Hao Noodle and Tea

The eponymous proprietor of this great West Village establishment is the successful restaurateur, Zhu Rong, who also runs popular restaurants back home in culinary hot spots like Shanghai, Hangzhou, and her native Chongqing. Unlike other chefs around New York who’ve traditionally focused on one style of provincial cooking or another for decades, the carefully edited, judiciously priced, seasonally attuned menu here reads like a window into the evolving, pan-regional tastes of modern China. Everything on it is exceptional, but pay special attention to the noodle section, which tastes like a greatest-hits tour of the street stalls of China’s famous night markets, and to the complex and flavorful soups and stews, which are as different from your standard-issue carryout variety of hot-and-sour soup, say, as a “deli style” corned-beef sandwich in Beijing is from the real thing.