Get In My Jelly Belly

As I was re-stocking my pantry on Saturday with a trip to Chinatown, I decided to have lunch at Swatow. Now and then, it makes the rounds as one of the places chefs go to after work. As anyone goes by at 2 a.m. can attest, this place is hopping for the late-night crowd. It's also busy for lunch too (and pretty much all the time).

Even such a fixture has also evolved with the times. The new tables are cheap, but classier-looking engineered wood. There's some etched frosted-glass touches at eye-level. And the Chinese-only menus are no longer scribbled papers taped to the walls, but professionally printed and mounted. But the food is as cheap, quick, and tasty as ever.

Swatow's soups are not only yummy, but at $4.50 may be the cheapest nosh in town (with pho pushing $7 and ramen usually coming in at $10+). Mine came with plump shrimp wonton with the perfect mouth-feel. The wheat noodles were soft but chewy, and the broth was light. This was enough for lunch but my eyes were greedier than my stomach so I had ordered two more dishes. The fried bean curd ($0.90) had a crispy skin, giving way to moist tofu. The beef curry fried noodles ($9.50) had the typical super-soft Chinese beef with some great crispy noodles. The curry added a bit of messy spiciness. The vegetables were perhaps too lightly cooked: it kept the green peppers fresh and crunchy, but that meant the onions were essentially raw.

On the way home, I stopped off at Jelly Modern Doughnuts to grab some mini-donuts for an evening dinner. Though the regular doughnuts were twice the size for only $0.50 more, the "3-bite" version ($2.25) worked better as desserts. There was a variety of interesting options. I went with traditional lemon curd but also glammed it up with some chocolate cherry and s'mores doughnuts.