IMHO, restaurant recs are points in time, otherwise they are historical reviews. You read about a place of interest and GO before it morphs into something completely different. Overrun with diners, impossible reservations, changes in kitchen or menu direction or price point. You gotta get it while you can. Going back and finding an address after six months tells you nothing about today. Dedicated single restaurant threads are good only so far as they are kept current.
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Or you could search within the thread by who and what
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I worked on a big, innovative banking platform in amsterdam for about two years. We had lots of senior people from our company, IBM and the big 4 joining the program every month, they’d look at our solution, scratch their heads and tell us we had it wrong. Unfortunately, since they were senior, we had to spend days, sometimes weeks, explaining/debating the platform architecture which expended an incredible amount of time and emotion.
after about six months I had my team create a faq for the platform and faq number one was “Why we will not debate first principles”. We still held education sessions but we refused to debate the pros and cons of alternate architectures. Worked pretty well.
I suggest we take a similar approach for this thread. Perhaps @Saregama could expand the original OP and add her post about the rationale for this thread. Going forward, if someone questions the utility of the thread (like me), we can just refer them to the OP and move on.
best,
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This is the Wind Sand Chicken at Pinch Chinese (Soho)
Its cooked like Peking duck (I think). Three days of Marinating (cinnamon, star anise, other herbs and spices), dry, spank, rinse, repeat. The skin gets super thin and crispy, and the flesh quite moist. Its delicious but pricy at $58. Tho its the size of about three mains so not too bad. A Hong Kong classic I dont see on many menus, tho maybe I’m not looking at the right places.
We also like the cumin ribs, the signature soup dumplings, “crab in a chinese restaurant”, and last discovery was a nice braised pork with rice. Like a fancy homey lunch box. Skip the overly sweet eggplant, and Dan Dan noodles
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I get the angst in wanting to make HO a bit more search friendly.
But, as you aptly note, while there are upsides to having a set structure and rules there are also downsides – namely, getting people to buy-in and actually abide by them.
Here, it’s enough of a task to get people to be civil to one another – even superficially – without breaking the internet (euphemistically speaking, of course).
Requiring everyone to post in a certain way, or to geo-tag every mention of a restaurant would make herding the proverbial cats seem like a walk in the park.
Wait, wait.
You mean just let people do what they want to do?
Such craziness.
You must have gone to those things they call “school”. I’ve heard of those.
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Ooh Pinch. Used to love it, but haven’t been back in a while.
I liked the soup dumplings, sand chicken, pork chop, egg fried rice, steak fried rice, ribs, duck, and more. Weekends they have more dim sum options.
Never made it to their dumpling happy hour, sadly.
Last year I when a friend was looking for non-traditional thanksgiving meals, I discovered that they do a Peking duck thanksgiving takeaway feast - made me very annoyed about my Turkey dinner 
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Hahaha
Did it work? I find people will still question things even when it’s already a given
Happy to (and if I can’t edit anymore, I’ll flag the mods for help)
BUT I think this discussion has raised an important point that hasn’t been addressed yet — why a top level search (here on HO or a site search from google) doesn’t return all instances within this thread, only the last mention.
@sck Can you shed some light please? See this comment:
It worked with everyone at my manager’s level and below. everyone above my manager’s level was very senior and really just there for a free week in amsterdam. they’d get offended when I told them the rule, insisted I take them through it, their eyes would glaze over after 30 mins and that was that.
project eventually failed for cultural reasons but my God, there was a lot of great food and wine consumed, all paid for by my employer.
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Went to Pinch for the first post pandemic visit a few weeks ago. Had the duck. Very good but pricey at $105 if I recall. The wrappers are the thinnest I can recall anywhere. Like tissues. Soup dumplings were very good but the pan fried versions were equally good. The duck came with a jajiang mien which was outstanding.
Next time I’m trying the chicken.
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ING or Rabo? Or ABN? I used to do a lot of work with some of the large Dutch pension plans in another life.
Is that a whole duck for $105?
The few times I have eaten chicken ( free-range? ) in New York, prepared in the Chinese way. I always find the meat more flavourful ( tastes more like chicken! ) than those here in Toronto?!
Nope. Faulty memory. $115 for a whole duck. But it was plenty for 4.
Fodder for a new (mayoral) scandal: did any of you nyc folks know there’s something called a Pizza Knife?
Took pics and started to write up but then forgot to hit reply.
Remember the Flushing Uyghur Gosh Naan?
Went back, bought it, ate it. Delicious. Also got a bunch of samsas - more portable, but proportionally less meat inside.
I preferred the flavor of the lamb, but it’s chewier than the beef.
The diced noodles were saucier than before but still delicious. Next time I’m going to ask them to skip the celery, though.
And now I want their pretty skewers even though I don’t have a bbq to put them on.
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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.
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I wonder if “my wife it was out of town” was a Freudian slip or a simple typo.
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I figured it was about time I had my first omakase, so I went for lunch at Sushi Ikumi (recommended by someone whose sushi opinions I trust). It was a relative bargain at $150 - dinner is $220, and this was PLENTY of food: An appetizer (fried fish with peas and onion), followed by 12 pieces of nigiri, miso soup, housemade soba, and housemade strawberry ice cream. I was very impressed with the fish, and the chef’s knife skills were pretty awe-inspiring. But I found the rice a little too loose and too warm. Obviously I’m not going to do this often, since I may want to retire one day, but I’m really glad I went. Reservations should be a cinch to get - I was half the customers.
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