With a smile and a snappy “make I take your order please”, the waitress starts me on a journey to seafood curry noodle soup; one of the excellent choices at Mee Noodle Shop, located at 795 9^th Avenue at the corner of 53^rd Street in Manhattan (212-765-2929). If your taste runs to spicy food, the curry noodle soups will please you. The large bowl of curry seafood noodle soup comes to you filled with large shrimp, scallops, crab legs, calamari rings, bean sprouts and a green leaf that I can’t identify, but tastes good. You have a choice of eight different types of noodles; from mandarin to mee fun. I sometimes ask for the alternative of spinach (since the noodles put me in Siesta mode) along with four wontons and a hard boiled egg. Once the soup comes to your table, you better hope the air conditioner is on full blast or the temperature is ten degrees below outside cause the soup sure is spicy and hot, but its also soothing; close your eyes and feel the spiciness at the back of your throat, a spoonful of the hard boiled egg has the texture of Cream Brule; warm and inviting.

Other dishes I recommend:

Chicken Curry Noodle Soup; as good as the above but for those that want a change or don’t like seafood.

I once had the Sizzling Platter of Meat Dumplings with Peking Meat Sauce over Noodles and had to loosen my belt by three notches; it was worth it.

Cantonese Style Noodle Soups; a selection of twenty-nine soups with a least ten you’re gonna love.

Mee Special Noodle Soups: Now you’re eating with the big boys.

The classic Egg Roll is good, but try the Shrimp Roll in Seaweed; the shrimp is minced and filled into a seaweed wrap then fried; with fresh hot mustard to dip it in, your mouth will cry for more.

B-B-Q Roast Pork over brown rice with spinach will keep you happy and its only $4.10.

Bring your girlfriend, boyfriend,  spouse. friend, a newspaper or whoever to Mee, you will enjoy the food and each other.

I’m Robert Greene