my wife it out of town which presented an opportunity to eat at hole in the walls. First stop was International Wing Factory on the UES for their inflation special, 4 wings and a small order of fries for $9. the fries were hand cut and pretty good, the wings expertly fried but the medium hot buffalo sauce while good was not anywhere near buffalo standards. thinking next time I’ll go for the tandoori masala or soul purifier, god knows I need my soul purified by some wings. followed up the wings with a pork bahn mi from viet thai (91st and 3rd), not bad but c’mon, source vietnamese rolls instead of bad hoagie rolls.
back to the wing well last night at chicken insider, 95th and 2nd ave. The draw was Korean fried chicken, double fried wings worthy of a tik tok video. unfortunately doused in what I’d call an amped up general tso’s sauce; think double the glop, double the sweet and double the spice. the place was very busy, I guess they’ve accurately plumbed the UES palate.
today stopped at tasty dumpling in chinatown, 4 decent fried pork and chive dumplings for $2. if we all agree with my wife’s 1 star rating for the ambience of mariscos submarino , tasty dumpling falls on the order of .01 stars. I noticed they removed their good chili oil from their unwashed tables in favor of a thin, communal chili oil found in a plastic container on their unwashed counter.
followed tasty dumpling with my first visit to Tonii’s Fresh Rice Noodle. $6 buys three huge, beautiful, perfect rice rolls stuffed with unidentifiable meat products that they called pork and chicken, tiny dried shrimp brought a strong fishy taste to the whole affair. And if Tasty Dumplings is .01 ambience stars, Tonii’s is about .00000001 stars. I will say the people working the counter are terrific and friendly but, maybe for the first time in my life, I don’t think I can head back there without a blindfold.
Finished the day with a fantastic, warm, flaky portugese tart from tai pan. I’ve always thought they had the best dan tat in flushing, pretty sure these are the best portugese tarts in manhattan’s chinatown (and maybe manhattan) but I’d like to be proven wrong.
best,
ps A basic rule of riding the nyc subway is that if someone is deranged in your car, you move away to the other end of the car and change cars the next stop (as opposed to obtaining a chokehold and strangling the person to death). Today I came up with a corollary to that rule, two 16 yo or so teenagers were riding the subway together, the guy had a “beaches of hawaii” tee shirt, a large beaded retaining strap for his glasses and an expensive camera hanging from his neck. The girl was similarly dressed, with a pocketbook where I could see a row of credit cards and money.
the corollary to the rule is to treat them the same way as a yelling, deranged person, move to the end of car and change cars asap. Cause dollar to donuts, if someone is going to attract criminals, it’s people dressed like this. I saw them leave the train at the times square stop, I wonder what became of them.
