Our kids had life-changing experiences with idodi.org and, by way of giving back, my wife and I appraise solutions at the annual state tournament in lovely binghamton ny. Or I should say, my wife appraises every year while I spend the day scouting out places to eat. But this year, they were short on people which put a damper on exploration.
And that’s sorta shame, because to my eye, binghamton, despite tough economic conditions, seems to have a burgeoning (relative to the past 20 years) food scene. And honestly, for a city with a good state university and students, I never understood why the choices were so dismal.
In the past we’ve liked a pair of Chinese restaurants, Moon Star in Endicott and China Lake in Endwell, but at times they haven’t had the ingredients (or maybe the chef) to make dishes off their traditional menus. This year we tried a new-ish restaurant, Red Chili, specializing in Szechuan food. The restaurant is part of a cluster of new-ish dining options that seem to serve new-ish student housing in the same parking lot.
When we walked in, the restaurant was about half-full of young Asian students and families, and the food looked great. We ordered Szechuan dumplings, cumin beef (not willing to take a chance on lamb for our first visit), and Singapore mei fun.
The dumplings themselves were handmade, the sauce good but with a different balance of soy and chili than typically found in NYC. Still, a dish I’d order again. The cumin beef was delicious but again a little different than NYC renditions, with a thicker, more intense cumin presence. The Singapore mei fun was standard fare, but I was pretty happy to have the dish in Binghamton. Unfortunately, no chow fun on the menu, as I prefer Singapore chow fun.
for lunch the next day, I was contemplating a new, ayce sushi joint with scary low prices for seniors, but in the end, couldn’t think of a single good reason to go other than to provide potential misery voyeurism to my fellow forum-ites.
Instead, I opted for a chicken spiedie at spiedie and rib pit. They’re in a new-ish space, about 5 minutes from where I was vounteering. Walked in on saturday at around noon, every table was taken, good to see there’s still demand for this bing relic. In addition to traditional pork and chicken spiedies, they have bougied up the menu with all sorts of “gourmet” choice. Given that this is something I eat once or twice a year, decided to go with the chicken spiedie and fries.
I dunno, I guess they have a pit and I guess they charbroil the chicken, but I couldn’t taste it. Next year, if I have time and the inclination, I’ll head back to lupos char pit, where you can smell the smoke coming off the pit while you eat.
still, these was great cheap eats, I want to say < $11 for a big, delicious sandwich and very good fries.
Thanks, I will bookmark all of these for our next trip. We usually are beholden to the whims of others, which are pretty unchanging, but maybe we’ll be able to convince them to try something new one of these times!
