HK-style French toast (Cha Chan Tang)

Do you know why I gave up on my PhD so prematurely? It's because innovating shit is hard. Every time you think you've come up with some pimp-ass novel idea, you go online to Google that shit, and 10 times out of 10, I bet you some butthole in Turkmenistan has already done it. I frequently found myself thinking "fuck that guy, why didn't I think of that?" What does this stupid story about one of my life's greatest failures have to do with food? Well, the French toast that they serve at Cha Chan Tang is kinda like that. For the majority of my life, I've enjoyed my French toast the traditionally defined (and already delicious) way - simply bread that's fried in an egg-laden batter. Butter, oil, bread, and eggs... that shit was pretty dope already, when suddenly, some guy halfway around the world in Hong Kong decided "shit son. All junk tastes better when peanut butter is involved!" and proceeded to go ape-shit in the kitchen and fucked some PB between some bread, fried it, and put some syrup on top. Not just any syrup... golden maltose syrup. Why is that better? Because butter. No, seriously - hell if I know - it just is.



What treasures might hide inside that golden crust of heart disease and high cholesterol?

On the exterior, this appears to be a regular piece of French toast. Sure, it looks perfectly goldened, and yeah it looks crispier than a freshly ironed shirt, but to say that it's "slightly better than that junk that you get at IHOP" would be like slapping your mother in the face. Legitimately disrespectful to how sick this dish is... also to your mother, who is probably a lovely person. But inside this crisp, oil-drenched, butter-laden, deep-fried egg on carbohydrate love train is a dark dark secret, one full of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Ooh baby. I love it when foods get all chemically sexy and jizz.



What's really good? Peanut butter. I think they actually butter the insides of the bread (in addition to the giant pat they melt on top) before applying the peanut butter, so it's got that going for it too. Actually, to be honest, I can't really tell, because basically the entire thing is a hot mess of porous bread soaked with various types of oil products. When you that small dish of maltose syrup on top... GG, shit gets intense. Like camping. Maltose syrup has somewhat of a distinct taste and is far more viscous than the standard grade-A maple you might get from a squeeze bottle - combining it with the subtle notes of savory from the egg and the sweet saltiness of the pb makes for a strange flavor profile that's as delicious as it is confusing. Let's put it this way, it's kind of similar to how you might feel if your best friend's little sister is really attractive, but at the same time looks kind of like him, so it's as creepy as it is awesome. Exactly like that.



They also have pork chop sandwiches (obligatory G.I. Joe PSA video...). Now I'm not going to talk shit about $4 sandwich that has a pork chop inside, but I wasn't exactly as impressed with this as I was with the PB French toast. In Hong Kong, they do pork cutlet sandwiches too... which at the time I wasn't so hot on. Now, thinking back, those bitches are pretty great for $2 a piece. At Cha Chan Tang, they put healthy stuff in there. Vegetables and whatnot (WTF tomatoes). I'm not really okay with that. They also use non-buttered plain white bread, which is kind of a confusing to me since they butter the crap out of everything else. Lame. At least they cut off the crust. I guess I lied, I pretty much talked shit about this sandwich for an entire paragraph - don't get it if you go.



Apparently, people in Hong Kong also know how to cook Portuguese stuff (probably from being occupied for so long. Haha owned). There's this dish on the menu called 'Portuguese chicken casserole' which, unsurprisingly, comprises of chicken, rice, and cheese. I don't really know what else really goes into this dish, but I know when it came to the table... all I could think was "holy crap, that looks like someone took a dump over some rice and reheated it in an oven with cheese." Good thing it didn't taste that way. Flavorwise, it's like a cream of chicken blend mixed with cheese that also has hints of curry. The strong taste of spices complements the smoothness of the dairy pretty well, and I really have nothing but awesome memories of this aside from the visuals. Again, this just solidifies my unified theory of "foods that look like shit taste dope."



Have you ever had fried squid with pepper and salt? No? Wow, your life up to this point must've sucked pretty badly. This is one of those dishes that's synonymous with street food in almost all of Asia. I know Taiwan has it, and I guess Hong Kong does too. I bet Koreans love this 'ish too. It's nothing complex in execution, but there's something fantastically delicious in the simplicity. The squid itself is kind of rubbery and provides that eraser-like texture I want in all of my foods. With just a hint of seafood flavor, what you're mostly tasting is breadcrumbs doped with salt and pepper. It's kinda like eating fried chicken skin (the best part), but having something elastic to chew on at the same time. I realize this all sounds pretty stupid and probably off-putting, but I assure you it's not. Cha Chan Tang's version certainly could be better (it's neither crispy nor spiced enough), but it's adequate for satiating that slight bit of nostalgia. Additional unnecessary commentary: yes, I did start scratching shortly after consumption. Kind of worth it.

tl;dr - Innovating shit is mad hard. Good job to the guy who decided to add peanut butter to French toast. Also maltose syrup instead of maple. Maple can eat a dick. Basically, go to Cha Chan Tang and get yourself some French toast and bubble tea. Dope combination is dope.

Cha Chan Tang
45 Mott Street, New York, 10013
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Rice noodle rolls and pork chops (XO Kitchen)

There are a lot of stories on the internet telling tall tales about how ridiculously great the Google cafeterias are. While I will admit that having an endless supply of coconut water and fig newtons is pretty fantastic, it's not all sunshine and lollipops here bro. Do you know how much it sucks to have to walk downstairs just to get cookies? Do you know how infuriating it is to have steak three days in a row? Just because you put chimichurri on it doesn't make it a different dish ಠ_ಠ. To be honest, it's pretty frustrating. So frustrating that yesterday I was actually driven to pick up a vegan meal... just for something different. It was a pre-made box of sprouted brown rice with sundried tomatoes, onions, and tempeh (which according to my friend is no more than a shitty version of failed tofu). As I sat there lamenting - crying into my container of brown rice - over both the lack of variety of free food and my decision to pick up a box of glorified kitty litter, I realized something. I missed outside food. I missed pork. Good pork. Like the pork chops they make at XO Kitchen.



There are some things I get really sick of, really fast... like the steak in our cafeterias. Then there are things like the pork chops at XO Kitchen. If you told me I could eat nothing but their pork chops w/sauce over rice for a month I think I'd cream myself. They're marketed as "台式豬排" or Taiwanese pork chops, but don't be mistaken - they're not the crispy as fuck kind you'll find at Hua Ji, these are a whole 'nother animal all together. Probably not the pinnacle of pork and sauce technology, but good in their own right. Know why? Because they basically take the fattiest cut of pork you could find, fry it (plain) until even the fat is crispy, then slather it with a savory sweet concoction whose composition I don't even want to know because it's probably bad for me. Just think of thick cut bacon... fry that shit up good, now smoosh a bunch of it together. It's a magical thought to behold, and that is essentially what their pork chop is. A mass of crunchy pork fat covered in sauce. Paired with rice. I'm Asian, I'm programmed to love rice and sauce.



Unlike my cafeteria, XO Kitchen values variety. Instead of shoving pork tenderloin in my face everyday with a different accompanying sauce, they actually use it in different dishes. Like their 腸粉 (cheong fun). I'm pretty sure this is what they're actually famous for, and their version is pretty dope. Bouncy and "QQ" rice noodles usually get rolled together with various types of filling. The XO pork sauce version is just that plus a slurry of ground pork, what I can only assume is "XO sauce," and a host of other stuff that's super fragrant. End result is a super sick dish of rice noodles, pork, and more pork. None of it repetitive, none of it boring.



BUT WAIT, there's more! I'm pretty sure this shit ain't vegan friendly (for all I know it's fried in lard), but they also do cheong fun with "油條" (oil sticks) shoved inside. Then they put some sesame seeds on top, and a sprig of something green on the side. Goddamn. No, it's not meat filled, but there's something inherently satisfying about carb on carb action. You get your teaser in the rice noodle, but once you get to that crispy stick of oily dough? Game over. The flavor profile isn't anything special - it's really just noodles and soy sauce - but it's pleasurable from bite one through the last. I don't know if anyone else did this, but when I was a kid I used to lick 9v batteries. Can't tell you why it was fun to me, but it was. This is just like that. Inexplicably good.



They also have fried mantou (銀絲卷). I don't really have to explain why this tastes good right? It's freakin' fried bread that you dip in condensed milk. Fat kids everywhere just peed themselves in excitement. XO Kitchen's probably aren't the lightest, fluffiest, most sensual golden fried buns I've ever had, but you know what? They're kinda like me complaining about Google's cafeterias, the commentary has very little merit and I'm just being a nitpicking asshole. Makes sense, right?

Of course, for the lazy, the illiterate, and my asshole friends who really only look at the pictures... tl;dr - Google needs to stop serving steak all the time, it gets boring. Instead they should be more like XO Kitchen, where you can get kickass pork chops, things wrapped in noodles... and other shit like fried bread w/condensed milk.

XO Kitchen
148 Hester Street, New York, NY 10013
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Indifference and pork chops (Excellent Pork Chop House 武昌好味道)

Good things come in threes. That's a fact of life. The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, The Mighty Ducks, High School Musical (okay, maybe not that one) - all come in triplets, all awesome. The problem with trilogies is no matter how good the overall concept is, and no matter how great each might be on their own, there's the unavoidable problem that one of the three is going to look like crap... simply by association with two similar yet slightly superior offerings. Just like movies, with three big Taiwanese pork chop places in Manhattan's Chinatown, someone had to be the ugly duckling. The slightly demented slow child in the family if you will. I feel like that's what happened to Excellent Pork Chop House. Remember when Saruman gets his ass beat down in Two Towers? It's not that I didn't enjoy watching that film, but it feels kinda pointless when you find out he's not even the final boss. Excellent Pork Chop House is like that. It isn't bad, but if you've had the others you'll have a - meh, that was okay - moment.



I do find it amusing that they're super proud of their MSG usage. Maybe it's because when I was growing up, my family would always have a bag of MSG on hand for cooking, but I feel like it probably makes things taste better. Asians have been using it for years (soy sauce and kelp both have high quantities of glutamic acid) in their cooking, so there's probably something to it. Oh, and all those people telling you how MSG will give you cancer, killer headaches and probably aids too? They're apparently just crazy. It's science bro. Come at me (when you have statistically significant data).



Know how I said Hua Ji had epic-ass crispy crusting? Yeah well, Excellent does not. They still pound the pork harder than BrO-J Simpson on the gridiron, and they still season it with generous amounts of salt, pepper, and five spice, it's just... the final product doesn't have the same refined crunch as its neighborly counterpart. Tastewise it's also not as in your fact as Hua Ji's. Given the lack of textural distinction you'd hope for a more heavyily flavored sauce, but they chose to go plain. I understand that maybe they want the flavor of the pork to shine - and if it were the only game in town, I'd probably be singing its praises - but in its current situation it comes off as somewhat boring.



Did you know... that there was still shell on the outside of my soy sauce egg? True story.

As for the pork sauce? While May Wah could lay claim to some legitimately dope pickled veggies and pork mix, Excellent can't say that either. Again, it's not like they're bad at playing this pork and rice game, they just don't do anything particularly well.

So for the lazy ones who just look at pictures, here's the tl;dr - everything here is adequate, but sometime that's just not good enough. If there's anything I've learned from Will Ferrell movies... "if you're not first, you're last" -Ricky Bobby. Excellent Pork Chop, no one remembers second place. You're not too far off from the competition, you just gotta step up your game whether it's in the sauce or in the chops. Do it. I believe in you.


Excellent Pork Chop House
3 Doyers St # 1, New York, NY 10013
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Pork chops and chest pains (Hua Ji Pork Chop Fast Food 華記排骨王)

I know what you're thinking... "goddamn son, you sure do eat a lot of pork chops. You should probably chill on doing that or you're probably going to have health problems in the very near future." While it is true that I have been having intermittent chest pains for the past week or so (living life dangerously sans health insurance!), that is probably entirely coincidence and most likely has nothing to do with the fact that I've been wafflestomping pork chops like I have a vendetta against pigs. Anyway, I've already made my point sufficiently clear on why I think Taiwanese pork chop over rice tastes like frolicking through a field of wildflowers i.e. awesome, so now let me address another pressing issue that definitely needed looking into - given the staggering number of places that serve this stuff (that'd be like... four?), who's serving up the dopest Taiwanese pork chops in all of Manhattan?

Well I'm not really sure how to answer that. I hate ranking things and using words like "best," "ultimate," or "perfect" - seriously, bloggers who use those superlatives need to calm their hormones when describing food... I'd love to see anyone definitively prove that something is the absolute pinnacle of culinary innovation. But... when it comes to pork chops in Manhattan Chinatown, Hua Ji (華記) pretty much shames the competition into looking like demented elves. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it is my favorite place for fried pig.



$5 bro. That's all it takes to purchase a plastic bowl of ecstasy. Sure May Wah might be cheaper at $4.50, but I'm pretty sure I prefer Hua Ji's pork chops by more than 11.11%. Why? Their pork chops tend to be crispier, fattier, and in general more... in your face. May Wah and Bian Dang Truck both have a tendency to rely on sauce for flavor, and while that's perfectly cool with me, it mellows the texture from the frying into something that's in general smoother (never thought I'd describe pork chops like that...). Hua Ji does their shit right - minimalist seasoning and proper frying - and the end product reflects that, a tender hunk of meat and crispy fat that spurts oil as you bite through the crust. If that doesn't sound great to you, then you probably hate eating bacon too... we have no further business to discuss.



It's unfortunate that their pork sauce is only "okay." That's not to say I don't find it delicious and totally worth eating plain with rice, just that May Wah's is probably better. Ideally the mixture should have an adequate saltiness that's balanced by the tartness of the pickled veggies and neutral flavor of the cabbage, but Hua Ji's lacks the certain oomph that would make me crave more white rice. It's inoffensive, but in a bland sort of sense rather than a pleasant one. Still, you're paying for pork chop over rice and not pork sauce over rice, so it's not a deal killer.

tl;dr - Hua Ji makes some sick pork chops. Probably some of the finest shit I've had outside of Taiwan yo. Sure their pork sauce might not be as sickeningly delicious as May Wah's, but it's okay. Remember... you're only paying $5. That's pretty good for $5.

Hua Ji Pork Chop Fast Food
7 Allen St, New York, NY 10002
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Taiwanese pork chops (May Wah Fast Food 美華)

In my idiotic opinion, there are few sensations as pleasureful as biting into a freshly fried Taiwanese style pork chop. If you're a dude, think about getting punched in the nuts. Unpleasant right? Now think the opposite of that. That, is the kind of effect a properly fried pork chop has on my life. The feeling of um... not getting punched in the nuts? If you're a girl, I don't know how to describe it, but it's awesome. I promise. On the surface there's nothing that would suggest this dish is anything special, but when you beat the shit out of a slab of pork, starch it up, fry it, and doll it up with that trademark sweet soy sauce and garlic marinade, my knees go weak, I lose control over my bowels, and I inevitably soil my pants in excitement. Crispy, oily, flavorful, tender, sensual are all words that would be appropriate to describe this dish. What could make it even better?

If you charge less than $5 for it. Yep, that would do it. I haven't really started my job yet, so technically speaking I'm unemployed. Also my parents cut me off... so I'm currently big on finding cost efficient meals... by which I really just mean cheap things that make me go into food coma afterward. Possibly with the added bonus of butthole pleasures. I know what you're thinking, "But wait... where is there such a deal? Fried pork over rice and anal excitement for the low low price of $5?"



This place. Random factoid - back in 2006 this place used to be called "Mei Wah." For one reason or another they closed up shop and reopened a few years later as "Wah May"... spelled even more incorrectly (from standard pinyin) and evidently with a case of dyslexia since the Chinese characters still read "Mei Wah." To be honest, I can't really tell if the food tastes any different, but the general premise is still the same - they fry up cuts of thinly pounded pork with salt, pepper, and all that other shit that makes it smell dope.



I think their standard pork chop over rice w/soy sauce egg costs $4.75... but I'm not really sure. I gave the woman at the counter a $5 bill and for some reason she gave me $5 back in change. I'm not someone who would ever question another Asian person's mathematical abilities (don't ever do it... it's straight insulting), so I didn't say anything. I guess I should probably mention that I ate this meal for free then?

Their version? Not too bad. Definitely better than the Bian Dang Truck guys... and cheaper too. Wah May's isn't as crispy as it could be, but it finds a decent balance between distribution of marinade and crust. The frying definitely plays its role in the texture, but it's not nearly as pronounced as in some versions I've had which possess a potato chip like crunch on the exterior. Whether that's a good thing or not is debatable. Not that it really matters, I'm down with pretty much any preparation of pork. A tad salty (which seems to be a complaint a lot of people had since it reopened), but the meat aspect of the dish is certainly passable. The star though... is the pile of sauce that looks like shit blanketed by the massive piece of fried pork. While this olive green and brown mixture looks like the spawn of Satan's asshole, it is in actuality worth its weight in gold. It is hands down the greatest thing Chinese people have given the world since fireworks... or kites. Kites are pimp. Little more than a blend of ground pork, soy sauce, pickled veggies, and napa cabbage, pork sauce is an instance where the sum of parts far exceeds the individual components. I don't really know how to explain how good it is, but I would have paid $5 just for them to mix pork sauce with rice.

Wah May probably isn't my "go to" pork chop place, but I'd be a huge asshole to complain about it given the price. It's good. And it's cheap. That's fine by me.

May Wah Fast Food
190 Hester St # 1, New York, NY 10013
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