This is the Chinese restaurant that ushered in my first foray into healthy living Chinese cuisine. Was my meal still like a million calories and eight thousand grams of fat? Sure it was. But I had a hallelujah moment after ordering their chicken and broccoli lunch special one day. I said to myself, “Self, you total asshole, why are you killing yourself with all of this oil and nonsense and eating processed, bleached carbs?” And then I smacked myself like Ed Norton in Fight Club (much to the dismay of my friendly server–who promptly comped the meal for the crazy Caucasoid) and had a serious V8 moment: why not try brown rice with my chicken? It’s so crazy, I thought, that it might just work. And boy did it! That nice nutty flavor added a great base to the brown sauce, which turned out to be pretty un-greasy, all things considered. I’m still not sure what real advantage brown rice gives me health-wise, but I figure anything my mom “reads” in the L.A. Times and Beverly Hills Diet manual must be spot on. Let me tell you, folks: once you go brown, you, uh, never go white again? I was so tied up in my new adventure that I didn’t notice that they actually charge a dollar extra for the brown stuff. I almost faltered in my cheapness when discovering this on my second post-processed rice jaunt, but stuck to my guns. I get my food to go, but I still haven’t really figured out the oddly skinny, sad sitting space in this place. They don’t seem to do a lot of business, and, despite this, are sometimes a little slow getting the food out of the kitchen. But at least they’re located near some folks who don’t know how to lock down their wireless routers so I can surf on my fancy phone while I wait. [MF]
480 9th Ave.
212/465-9739