Northern Tiger Brings Seasonal Chinese Fare to Hudson Eats

Even though it opened in Brookfield Place almost a year ago, Hudson Eats’ impressive line-up of restaurant vendors has officially been finalized.

Northern Tiger has taken possession of the last space in the gleaming, high-end food court, offering farm-to-table Chinese fare with an emphasis on dumplings and noodles. And while it’s owned by the team from the similarly seasonally-focused restaurant, Yunnan Kitchen, it’s very much its own project — refreshing, since the market is mostly occupied by mini chains such as Num Pang, Umami Burger, and Mighty Quinn’s.

Northern Tiger also pulls apart from the rest of the greasy, meat-focused pack with options that are still entirely comforting, but considerably lighter on their feet.  Take those crescent-shaped dumplings, handmade daily, and filled with cut-above ingredients such as Heritage Pork and Chive and Long Island Duck and Leek, and the flaky Shao Bing Sandwich; essentially a refined scallion pancake stuffed with aromatic beef, Anaheim pepper, Vidalia onion and cilantro.

An assortment of grab-and-go cold dishes are ideal for health conscious, desk-bound office workers, and include a Crysanthemum Tiger Salad (tangy leaves tossed in a kombucha vinaigrette), and traditional Smashed Cucumbers, fleshed out with cubes of tofu and salty, red-skinned peanuts.  But more leisurely lunchers will surely gravitate towards the selection of noodles and soups, such as the Beijing Zha Jiang Mian, which features hand-pulled pasta interspersed with lengths of lean, heritage pork, and crowned with a riot of vegetables such as cucumber, Buddha gourd and soybean, and a soul-warming Lamb Noodle Soup, made with intensely flavorful bone broth, and finished with crunchy daikon and bitter greens.

The humble food court never had it so good.