Ming’s is located on South Clinton Avenue in the Swillburg Neighborhood (which was named back in the 19th century when George Goebel ran one of Rochester’s prominent pig farms and collected garbage of swill for the pig’s feed. Just a fun fact, but no worries, there’s no garbage there nowadays!).
The restaurant advertises itself as a ‘Take-Out and Delivery” location, and honestly, while there were a couple of tables with seating for about 10 in total, I wouldn’t sit there; the tables were pretty flimsy. The restaurant smelled good walking in, but because of its humble size and open kitchen format, the air could become a little overwhelming if you sat in there for too long. If it’s advertised as take-out and delivery, most likely that’s worth recognizing and this case isn’t an exception. The take-out experience was smooth. We called ahead, the food was ready when we arrived and the cashier, one of the owners, was very friendly and welcoming.
Essentially, much of the menu is set up so you pick one protein and then one compliment, whether it’s a type of rice or noodle, and with eight types of rice and 12 types of noodles, there are many options. The proteins include the basics chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and tofu and then even stretched to include jumbo shrimp mixed seafood, duck and squid. The rices can be everything from vegetable fried rice to more interesting options like tomato sauce or ginger fried rice and noodles include rice noodles, flour noodles, egg noodles and variations on the three. Looking at the menu was overwhelming because there were just so many choices. Plus, the cuisines cover everything from Chinese to Thai to Vietnamese, so I’d say just close your eyes and be adventurous!
My dining cohort and I both decided to go with noodle dishes, since that is in the restaurant’s title after all. He went with the duck in a crispy pan-fried noodle, while I selected the House Special (chicken, pork and shrimp) with Ho Fun, or wide rice noodles. We ended up splitting the food between the two of us. His duck dish was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and the noodles added an extra crunch, which was a cool dynamic.
As for mine, I liked having the mixture of chicken, pork and shrimp, because it kept each bite interesting and the wide rice noodles were a really nice compliment to that.
This restaurant is perfect for the college student. Between the two of us, the dishes were between $6.75 and $7.25, which is an excellent price for people on a budget, especially for the amount of food.
With respect to the menu as a whole, nearly everything on it falls between $5 and $10, with only a few exceptions on the ‘Ming’s Specials” and ‘Chef Wing’s Specials” sections.
To conclude, Ming’s had some delicious food. While it’s not structured as a dine-in, the food was great even when I brought it back to my apartment, and there was plenty of it for the price. I would fairly say that it was one of the best, if not the best, Chinese food experiences I’ve had in my years here at UR. That being said, I would definitely suggest trying Ming’s out and see what you think.
Siegel is a member of the class of 2010.
