Dat roast pork sandwiches (Taylor's Gourmet)

If you've read my blog consistently - which admittedly is probably pretty difficult lately given my ass-clown posting frequency - you probably realize I have no real love lost for Philadelphia. Most of my memories about the city are pretty shitty. Philly drivers are entirely assholes towards cyclists, and while the riding is absolutely sick - I had more than a few close encounters with cars, the 'subway' system smells like cat pee and weird handsoap, and the city all-in-all shuts down at 10 pm unless you plan on getting hammered as if you were stuck in colonial times. Freakin' Quakers. That said, to be entirely fair - it's also home to a dope-ass Korean-Japanese food truck that pimps a bulgogi cheesesteak (with the nicest old couple running shit ever) and a couple of the best burgers I've eaten in my short cholesterol-laden life (which is actually serious praise considering how many burgers I put away thus far)... but most of it is shitty. That said, one area that Philly absolutely killed at was sandwiches. Maybe it's all the old-fashioned Italian delis... or maybe it's all fo the old-fashioned Italian bakeries churning out some seriously sensual bread fumes... but mash those two components together and you have something absolutely magical. One of the few things I legitimately miss about Philadelphia: Italian roast pork sandwiches.



Look at that rod of hot Italian pork. Not unlike Gary Oak - this is a sandwich where you "can't ignore its girth." Don't be deceived by the generic deli look here - the amount of meat packed inside the core of the baguette is unbelievable - it's almost as if someone hollowed out the bread beforehand to violate the center pocket with an additional quantity of pork. I don't remember how much it was (it has been over a year since I've eaten one of thes fuckers), but I would most certainly pay a bounty of gold to taste that sweet porcine folded meat right now. Goddamn.



There's something distinctly indescribable about the flavor combination in these sandwiches. Roast pork au jus, a very distinctively sharp provolone, garlicy olive-oil laden broccoli rabe, and a seeded hoagie - there's absolutely no complexity in the construction, but the depth of flavor it brings is like getting punched in the face while wearing braces. Except in a good way. Less painful, more delicious. Taylor's Gourmet manages to deliver on nostalgia like a boss. Their roast pork is as moist as my pants just thinking about it, the bread softer and fluffier than Jigglypuff. Shit... that's soft. Despite the their location in Washington DC, they've forgotten absolutely nothing about the OG roots that make this sandwich the crown tit's of Philadelphia (honestly, it deserves to be held in higher regard than the cheesesteak). Good on ya' bros.

tl;dr - writing this post reminded me of how much I think Philadelphia sucks. Except for the food, they got that shit locked down. In spite of how much their subway system smells like a delightfully pungent combination of homeless pee and cheap handsoap, I think they're really good at making roast pork sandwiches. Taylor Gourmet makes them pretty good.

Taylor Gourmet
485 K St NW Washington, DC 20001
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When dim sum feels wrong (Red Egg)

Note to self (and all): do not get the desiccated soup dumplings here

I think something that's come with me having a job, and by association not being a broke-as-shit graduate student, is that my perception of value has become skewed. When I first started writing 'My Inner Fatty,' I think there were few things that made it ever slightly more palatable than every other food blog on the internet. First - I was (and still am) a relatively huge idiot and this is kind of like one of those nature shows where you just know the gazelle is going to get fucked, but you keep watching thinking that maybe it'll outrun the lion... but it never does. Second - I was raised in an Asian household that valued holding onto money tighter than a sphincter during a Korean horror movie (hint hint... that's tight) so instead of being a mega douche-nozzle getting off sucking off the likes of Per Se and Daniel, I wrote about stupid shit like 5 for $1 dumplings. The last thing I had going for me was my stunning good looks, but only a select few of you know me well enough for that to be reason to read my blog. Kidding on that last one, sadly. Anyway, I feel like I should apologize. Back to the original point, I feel like my value per dollar is really messed up now that I have a job. I'm no longer championing sketchy ass sandwiches from drug-dealing delis, I'm taking fancy pants pictures of legit restaurants with grades like 'B,' sometimes even 'A.' Shit. That's messed up.

When I first started writing this post, I was going to talk about how pimp Red Egg's dim sum is - it takes a tried-and-true concept of classic Chinese afternoon dishes and combines that with booze, complete with a pseudo-fusion feel - but then I realized that, no... I don't like the model that they're trying to sell. They're trying too hard. I think most of it has to do with the fact that it feels out of place in Chinatown (with how modern the decor is...) and its location is kind of out of the way too, undoubtedly so the old school Asians don't flip a shit. Counter-intuitively, I give mad props to any restaurant that can stay afloat while dancing gently along the fine line that is hygiene, looking like absolute shit and mocking the DOH - Red Egg is basically the opposite of that. It feels as if they're selling me ambiance, not food. Regardless of how true that might be, first impressions are big, and that shiz don't gel with me. Plus I like the fact that those other places have old women that yell at me in Cantonese while pushing around little carts in those little apron numbers - that's kinda my thing. It makes it feel more homely and hectic (and erotic). You ain't gonna find that kind of sensual atmosphere at Red Egg. There will be no one yelling at you angrily to take their 'chicken feet' while eye-fucking you with the intensity of 1000 suns.

With all that said, it's pretty clear that I'm biased against this place. With that said, they do make pretty bitchin' cuisine. Since I'm something of a Chinese food connoisseur/moron - it's probably for the best for you to make up your own mind on whether or not you want to go.



Oh hai! It's shumai. Admittedly, it is hard to fuck up shumai, but theirs were tight. Sometimes you find places with pushcarts that keep their steamers on top of low heat for so damn long that the shumai skins get mushy, the meat starts sweating, and weird flavors from other dishes leech onto the small delicate flower of pork. While mixing of dim sum flavors sounds like an absolutely heavenly premise, it actually sucks - and their shumai suck. Not Red Egg's. Theirs are springy like an rubber band (but without the chemical taste!), with each squishy bite carrying unadulterated pork porn (at this point, I guess I should have realized why my blog keeps getting flagged for adult content, but I never seem to learn).



I actually have no clue what the fuck these things are. While they look like boring bricks of lightly browned rice cake, the glistening skin really hides a center of pork. I think a good rule of thumb in an Asian restaurant is - "if you have no clue what something is, the center is probably some combination of pork, shrimp, msg, and other shit you don't want to think about." Anyway, these discs of oil and meat are basically dumplings with uber thick rice flour skins flattened into a short and stout cylinder. The filling is as you would expect - that is to say, porcine - but the skin is actually pretty special. There's a certain snappiness to the texture, and a very deliberate sweetness that you don't get with the 'dead flour' you normally use for wonton or dumpling skins. Long story short, while these things look all pasty and white like Newt Gingrich, they taste all dark and sensual like a Barry White. That's not racist, you're racist if you think that's racist.



I'm not going to justify why I got these. Shit, I got two orders of this. Why? Because every roast pork bun is a good roast pork bun (and because I finished one of them myself). Admittedly, some are better than others, but Red Egg does pretty well here. The bun is pillowy soft and the roast pork is crispy, yet moist. Add in a generous helping of maltose syrup and it's pretty much game over. Know all those stupid Snickers commercials where they say people get cranky when they don't have a Snickers? Well I feel like if you gave Kim-Jong Un a roast pork bun from Red Egg, he'd mellow the fuck out too.



Cheung fun is another one of those dishes that you can't really go wrong with. You steam rice noodles, you wrap some delicious-ass junk inside, and boom - you have a culinary masterpiece that delights on texture and also flavor. Sometimes I wonder if I actually like eating rice noodle wraps, or if I just use it as an excuse to drink the sweetened soy sauce mixture that they bring out to the table. Then I realize it doesn't really matter. That last bit was a good story, I'm sure.



These fuckers are so good they don't even need to be filled with meat. That's coming from me, so you know that's gotta be true. Some people don't like cilantro (I've been told it's because it shares the same active chemical as is used in modern soap production) - that's totally cool. If you don't, this shit probably isn't your jam, but if you enjoy munching on bars of Irish Spring as much as I do, you'll fucking love this dish.



My friend showed up with a vegan. I'm sorry, but if you're vegan - dim sum is basically a huge Jackie Chan "mind is full of fuck" kind of thing. Why would you even bother rolling out of bed to go to a place where everything is probably rolled in pork fat before being brought to the table? Seriously. If you're curious how these tasted - the honest to god answer I can give you is, I have no freakin' clue. I go to dim sum to eat pork, not steamed grass. Anyway, I think what you should probably take away from this post is - Red Egg makes good food, that is undeniable. I hate the premise on which Red Egg operates - that it's hip, caters to non-Asians, and tries way too hard to be modern... and has good hygienic practices. You should go if you want to drink with your dim sum. You will never find me there. The End.

tl;dr - Red Egg is a dim sum restaurant that serves booze and is clean. That feels wrong, weird, and counter-intuitively... dirty to me. Their food is pretty sick though. Also, don't invite vegans to dim sum. It really brings down the mood all around.

Red Egg
202 Centre Street, New York, NY 10013
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Non-Asians and dim sum (Nom Wah Tea Parlor)

There's that saying, that you should never judge a book by it's cover. Like Twilight... which has a stupid-ass cover, but holds the depths of literary achievement like the world has never seen or experienced before. Kidding... or am I? Anyway, I generally feel like if an Asian restaurant is being frequented by a plurality of non-Asian folk, I should probably mosey the fuck on outta there. Not that I don't like a good serving of General Tso's chicken - I just don't want that when I'm seeking on legit homestyle shiz. Now, I realize this isn't really a fair generalization (when are generalizations ever fair anyway?), as there are a handfull of non-Asian food bloggers who clearly know their shit when it comes to cuisine from the Far East, but this as a general rule is pretty good to follow. Sometimes... there are exceptions. Nom Wah is truly a case where the number of white people isn't indicative of how authentic the food actually is.

Just a few years ago, Nom Wah was a true hole-in-the-wall type dim sum joint where the old guy in the back cared more about playing mahjong than service. By no means am I suggesting this is an awesome customer service model, but goddamn it was some OG cuisine. I knew whatever that bro pimped from his kitchen would be delicious and of questionable preparation methods. That's the kind of place I'm all about. Turns out... not everyone likes that style of management. The original establishment basically ran itself into the ground. In order to stay afloat, some random young guy stepped in and breathed new life into Nom Wah i.e. it "sold out" and transformed into a hip English-friendly establishment. I should be outraged... I mean, this place traded Asian street cred on account of greed! Yet I'm not. Why?

Because some of their food is actually pretty dope.



At first glance these might appear to be normal beef meatballs, but if you thought that... then you've been Chuck Testa'd. These are some next-level shit meatballs with a tofu skin wrapping. I've never understood why, but dim sum meatballs all have a certain citrusy flavor infused. Anyway, their version were decent - and I did enjoy how elastic and chewy these were - but we didn't order them. Not sure if someone fucked up, but we didn't get our order of beef cheung-fun. I would be pretty pissed if these weren't ape-shit delicious.



And some of these! I don't think anything I say about scallion pancakes is actually worth a fart (I guess you could argue that about anything I've written on my blog), but theirs weren't fantastic. It's not that they tasted bad or anything - they were hot, crispy, and as my ass-clown Korean friend in LA would say "it tastes like scallions" - they were just really generic. Almost like the ones you get from frozen packaging. To be fair, I ate most of them, probably with a shit-eating grin on my face the entire time, but I wasn't wowed. Let's put it this way... I could've stood up while wearing sweatpants because there'd be no boner to hide.



Their egg rolls are supposedly their signature dish... and I'd be lying if I said they didn't taste good. The problem here is honestly that I have no fucking clue what's inside of them. If you're expecting the "traditional" egg roll from an Americanized take-out joint - roast pork, lots of cabbage, lots of bean sprouts, and carrots - your mouth is going to hate you. I think there was hints of tofu, more than a couple slivers of mushroom, and possibly even egg (cray, I know), but I might be making that all up. The mish-mash of flavors simply works even if it is unmemorable as a whole. If you like knowing what you're putting in your mouth, then you should probably steer clear. If you're a tastebud slut who'd swallow anything without question - it's actually worth a try. Uh, for people who don't fall into either of those categories... you're on your own.



As an aside, do you know why I hate writing about dim sum? Never mind the fact that "all dim sum is good dim sum" to me. Look at the turnip cake above. Looks delicious right? Fuck yeah it does. All crispy and Maillard reaction'd up. The problem is, it's the same as every other dim sum place. It's a block of gelatinous turnip that's pan fried. No one can screw that up. No one. Not even me. I've made that shit before and it was premium. You wouldn't it was from Nom Wah if it weren't for that tacky-ass table spread. Whatever, end rant. Their turnip cake was good.



Not sure why we bought a giant plate of fried meat, but you really don't need a good reason to ever do that. Nom Wah's deep-fried rib tips are confusing to me. Most spare-rib tips are drenched in a sauce comprised of soy, honey, and maltose syrup - so their unadulterated offering just feels... wrong? But it's not. It's eerily reminiscent of salt & pepper chicken (if you're Taiwanese, you know what I mean, otherwise - think of popcorn chicken that's seasoned with pepper beyond belief), and offers up a reasonably flavorful bite of fat and crispy pork. None of that sounds bad. Unless you're vegetarian, you should at least try it.



Oh look, it's sticky rice with strips of egg. I don't like ordering this shit at dim sum. You know why? Two reasons... I always feel like my OG grandmother could make a better version at home and in larger quantity, and also because I feel like it's a waste of carb real estate that can be saved for better things. Better things like...



Giant buns of roast pork. If I were in charge of the cafeteria at my office, every meal would begin, and end, with a roast pork bun. While I can safely say nothing else at Nom Wah truly makes me 'moist,' they fuckin' kill it on this one. Considering how many places you can get this shit, that's high praise. Their offering is a huge bitch - with a bun the size of a small plate and stuffed to the gills with deliciously fatty cancer pork. Also, it's pretty cheap... so my two real scoring criteria are both fulfilled.

I feel like I've come full circle with this post. I can't find it now... but I vaguely writing a post in which I basically said that an Asian restaurant full of white people was the ultimate red flag in bootleg. That it basically meant I should run far and fast away from the land of lo mein and egg rolls. With Nom Wah - while it's certainly not the pinnacle of... well, anything - I've realized that isn't 100% canon. There are lots of non-Asians inside, and their food is actually pretty decent. Where am I going with this? I'm not sure. I should probably stop being prejudiced now.

tl;dr - Nom Wah sold out big time, now caters to tourists and non-Asians. Someone made me go, and I've seen the light. Their food is not bad. Their roast pork bun is arguably great. I'd go back, but probably not make it a destination.

Nom Wah
13 Doyers Street, New York, NY 10013
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Cambodian sandwiches and dolphin rape (Num Pang)

For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for me to kick the inevitable bucket from heart disease... sorry. I'm still around. Just so busy with work and shiz that I haven't really been able to spew nonsense from the second butthole that is my mouth to your ears (and by extension, from my fingers to your eyes). Anyway, a couple of months ago... Tia, Danny, and myself convened at Num Pang, this tiny little Cambodian sandwich shop near Union square, for lunch. Sandwiches and pleasantries were had, but we also discussed a topic that most of you probably aren't aware of yet - a gross injustice in this world that's been overlooked and ignored - I'm talking about... dolphin rape. Imagine this: you're swimming so carefree in the sea, when suddenly... a biker gang rolls up... except, instead of badass bikers with crazy beards and names like "Moshpit" and "Bartholomew," you're accosted by dolphins. What do they want? Fuck if I know what their motives are, but instead of frolicking around like you always see in the movies, you're quickly whisked away to their secret underwater cave where you're emotionally and physically violated by something you always thought of as friends. Fuck you Flipper.

What in the shit does this have to do with Num Pang and Cambodian sandwiches? Well, not unlike the heinous crime that is... *dramatic pause*... dolphin rape, the fact that Cambodian sandwiches haven't been pimped harder, and have largely been kept a secret in the past, is a serious injustice. These combinations of bread, meat, and vegetables are synergistic boners for your tastebuds and deserve every bit as much praise as most assclown food bloggers nutted over banh mi a few years back. I mean, goddamn, just look at their menu. Five-spice glazed pork belly sandiwch? GG for everyone who loves pork.



Just look at that glaze. Dat glaze *bites lip*. At first, I kept thinking "fuck this, why am I paying close to $8 for this sandwich when I could easily get two of the aforementioned banh mi from Banh Mi Saigon...?" That was shortly before I bit into the magical creation you see above. Sometimes quality transcends cost (this is not a universal truth, just for things under $10), and in a case like the five-spice pork belly sandwich from Num Pang... it's definitely true. While I won't haul my ass downtown just to have one - ninja edit, yes I would - if I'm in the area? I'd be perfectly okay with spending $8 on this shit. Dope as hell. "Shut up about your thriftiness! Just tell us about this sandwich" you say? Prepare to cream your pants.

Built on a bready and crunchy baguette from Parisi Bakery, you get a thick slab of pork belly on top which is remarkably crunchy for something so high in fat content. On the outside of this bacon on steroids is a sweet and savory glaze that's built upon hoisin sauce and flavored with hints of five-spice. Then on top they lay the standard accouterments... cucumbers, pickled carrots, cilantro and chili mayo, but wait... there's more! As a nice finishing touch, they stack on a sliver of Asian pear, which adds a nice crunch to the texture as well as a bit of sweet tartness that only something as healthy as a fruit could provide. Listen, I'm normally the first person to tell you why fruits and healthy things suck, but it works. It really works. Is Num Pang all that it's cracked up to be? I'm not sure, but the two sandwiches I had would make me feel that way. Also, while I'm still not entirely sure how to describe how Cambodian sandwiches are supposed to be different from banh mi (clearly I'm be the best person to be listening to on this subject) - the fact that banh mi got so much ass in the Summer of '09 and no one's globalized the term num pang is fucked up. Seriously. Do your part to correct this injustice and go have a Cambodian bacon sandwich yo.

tl;dr - be extra careful when swimming in the sea (or I guess freshwater rivers too, if you're in china) you never know when a gang of biker dolphins will arrive with plans to "show you a good time." Equally scary is the fact that a lot of people don't know how sick Num Pang's sandwiches are. Almost as sick as dolphin rape.

Num Pang Sandwich Shop
21 East 12th Street, New York, NY 10003
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A roast pork PSA (Wah Fung)

Not that this really needs reiterating, but I fucking love Chinese roast pork. Not just any roast pork from Chinatown will do though, it has to be from Wah Fung - home of magically delicious maltose soy sauce glazed fatty pork that doubles as a nightmare for my bowels. Not to rehash anything I've already said in my old post, but basically this is both a value play as well as something that just tastes straight dope. With a side bonus of playing Russian roulette with the toilet. What more could you ever ask for? Maybe the large order. Which is why I wanted to make a public service announcement - at the risk of increasing the already ridiculous wait time - their large roast pork over rice is easily the deal of the century.



In my original post, I thought this was a hella good deal already. Look at all that goddamn meat, and all for $3. It just didn't make sense - how was this tiny little shop in Chinatown surviving on margins that couldn't possibly exist? Then, one day I decided to step up my game... man up and order the large roast pork over rice i.e. the monstrosity you see at the top. At a price only 50% more than the small, you easily get two to three times the amount of food. Asian bro-homeslice at the shop basically lays down a carpet of rice, packs that shit down real good and begins the magic of meat chopping. Exactly like the miniature box of roast meat, you just watch him transfer hand after hand of glistening pork into the box, constantly wondering how the fuck he's going to close that shit. And when you think he can't possibly put more in, he'll stuff some extra roast chicken or Chinese sausage in... for good measure. After all is said and done, basically when he realizes he actually can't close the lid of the box, he grabs a handful of rubberbands and jerry-rigs the fuck out of it until he forces it into delightful submission. I love you man, and everything you stand for. Anyway, I just wanted people to know that something this awesome exists in Chinatown. That's all.

PS - in case you haven't noticed yet... I've become a really shitty blogger as of late. I don't really update with any sort of regular frequency, and when I do, it's usually weak-ass posts light on content like this one - oh hai! I just wanted to note that it's hard as shit to blog when it's not your job. Mad props to all those peeps who manage to not get fired from their real jobs and moonlight doing this food writing nonsense. I am impressed. Please tell me how I can suck less yo.
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Why press events are retarded (Rub BBQ)

It's cornbread inside suckling pig. Yes it was delicious, no I did not pay for it.

When I first started this writing thing I thought getting invited to press events was the epitome of baller status in the food blogosphere. You're probably thinking "wow, you're a gigantic toolbag for thinking that!" Haha... fuck you. To be entirely fair, I was a junior in college and I basically fed myself by going to random talks I didn't care about in hopes that there'd be free pizza. Shameful. If you were me, and someone told you that you could have free food in exchange for press... you'd probably piss pants in excitement too. Now that I'm a wily veteran of this demented food blogging game, I can safely say - food PR events are incredibly stupid. Why would I say that? First off, no one really invites me to these things because... well my blog doesn't get that much traffic. Am I bitter? Yes I'm bitter! Other people are eating free food that I'm not. I'm losing in this endeavor. I don't like losing. Secondly, no one else can experience the same thing as me afterward, so what's the point? Doesn't make much sense if you put it that way, right? Third, it's a zero profit system. Either I think something is awesome and I'm called a shill... or I bitch about something that's free and I'm a giant asshole for doing so. Screw that. I'm not gonna play a game where I always lose.

Now let us delve into each one of those points a little deeper shall we? About a month ago I went to some random press shindig at Rub BBQ. Naturally I was not invited, I only went because a friend of mine was, and she realized that I greatly enjoy eating things. Awesome. See why this system sucks? I don't get invited to shit because my blog doesn't get traffic. I guess that makes sense to people hosting the events, but to me that screams unfair. I take time to bitch about things online too! Why can't I get all the perks of other bloggers?*



Onto point two. These events are snapshots in time. What I experience... no one else can ever have again. Does that make any sense to anyone? See that salad above? I don't normally eat salads, but I ate that one. Know why? It was drizzled with a bacon fat vinaigrette and had bacon lardon pieces. Bitchin' salad covered in pork oil, sprinkled with rendered pork fat, and topped with a poached egg. Erotic salad is wonderful indeed. Then there were also...



Fuckin' lamb sliders. Cooked to a gentle medium rare and served with fried spicy eggplant and a mint-basil aioli. Probably one of the dopest "burgers" I've had in a long time. Here's the funny thing - you'll never have one like it! You'll never have that awesome pork flavored salad either. Sucks for you. Now I seem like an asshole right? Wrong. Press event people are the assholes. They're the ones doing this, not me.



I also ate bacon and cheese. Because that's what classy people do, I guess...?

Now this last point... this one's key. No one wins in these situations. Press events are built on the concept of good PR. Shit is free because they expect you to say good things about it, but there's also the unspoken agreement that you do say good things about it. Here's the thing, because it's free... you really can't expect jack shit from the organizers. If you decide to show up, that's on you. So what do you do? The food at Rub was pretty sick and I had no complaints, so I write good things about it. Now I'm a shill. If the food didn't meet expectations can I bitch about it? No, it doesn't work that way either because I would have to accept responsibility for being a retard and expecting something for free. Basically you're dicked either way, so... why bother? There's been a lot of beef going on lately about things at press events not living up to expectations and people getting duped... here's my take on it: calm your hormones. It's like if a dude in an unmarked van offers you candy, then you get in and get molested. That's on you bro. There are no free lunches.

tl;dr? Press events embody everything that is dumb about food blogging. It's really no more than people writing about nonsense that doesn't actually exist anymore and people expecting things from nothing.

*If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. I think getting free food solely on the basis of being a "Yelp Elite" or influential blogger is pretty much one of the douchiest things you could ever do.
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More reasons to hate food blogging (Bánh Mì Saigon)

Remember a while ago when I talked about how much I hate food bloggers? I bet you probably thought my 24 pack of Haterade™ had run dry, but you'd be wrong. This shit is real, this shit is happening - I'm making an addendum to my somewhat exhaustive list. Reason number - er... whatever it is, I lost count - to hate food bloggers: they're fickle-ass motherfuckers. Equipped with memory capacities only slightly better than those of common goldfish, a lot of bloggers drive food trends for a couple of months, writing fervently about a single dish or cuisine as if it were truly the apex of culinary innovation, before quickly switching to a new "golden topic" of the day. Remember when cupcakes were all the rage? Then people decided that they wanted artisan pies? Which was followed by a sudden "renaissance age" of doughnuts? Well that shit is stupid. It's not like cupcakes suddenly started tasting like stale bread frosted with crap or that pies became second-rate desserts, it's really just that people tend to have a sheep-like tendency to do the popular thing. Not me though. I'm a shark. Sharks are winners, and they don't look back because they have no necks. Necks are for sheep.

Just like bánh mì. Two years ago, there wasn't a single person who wouldn't shut up about bánh mì. Then slowly, everyone made a mass exodus to some other hot issue in the very important world of food blogging. Probably something stupid like ramps.



Now I'll be straight with you upfront - I really don't know jack shit about Vietnamese food and I really don't know that much about bánh mì... so I'm not gonna tell you some nonsense like where to go for the best one (let's be honest, everyone knows how much bs those lists are anyway). What I will do, is tell you that Bánh Mì Saigon (located in the back of a jewelry store) makes some bombin' sandwiches in general. Also they're cheap. That's always a plus in my book.



That would be $4.25 worth of sandwich. Their most popular sandwich is probably the bbq pork one. It's pretty simple really, just a plain baguette that balances a nice crispness with compliance that's sliced and stuffed. The filling is fairly... subtle. The roast pork is a loose ground meat mix that's semi-sweet, semi-savory, and relatively tender while possessing an unexpected crusting from the cooking process. Combined with cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, carrots, and all the standard accouterments (don't ask me what else goes inside)... this is a pretty damn tasty sandwich. With the cucumber slivers, daikon, and cilantro there's a certain refreshing lightness to the taste profile, and with the roast pork, pate, and mayo-ish sauce there's definitely a contrasting dense part to the equation. When added together and put on fresh bread? It's like seeing baby unicorns prancing across rainbow bridges suspended on puffy clouds - goddamn magical.

In closing, I'm actually gonna throw some more salt in your game by giving you a bonus reason to hate food bloggers. They steal shit. All the time. Ideas, content, photos... you name it. I wasn't actually gonna write this post for a few weeks, but you know what spurred me on? When I found out some asshat on Tumblr jacked my photo. My copyrighted photo. That little 'c' in a circle on Flickr? That means you should probably ask my permission before posting my shit on your demented blog. Just because you posted my Flickr username doesn't mean you credited me, it just means you just have the slightest bit of moral sense to admit that you didn't take the photo yourself. You're probably thinking, "bro you should chill out, you download shit all the time... what's one photo in the grand scheme of things?" Well first of all, it's not exactly an isolated incident. People take my photos all the time without asking. It's the fact that they don't even respect my content enough to at least ask to paste it all over the internet. What really boils my britches though, is the fact that the photo in question now has 2400+ pageviews. Pageviews that asswipe-content-stealer got that should've been going to me. Fuck this. I don't take pictures so other people get praised for shit. I do that for me. Frustrating.

Right. So in case you didn't feel like reading all that jazz (don't know why anyone would skip my Pulitzer-caliber writing...) tl;dr - a lot of food bloggers are like sheep because they have necks. There's a tendency to follow a retarded mob mentality and to forget that newer doesn't exactly = better. Also, some food bloggers are assholes and jack content like there's no tomorrow, stealin' mah pageviews... and stuff. Finally, Bánh Mì Saigon makes really good sandwiches that all cost less than $5. It is awesome. Also you can shop for jewelry while you wait for your order.

Bánh Mì Saigon
198 Grand St, New York, NY 10013
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Roast pork and butthole pleasures (Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food)

Here's a somewhat difficult to answer question: how much is good tasting food worth to you? I realize there's a few different ways you can qualify the cost of food, whether it's monetary value, distance traveled, or wait time... but let me offer you another way of quantifying the cost of a meal - your health. Now I'm not talking about getting herpes from eating a sandwich or anything drastic like that, what I mean is... would you eat something that's breathtakingly delicious if it meant that there was a 50/50 chance you'd also get a free side of mudbutt? This is the dilemma that plagues me about Wah Fung's roast pork over rice. It's a dish that has a lot going for it... it's cheap, it's plenty filling, and tastes delightfully sexual - satisfying me in ways that only pork can - but it has a menacing side to it as well. The same gloopy grease that makes this dish taste oh-so-good also has a tendency to "unleash the warrior within." Some real black swan shit going down.

Listen, if you enjoy having full control of your rectal muscles, then maybe Wah Fung's roast pork over rice isn't your thing. Not me though, I like living life dangerously, and if it means I get to put some dope-ass Chinese roast pork in my mouth while doing it - that's just icing on the cake. Remember, according to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, "life is about love and passion... it is not about the butthole pleasures," and I am positively smitten with Wah Fung's pork over rice.



Before I continue creaming myself over this dish, there is one thing that annoys me. The price. I probably sound like an asshole complaining about something that costs $3, and maybe I am, but I am absolutely livid with this change. When I was still a wee undergrad at Columbia a few years ago, this shit cost $2.50. Yeah. The cost-value function was insane. Then all of a sudden it was $2.75. Now it's $3? Pretty soon it's going to cost $3.25. I don't know how I'd feel about that... probably hurt and lonely. Definitely devastated.



I guess I should probably talk about the food now. For $3, this dude right here will fill a small aluminum box and shove it full of rice. I'm sure at some point the rice is/was fluffy, but he packs that shit in tighter than an FCC lattice (can't get no more efficient than that bro). Then he takes some cabbage and broccoli and layers it on one side... I guess to make people think they're eating a well-balanced meal (it's really not). Whatever, those are trivial details... it's at this point that mr. pork goes apeshit. He'll pull slabs of meat out from a tray that's filled with the honey/grease sauce and go "Yan Can Cook" on it. Surprisingly... he still possesses all 10 of his fingers. The box gets padded with a 1" thick layer of pork and finished with a ladle full of sauce (read: grease). It is basically a brick's weight of rice and meat in a to-go container. It is beautiful, and it is a spectacle to behold, I swear.



If you've never had Chinese roast pork before... you're missing out. You really are. While I can't actually tell you how it's made, I can tell you that it's some pretty sick stuff. If I had to rate it on a scale of awesome from 1 to 10, it would be past bacon. That's how good it is. As for what it is? It's usually a fairly fat cut of meat that gets roasted until the fat renders off and crisps the skin, it's normally coated in some sort of sweet oily concoction that can only be described as magical, and it's almost always red. Don't ask me why, I don't know... it just is. In the end it really doesn't matter, Chinese roast pork has a certain sweet savory complex that delivers a disgustingly rich flavor profile all at a very reasonable price.

So back to the question at hand... is the juice worth the squeeze? Oh yes.

Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food
79 Chrystie St # A, New York, NY 10002
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