A Picture-perfect Dining Experience

In photography it’s called the decisive moment — that fraction of a second when the photographer squeezes the shutter and captures magic. Right then, a photograph is born.

For a hungry person, stumbling into a restaurant in the midst of a full-on hypoglycemic stupor, arriving at the decisive moment of what to eat while goggling at a menu is way too hard — harder than, say, posting pictures of your “delish” meal to Instagram. Yes, many of us have that preor post-meal social media photo-posting tendency; hence, “iPhoneography” is born.

Coming to your rescue to help you decide what’s for lunch is vice president and manager David Chang, who makes the task easy.

Chang recommends three dishes under $10 that bring “insta” satisfaction. Place your order, cue the sounds of chirping birds and soon you’ll be quelling any cravings for Chinese food, or just homey, delicious fare, let alone midday starvation.

The simple-but-good Chef Chan Special Fried Rice ($9.50) is gingery goodness begging to be shared — on Facebook even. What’s so special about this dish? The components are all made in-house and showcase executive chef Kenneth Chan’s strengths. Sweet char siu pork marinated in hoisin sauce and golden roast duck stud the rice along with plump shrimp, egg and green onion. A lacing of aromatic ginger carries through in each bite.

Seafood Mixed Vegetable Fried Noodle ($9.95) is “comfort food,” says Chang. The crispy, yet saucy noodles are tasty enough to tag on Tumblr. Fried to a golden crisp, the skinny, wheat noodles are topped with jumbo shrimp, browned scallops and intricately cut squid. Baby corn, tender broccoli, carrots, shiitake mushrooms and sliced water chestnuts add to the mix. Underneath it all sits a generous ladle of simple gravy made from the juices released during cooking.

Roast Duck Noodle ($9.25) boasts slurpy Pintrest-worthy saimin topped with roast duck. “The Chinese roast the best duck,” says Chang. The same noodles used for the previous dish are met with clear fish stock, choi sum and a quarter of the duck Little Village marinates overnight and roasts on-site to perfection.

After this feed, it’ll be safe to Tweet: “See you later, hypoglycemia.”

Little Village Noodle House

1113 Smith St., Chinatown
545-3008
Monday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m.;
Friday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
littlevillagehawaii.com