Monday, May 23, 2011

Take on those takeout Szechuan places

I consider myself a true New Yorker when it comes to my food choices. I'm not afraid to eat from the grease carts, the dirty hot-dog vendors or the bodegas but when it comes to those Szechuan take-out places with the bars on the window and the fluorescent lighting I'd rather lick the floor of the subway (although not the A train) It is not like I am anti-Chinese food as generally I really like it and I like Szechuan style particularly but those places you usually see near housing projects is where I draw a line.
For some reason these Chinese business-people think that posting pictures of their awful looking grub will help customers decide but when your presentation looks like it was put together by a 10 year-old, I think it loses any appeal. The pictures make it look like dog-food so I can only imagine the actual food looks even less edible to start off and the fluorescent lights can do nothing to help it look more appetizing.

My other issue is with those NYC grading systems, I just assume it has to be done on a weighted scale. There is just no way those inspectors can hold the same standards for one of those places like they would for Per Se or Jean Georges. When the ghetto places gets a B rating it probably means that the rats running around are cooked and served as mushu pork which for the Four Seasons must be the equivalent of a busboy having a 1/8th inch tear in his hair-net.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

1 comment:

Cathy said...

the b rating thing freaks me out but i still eat at those places! it's not good. there's this ghetto korean place i go to sometimes that has a b rating, and i seriously wonder about the cockroaches or whatever gave them the b rating. they should just take the rating sign off if it's less than an A. i also walked into a chiney place with a b rating but still got bubble tea from there. i hope there weren't cockroach feces in the paper cups or anything. do u like bubble tea?