cool is for a long time in Chinatown, there was the Fujianese and the Cantonese. Cantonese were probably there first. Fujianese came in and there was always some, I guess historically there was some separation, of course, right? But now, there's like collaboration businesses. This one has FJ owners and Cantonese chefs. So, hey, it's a new age, everybody. Everybody's together. Oh my gosh, look at the drippy bean curd with the garlic. I mean, and the ginger, it's crazy. Oh, shrimp with scrambled egg is one of my favorite. Look at this chili oil here that they have. I like, it's minced up a little bit different than the other ones. Guys, overall, this food is pretty good. There's always Chinatown cheap eats, no matter how expensive or gentrified you think things are getting. They're always bringing the deals, man. Chinatown lives on, let's go. Food's so good, it's making my hair stand up. Soft, fluffy eggs. All right, you guys, next up on Chinatown cheap eats, we're at the iconic empanada mama. I saw Frank Ocean here one time. This is a ham and cheese empanada, definitely not fully traditional. We're gonna hit it with a small lot. It's about $4.60 plus tax. They make them fresh. This is definitely a Chinatown and Jason late night cheap eat. All right, you guys, today we are at Chakki, one of the dopest tatantangs in Chinatown NYC. And we are gonna be cooking the Chakki house special seafood fried rice, but with the added smiley. All right, guys. So we know that smiley makes an incredible finishing oil, but we wanted to cook with it too. We wanted to show you guys that the usage could be the exact same usage as olive oil. So we had seafood cookup, a Chakki fried rice with a ton of smiley in there. Of course, the wok, hey, you know, the wok was burning hot, so let's check it out. It got just enough pick guys. I'm telling you guys, especially if you're Cantonese or you didn't grow up eating mala flavors, this is the perfect amount. I'm telling you guys, it works both ways. As a finishing oil on top of something without mala flavor, but it actually works into the dish as well, infused into it. It really draws certain elements out differently because of reactive heat. So I love it, smiley, you get two bottles and you get optionality. Cook with it and just throw it on top at the end. Mm, that's good. All right, everybody, what you're looking at is smiley being cooked inside of the house special fried rice here. It has pickled veggies with a little bit of sweetness and the Chinese bacon, the lapioca. But I'll tell you this, you can barely tell by the shade, the shade's a little bit darker, but man, there is definitely an extra kick in this fried rice. Mm. I still taste the truffle, but I think even some of the granules that sit at the bottom of your smaller bottle, they came out and got re-cooked just real quickly, tossing that hot wok for like a second and it just brought out a little bit more flavor. But man, let me just add a little bit more drop. Mm. All right you guys, we are at the iconic great NY Noodle Town. Of course, opened up the interior back up for dining post COVID. I only have $20, so of course, I had to get their signature dish, which is the gung chong wen tun min. But obviously it's just the egg noodle, but with op on top, which is the duck. As you can see here guys, this is what great NY Noodle Town is known for. I mean, pretty much since 1995, this has been the premier late night spot in Chinatown. Look at the mountains of ginger scallion, AKA gung chong wen tun. Wait, bro, bro, bro, what you talking about? Oh my goodness, I was doing it like it was spaghetti. I mean, this is a very iconic dish. Not everybody serves just gung chong dan min like this. Like we said, we only had $20 guys, $9 for the gung chong ginger scallion noodles, $5 for the duck add-on, $14 all in. And of course, we have to garnish it with a little bit of our brand new sauce, smala. Come get smala at the link below guys. From Sichuan to Sicily, I think this is gonna go perfect on this gung chong wen tun min. The smala added just enough kick. It is unlike anything else on the market. Check it out at the link below. I'm telling you guys, super affordable, super iconic, great NY Noodle Town legendary. All right you guys, we're at the brand new location of Soft Swerve. Their first location was on 91 Allen. Now they're here on Bayard Street which is an iconic street in Chinatown. As you can see, they've got this like retro Hong Kong Chinatown Americana vibe going on here. And you know, the space is not very big but they did a very good job of making it feel big, almost like a mini museum. As you can see, I'm getting toppings put on my Hong Kong Laitang milk tea matcha swirl right now. Godly, I'm telling you, if you have not been to Soft Swerve, this is the best Asian Soft Swerve in America. If you guys have never had Asian flavored Soft Swerve, you're definitely missing out because this is Hong Kong milk tea flavor. I got the toffee, I got the mochi, I got the cookie crumbles, I got the matcha swirl. Ooh, I mean, they got lychee strawberry regular ice cream as well. But for me, a couple pieces of mochi, some sprinkles. That's me. That's me in a cup. Is Soft Swerve the best Soft Swerve? Yes or no? Yes. All right guys, we are outside of Na Trong on Baxter. When we got our man here, he has hooked it up and he's showing us some very, very new items, some items that you, they're off the menu. These are off the menu. Yeah, off the menu. Can you talk about what we got? This is the special noodle with great love, classic. Vietnamese pho for special noodle. We have beef, we have tendon, and special we added barbecue pork chop. It's a pork chop pho, okay. And then right here. This is one of my favorites. It's cow mochi, added with shrimp, mixed together with cow and onion on top of greek lettuce. Yo, that smells delicious, man. It lasts for 30 years. And this is another one is, we have the, we sell a lot of grilled pork sandwich and we add the top of the fried egg and we add tofu in there. Yeah, guys. So this is like. You like mayonnaise, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he knows I like mayo, all right. Guys, they have a Soju Vietnamese coffee that he's about to show me. So I'd love not trying because it's a traditional Vietnamese spot over in Chinatown, but they, he's always down to mix it up and try something new, all right. So, let's get into it. Bun me, you got scallion oil, tofu, grilled pork, two fried eggs, lots of mayo on top. Guys, this is a special bun me off the menu. Let me just break those yolks. So it's dripping now. Watch. Shout out to Chinatown cheap eats. There's a lot going on, but I like it. This is the owner's favorite dish. This is calamari with shrimp. So it's a mixed plate. So it's not, it's like a fried seafood with like the Chinese like to do you which is like salt and pepper, but also with the kind of like Southeast Asian flare to it, you know, with like a little bit more pungent sweetness. This dish is a must get lots of flavor. All right, guys. Here we have the special full lots of tendon. I put all my greens in there. Of course you have your beef flank, your everything like that, except you also got your pork chop flowing in here. So let me see how it all goes together. This is pork, grilled pork chop. Nice char flavor on the outside. Last but not least, again, doing things differently. We have a shrimp dog. This is ground up shrimp paste wrapped up in taro shreddings and then fried. So hey, put something in the shape of a corn dog and it might just sell. Whoa. There's like watching Kung-Lei make you a drink, guys. You can have a single side. Let's try a single side first. Let me together here, right? Let me see the top here, right inside here. Look at that. Oh my God. Oh my God. Espresso martini via style. That's pretty good. I could probably put another shot of soju in there, but actually I feel that burn afterwards, but man, that's pretty good, guys. Come here, try it out. Maybe ask him, see if you can get it, but I just love what Nautrong is doing. Chinatown cheapies, love to see Chinatown spots always innovating and doing something new. All right, everybody. We are here at Sugar Cane Daddy over on Baxter right next to Nautrong. It is the number one place to get your sugar cane drinks in New York City. Yo, Winsley, tell us about this new flavor that you got. So for the summer, we're gonna do a passion fruit. Everyone's been asking about it and we gotta send this out. This is the new drink for the summer, so. Okay, and now you're testing the ratios right now. I hope it's good enough. I hope it's not too sweet, not too sour, but let's see what's up. I think the passion fruit's coming through, bro. I think this is the golden ratio. You might have it, because I taste the passion fruit, I taste the sugar cane. I like it because there's a little bit of sourness from the passion fruit that's balancing out with the sweetness of the sugar cane. Yo, cheers. You already know, everything's all natural. All natural sugar. These are all our sugar canes right here. This right here, one stick right here makes one drink. We are at White Dream Cafe, rice roll canes. They got so many different names. What you are witnessing right now is a master at work, a master of the rice roll, the chung fun, the mandarin, the chang fun. I'm about to get the fish. Yeah, he's making a rice roll right now. We got everything in it. I got a fish base, I added scallions, and I added shrimp. Andrew, I figured it out. They put a chung fun spot called West Rice Roll and White Dream Cafe, a boba shop, in the same spot. Oh, I like the multi-use. All right, so here we have a fresh made chung fun. This is at a baseline $5, but you had add-ons that made it $8, still very much a Chinatown cheapy. What do we got here? Fish and shrimp? Guess what, guess what, it's fish. Oh my gosh, fish and shrimp. This is my very first fish chung fun I've ever had in my life. Look how translucent the chung fun is. Do you see that? Do you see how thin it is, guys? That's chung fun. Oh my God, you know it's fresh. It's not day old, it's re-steamed. This is fresh, fresh, fresh to death. It's gone. I'm super silk, super silk, I'm super silky. Oh my God. Listen, guys, chung fun for the longest time was $1, $2, $3, but it's getting to upmarket. Joel's Rice Rolls, West Rice Rolls, we moving upmarket, folks. Honestly, I would say for pure rice rolls, it's probably top three in Chinatown. It's pretty good. All right, next up on Cheap Chinatown Eats, man. We're back in the Mottree Eatery. They have a new stall called Build Noodle. Of course, I still want to give a shout out to Guy Kitchen. They have some chicken and rice back over here. We got Jun here. He is from Japan, and he just started Build Noodle. You can build your own udon. You said, Jun, you said you have your very own special udon noodle maker. Exactly. And you said it's a rare machine to have. Exactly. Only one United States. So this udon is like top, top level. Top level. Right here at Mottree Eatery, guys. Kakiage for $6. Crazy deal. Yeah. Okay, Jun. This is the very special udon making machine. How does it work? Okay. This machine contains everything. Mixing, making pressure. And make the dough flat and cut. Cut. Because udon comes out like in a thick sheet, right? And then it gets cut into the square noodles. Exactly. Okay. All right. Here at Mottree Eatery, you can now get this kakiage, vegetable kind of tempera ball over udon for only $6. That's a crazy deal. And then here I have the curry beef udon. Ooh. 100% worth $6. And I just feel like it's really cool to see an authentic Japanese concept open up here as well as you have Taiwanese guo te. You have now Singaporean chicken rice. You have Thai chicken rice. You have Kanto food. You got more Kanto snacks. You got sushi there. So, man. Shout out to them. Curry udon, $13. Mottree Eatery. Always doing new things. $7 Singaporean high non chicken rice, guys. Yellow skin, yellow rice. It looks like there's a lot of flavor. I like the gung chung right here with the ginger scallion. Ooh. I'm excited to try. $7 is a steal. Come by right now and get it. Right off the bat, it is really good, but it probably reminds me more of kind of like a guai fei guy. It's like a dish that you get a lot of Cantonese restaurants that are yellow skin. The chicken comes out and you, like I would say it's more like that than it is high non chicken. But either way, it is a crazy steal right now. $7 is ridiculous. So, come while it's still cheap. Yeah, we have bun jing. What's up on Chinatown Cheap Beats? We are actually a little bit outside of Chinatown. We're here on Rivington at Morgenstern's New Concept Bananas. They rebranded. They're doing something different and they have Asian flavors here, guys. Look it. They even just got Sanzo too. That's the most Asian sparkling salsa. But here for $10, you can actually get a swirl. This is the matcha and yuzu. And then here we have mango tapioca and then sprinkles right there. So guys, they're definitely doing Asian things here. I'm excited to try it. They said this mango tapioca topping is the best-selling topping. So this is all $10. $10 is a lot, but it's actually pretty hefty too. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right, right off the bat, I got to say it is pretty refreshing, pretty delicious. It kind of reminds me of the Dole Whip over in Disneyland, for example. That's also very famous. But it is all dairy-free. They got more concepts and more locations opening up. Well, I would definitely recommend the tapioca mango topping. I've never had this before. It's like mango clusters of tapioca. It's pretty delicious. I would say the matcha flavor, not super strong, but it fits well. It's not too bitter. I like it. What's going on, everybody? I'm outside of Golden Mana Bakery. They actually have some new bakery items. I love to see the Chinese bakeries always evolve and add new items. So here we have this Swiss roll cake, but it's a little bit different. As you can see, it has strawberry cake, chocolate bits, and a whole big pieces of nuts in there. So this was $2. Let me try it out. I would say that the roll cakes always could have used more of an update and more things in it. It's not bad. All right, everybody. I'm here at Audrey Bakery over on Bowery. It's one of my favorite bakeries in Chinatown. Here they have some new items. They got this American cheesecake I'm going to get. And they got this yogurt fruit cup that I'm going to get. These are all premium items. They cost about $4 and $5.25. And since I already have this in my hand and I can't put it down, this is the sausage egg bun. This is for $3. So I'm going to buy them all. Guys, this is a mango yogurt cup with fresh mango on it here at Mana. Mmm. It's good. It's good. It's very good. Here's your cup. Here at Audrey Bakery. Get it. All right, you guys. We're on Baxter Street. We're at the pie guys. Like we said here, you got chicken bacon ranch. This is not a traditional New York Italian pizza flavor. But I want to say for, you know, nowadays in 2023, it almost is like a new classic because you can find it at a lot of spots. Usually not Italian though. And my man who made this from Toluca, Mexico right here. That's why we got the Valentinas, the Cholula. And of course, for their more American height beach crowd, the Max Hot Honey. 350 for a whole slice. I split it in two. Gigantic. Next up on Cheap Chinatown Eats, I know we're not really in Chinatown, but we're in Chinatown extended. Congee Village is right across the street. We're here at Williamsburg Pizza over on Allen Street. It's open late night. This is one of the first good pizza spots I went to when I visited New York City. And here we have the tartufo slice. Tartufo slice, sorry. It's the fungi, you know, got the mushrooms. And then you have your pepperoni grandma slice here. And of course, a Smala Drizzle. So click the link down below if you guys are interested in Smala right now. But let me check the tartufo slice with the Smala. Mmm. I'll use a little more. Mmm. Williamsburg Pizza is known to be very crispy on the bottom. And they kind of have some cool like recipes. They have like an apple bacon one I didn't get. But both these slices are $4.75 each. A little extra Smala. Got the AC blowing my sheets away. Mmm. You know, Wonder Williamsburg is still busy. There's this day. Pizza is crispy, saucy, flavorful. What more can you say? And it's still pretty cheap.