Congee Village, NYC

It had been a while since petiteseour and I had done a downtown lunch/shopping day. This time I chose Congee Village. Congee is one of my favorite things to eat, it's comfort food. It's also a treat whenever I have it, because I don't make it at home. I guess I could make it, but when you do it, you'd want to make a huge pot of it. I could probably eat it for days and not get sick of it, but redneckhunter is not really one for eating the same meal day after day...

If you don't like congee (like petiteseour), don't worry, there are plenty of other choices -- everything from fried dough for $1 to bird's nest soup for $50 a bowl. We really would have needed to come here with a huge group, like the multigenerational family at the round table next to us.

We ended up getting rice with chicken and black mushrooms baked in a bamboo pot (above). Other choices of this type of rice included frog, eel, salted fish, preserved duck or chinese sausage.

I had to get congee of course -- my favorite: pork with thousand year old egg. It's came in a sha guo (casserole dish) but I managed to eat it all myself.

We also got lotus root stir-fried with spacial black bean sauce. I don't know what made the sauce "special" but it was delicious. Sweet, with a hint of cinnamon, and the lotus was crunchy and perfect.

I would love to come back with a big group - there was just so much on the menu I wanted to try! And so much of "non-American" taste: Roasted young pigeon, steamed chicken and frog with mushrooms, bitter melon with dried scallops, baked fish intestine, goose intestine with bean sprouts, cold jelly fish, snail and frog congee, liver and sliced fish congee, fried fish head casserole, simmered turtle soup with wolfberry seeds. And so inexpensive - our bill came to $15 before tip, and we even had leftovers to bring home!

Congee Village
100 Allen Street
New York, NY
(212) 941-1818