Szechuan Delight

Szechuan Delight
(718)836-2383

Ordered:

Dragon and Phoenix
Mu Shu Vegetables
Vegetable Roll
Crab Rangoon

When the bag was delivered, it weighed a ton because the restaurant threw in a free 2 liter of Pepsi. Very nice. The food also took fifty-eight minutes from phone call to delivery, not so nice. On the plus side, they didn't throw in ass-loads of plastic eating utensils, on the bad end that shiny silver bag with the rangoon in it. Wasteful.

The Dragon and Phoenix is a side-by-side plate of General Tso's chicken and a mix of General Tso's seafood. I've had this from other Bay Ridge restaurants and loved it, here not so much. It's edible but it's not good. There are lots of ways to make the venerable General's chicken, this isn't the worst method but it isn't the best. It's a dark brown batter without any crunch at all, a thin brown sauce. The chicken chunks are generous and not bad, but I'd never order this again.

GT chicken is supposed to be crunch and sweet, almost a sweet and sour sauce with spice. This ain't that.

The seafood portion was better than the chicken, but more mixed in quality. I had one large shrimp in the mixture that was so tough as to be inedible, tough and fishy tasting, very stringy. I was too scared of it to finish it, and I am nervous about the portion I ate. Otherwise the seafood was pretty good.

The Mu Shu vegetables I would call inedible. They smelled and tasted sweet in a way reminiscent of spoiled food. My wife turned her nose up at it, I did too after a few bites. I might dip back into this tomorrow, as left overs, but I doubt it. (edit: I didn't.)

The vegetable roll was okay, nothing special.

Look delicious, eh?

The crab rangoon left me with mixed emotions. They look hand made, if they aren't then they are a different sort than one normally finds in NYC chinese restaurants. They looked beautiful, but they suffered badly from the trip. The rangoon were chewy and greasy, still good but not great.

The shining joy of this delivery was the mustard. Real chinese restaurant mustard. Spicy and great. In New York I always am given crap mustard with the appearance of melted plastic, this was rough and textury and hot as fuck. Wonderful, wonderful mustard.

Sadly, I will never order from here again. Mustard gained and lost.

Follow up: I had a nervous stomach after the meal, took it about an hour to even out. I suspect the seafood or the sour smelling vegetables.

The Chip Shop - OUT OF BUSINESS

The Chip Shop is one of my favorite restaurants in NYC. Great food, nice ambiance. I get to drink Britishy drinks as fodder for my other blog. Better yet, everybody else feels the same way so we can always agree on the Chip Shop.

Chip Shop! Chip Shop! Chip Shop!

Chip Shop, you hold the strings to my heart, and you gave them a good yank when I tried your delivery.

Ordered:

Cod and Chips
Plowman's Lunch
Deep fried Twinkie

I knew things weren't going well when I unfolded the paper around my fish and the batter came off. All of it. I don't think there was a single bit of fried goodness stuck to my fish after I unwrapped it. My sobs echoed around our large, Bay Ridge living room. Alas. Scraping the goo off the paper didn't give me back any of the fried goodness. It was all mush. Everything about my fried fish that was "fried" and not "fish" had turned into gelatin and stuck to the white wrapping paper. It was like unwrapping a burn victim.

That sucks.

The french fried fared the same as almost all delivery fries. Mushy and gross. More like a big potato lump than little individual bits of goodness. That sucks too, but it's expected.

My wife got the plowman's lunch, I can't quite remember what was in it except that the pickle was missing. I think it was a salad and some cheese, no pickle. My wife likes pickles, this made us sad.

I was resigned to the worst when I had the Twinkie, only to be completely taken by surprise. It was delicious. I always eat the deep fried Twinkies for desert, and this was the best I'd ever had. It was like a sugar coated handjob, liberally slathered in berry sauce, where the creamy filling wasn't bitter and salty. The incredibleness of the Twinkie almost made up for the failure of the rest of the meal.

A favorite in person, not so hot at home.

EDIT: OUT OF BUSINESS

Bay Ridge Kebab House

Bay Ridge Kebab House
(718)238-8866

On the menu cover it says:

People Will Forget What You Said
People Will Forget What You Did
But People Will Never Forget What You Made Them Feel

I wonder what gravestone they stole that little number off of.




Ordered:

Lamb Gyro
Chicken Gyro
Babagonush

The food arrived lukewarm, not unreasonable considering it was thirty degrees out, but very unfortunate. Actually, yes, it is unreasonable for the food to arrive cold. This is delivery folks, you gotta deliver.

The lamb gyro was one of the worst I've ever had. The lamb was dried out, not greasy at all. It had a gross, grainy texture that is hard to explain - more like inferior falafel than lamb. It's sad that a poor little lamb was struck down, only only to be ground into something this undelicious.

The chicken was slightly better, if only because it wasn't ground up. Cold chicken is still good. The first bite I had of the chicken had something hard and gristly in it, the rest was better in texture. The chicken, for the record, was white - my experience with the stuff cut off the big schwarma rolls usually has it brown. Something different, not necessarily bad.

The pita wrap for both was greasy and dried out, you know exactly what I mean - it was stiff and almost translucent, the grease having sunk into the pita. It was a very thin pita, too. I'm not sure if you'd ever call it a pita. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but I'm just theorizing that maybe this is something of a regional variant. A pansified wrap instead of an honest pita.

I liked the babagonush, my wife didn't. We both agreed it was much creamier than what we're used to, something I sort of liked. The bitter eggplant taste wasn't that strong, either. Another plus in my book. It had that sort of smokey eggplant taste, but smothered in creaminess. Eh.

The best part of this meal was the bread accompanying the babagonush. It was a half a bread round, about an inch and half thick, with a shiny crust on both sides. Good and bready and crusty, I wish I could get just htis stuff delivered. Swilled around in the babagonush it was great.

The Woodburning Pit

iPhones have trouble orienting when aimed straight down.

The Woodburning Pit
(718)630-9980

Ordered:

Chicken and Ribs Lunch Special
Steamed Vegetables

One of my greatest regrets at being driven out of Astoria was the loss of a handful of great restaurants, the best of them being an over the counter churrascaria type place. It was incredible, great meat ready as soon as you point at it. And cheap. My heart wept as I waved goodbye.

I was overjoyed to find another South American bbq on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge, down near Ovington. "The Woodburning Pit" was closed for a week or so after I first saw it, but my wife brought home a menu after they reopened. My rollercoaster ride had gone something like this:

1. Great churrascaria in Astoria. Hurray!
2. Priced out of Astoria. Oh no!
3. A churrascaria looking place in Bay Ridge. Hurray!
4. Looks out of business. Oh no!
5. It's in business, I have a menu. Hurrah!
6. I'm ordering! Hurrrrah!
7. The delivery guy is here, Hoooooray!
8. I'm eating. Oh no.

Yeah, "The Woodburning Pit" was pretty not great. I had the lunch special, a chicken and rib combo with rice and french fries for $5.99. I had 'em throw in an order of steamed vegetables to get it up to $10, the minimum for delivery.

The meat was pretty blah. The ribs were dull and not meaty, they had a peppery taste but not much else. Not even the taste of ribs, just grey meat. No wood smoke, either. The chicken was okay, not much of it. A random cut near the breast and a drumstick, not very meaty either. Not a lot of stuff going on with the chicken, but at least it was moist.

The steamed vegetables were only borderline edible. I love steamed anything, and look past bland when stuff has been cooked in gassified water. But, blah. A generous serving of vegetables, but most of it went into the trash.

So, yeah. Not very hot. The pleasant woman on the phone told me that their chicken sandwich and the hamburger were very popular. I'll probably try this place again, but can't imagine when. With their lack of vegetarian options, I can't really order from here except when I'm alone.

The back of the menu, by the way, is great. It pictures a silhouette of a running chicken, carrying a fork and a knife. It's the sort of thing that kind of gives me the creeps, especially because the chicken looks so happy. I the upper left it says "TRY US ONCE..." with a sunburst behind the letters. A black and white sunburst behind black and white letters, not the best graphic designiness. Looking more, I see the chicken is missing toes. Brrr.


EDIT: I ate at this place in person and was just as disappointed as I was with the delivery. The only good thing was that they had a decent BBQ sauce available behind the counter.

The Original Fresh Tortillas Grill

Burrito unwraps with the foil, bad form. Good taste.

The Original Fresh Tortillas Grill
Tex-Mexican Express
(718)491-0468

Ordered:

A chicken burrito
Guacamole taco
Shrimp taco
Nachos

The best Mexican I've had in Bay Ridge, keeping in mind that the other three or four places I've eaten at were crap.

A chicken burrito had great grilled chicken meat in it, the whole thing was a good "tex mex" burrito start to finish. My wife had the shrimp taco and a guacamole taco, she didn't like the "guac" taco at all. The shrimp she thought good.

We also had an order of nachos with guacamole. The guacamole here is a little runny, a little yellow, but I like it more than I like the more typical guacamoles. The chips still had a little crisp when they arrived, a pretty good accomplishment for delivery.

I'm not sure if this place is part of one of the big warring Fresh Tortilla type chains, if it is then it's an exceptionally good example.

Bay Ridge Food Delivery, 11209

Clearly, five thousand different blogs about restaurants in Bay Ridge are not enough. One more is needed. Five thousand and one, that is the magic number.

My plan is to write a review of every meal I have delivered to my apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Not for the betterment of all you Bay Ridge eaters out there, but rather out of laziness. Or out of a test of my laziness. When I lazily decided to order food instead of cooking it, my "ordering the food" lazy will be set against my "oh no, I'll have to write about it after I'm done" lazy.

Which will win? Let's see.