Tag Archives: restaurant

BonChon Chicken

Sometime last year my wife started talking about this chicken place that she found out about with her sister. “It’s so good! You have to come with us! We can’t get enough of this chicken!” over and over again she’d tell me, every time she’d go out with her sister it was the same deal, “This chicken is the greatest!”

And it was annoying, seeing my wife and my sister-in-law this happy, over chicken. Watching them talk about their experience at this restaurant, I’d think to myself, I don’t ever get to that level of joy about anything in life, let alone fried chicken, and so I sank my heels in deep, determined not to let myself try the chicken, lest I start to believe that maybe this type of happiness might be real.

I was afraid, deep down, that I’d buy into whatever hype they’d bought into, and then after trying the chicken, I’d be naturally disappointed. I’d come back home with a stomach full of grease and I’d wonder, am I fully here? Is there something wrong with me, preventing me from enjoying what everyone else seems to be genuinely in love with?

Just let them get it out of their system, I figured, they’ll eat it to the point where they get sick of it and then we can all get back to our miserable, regular lives as usual. But the chicken fever, it wasn’t running its course. If anything, their love for this chicken place was growing deeper, stronger in intensity.

And try as I might to make them keep their chicken business to themselves, it got to the point where their occasional, “Rob, you really should try this chicken place,” snowballed into a daily, “Rob! I order you to try this chicken! Rob! I’m serious!” But like I said, I had already made up my mind. For better or for worse, I’m a stubborn guy, a real asshole, and so this went on for weeks, me, just trying to go about my life, attempting ever more unsuccessfully to evade this fried chicken propaganda.

One day I was getting off from work and my wife was like, “I’m getting off from work too. Let’s meet up and grab a bite to eat.” In a lapse of judgment, I agreed. She told me where we’d meet, but failed to mention the place. I showed up a little earlier than she did only to find that I’d been duped.

There it was, BonChon Chicken. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. It’s like, I don’t think my wife had eaten anything else besides BonChon Chicken for the past month, and here I was being guided to a restaurant of her choosing. Of course it was going to be BonChon Chicken. Had I really missed such an obvious trap? Or had a part of me started to cave? Somewhere from behind my active consciousness, was my brain maybe starting to at least wonder if any part of this hysteria might not in fact be true?

Reluctantly, I went inside and sat down at a table. BonChon? What kind of a place is this, Korean? I like Korean food, but I’ve never really made any sort of connection between kimchi and fried chicken. And that’s what the menu was all about. Legs, thighs, kimchi, scallion pancakes. Whatever, I was hungry and this place actually seemed pretty cool, that aroma wafting through the air …

Snap out of it Rob, I tried to ground myself back into my skeptical mind, let’s have a bite first, at least. I ordered the scallion pancake, some kimchi, and some assorted legs and thighs, some of them spicy, some of them garlic and soy sauce. “Ha!” I said to my wife after placing the order, “That’s not a fried chicken flavor!” But I just sounded like an idiot.

And I can admit that now, because as soon as I took that first bite, everything changed. I did a complete mental one-eighty. This was the best fried chicken I had ever had in my life. I’m not like a fried chicken connoisseur or anything, but I’ve eaten it elsewhere, I’ve made it in my own kitchen with varying degrees of success. Whatever, it’s fried chicken.

But BonChon is fried fucking chicken. It’s like, I have no idea how they do what they do with legs and thighs. Somehow the chicken winds up coming out of their kitchen almost too perfect in appearance. If you asked a professional artist to render the ideal fried chicken leg, he wouldn’t even come close to what BonChon is able to achieve.

The chicken skin is somehow not only fried to crispy perfection, but it balloons out slightly, absorbing whatever flavor it’s seasoned with, becoming one with the skin, and expanding just enough past the meat to where your first bite, it’s like crunchy skin, pause, then juicy meat. You know what I’m saying? When you have your standard fried chicken, the skin always kind of slides around on top of the meat, so when you start to dig in, you wind up swallowing most of it during those first two or three bites. But BonChon skin, it’s like its own entity, it’s almost structurally apart from the rest of the meat, ensuring that eat bite of chicken has at least a little bit of delicious, chewy, almost candy-like skin.

I’m a total convert. I wound up polishing off eight pieces on my first time. And every time my wife brings home a box, or I wind up sneaking away for more, I can’t help but finish every last morsel of meat from each bone. It’s almost crazy how good this chicken is. I like to brag about how much I can eat and all of the different foods that I’ve had, but BonChon is levels ahead of anywhere near where I’ve been before. I see that plate of chicken and it’s like I black out, like I get possessed by something inside, something primal, and the next thing I know I’m staring in disbelief at all of the bones that I’ve made short work of.

Go to BonChon Chicken. It’s a chain. There are several locations in New York. It’s usually crowded, so be prepared to wait. I hope this thing takes off and puts all other fried chicken places out of business. I hope that someday there is a BonChon on every corner. Hey President of South Korea, maybe it almost seems like too easy of a solution, but if all else fails with the whole North Korea stalemate, you might as well try some BonChon diplomacy. Fly them some chicken. Watch the Kim regime dissolve as they beg for more. It could happen, I really think it might work.

I’d like a cup of strong coffee

I was at work the other day and this old guy said to me, “I’d like a cup of strong coffee.” And I smiled and I said, “Yes sir,” and I went back into the kitchen and came out with a cup of coffee. I put it down in front of him with a little milk and I said, “Here you go sir, one cup of strong coffee.”

Guess what? It was just regular coffee. He made a point to order his coffee strong, whatever that means, and I also made it a point to deliver his coffee, repeating the word strong back to him as I set it down on the table. By my logic, his strong and my strong effectively cancelled each other out.

Listen old timer, I don’t know how restaurants did things back in the twenties, but what you think you’re exactly going to accomplish by telling your waiter that you want a cup of strong coffee? What do you think, we have different options back there? Strong, medium, weak? Who would order a cup of weak coffee?

Although, now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably make actually a little more sense to order some weak coffee. I’d just cut it with hot water. There you go, weak coffee. Although, I don’t know why anybody would drink weak coffee. Or decaf even. If you don’t like that caffeine kick that accompanies regular coffee, well then I just don’t understand where you’re coming from, what your idea of life is all about.

But the strong coffee guy, I put down that cup, I looked into his eye, I tried as best as I could to nonverbally communicate, hey mister, I heard you say strong coffee, yeah, and guess what? This is regular coffee. I’m almost daring him to call me out on it. “Waiter! I asked for strong coffee!”

And I’d just be like, “That is strong coffee.” Because strong is a subjective word. If I found myself in the unlikely scenario where I’d have to defend my position, I could genuinely say, sorry buddy, sorry boss, I thought our coffee was strong. I thought that was a pretty strong cup of coffee.

But all the while I’d be making that same eye contact, that same kind of half grin, like if you’d look at me you’d think, this guy’s either trying to be really friendly, or a huge dick. And of course it’d be the huge dick look. Because as soon as you start making my job that much more difficult, with your strong coffee request, I’m automatically not at your service anymore. I mean, I’ll still do my job.

But I’ll be looking at you dead in the eye, and all I’m trying to say to you is, what exactly is it that you expect from the service industry? You’re just coming in here and automatically assuming that the strength of our coffee isn’t up to your standards, that you’d like me to go back to our one industrial sized coffee machine, empty the whole thing out, make a fresh pot with extra coffee, just so you can take a sip and probably still flag me down and complain that it’s not strong enough?

And then what, I’ll have to go back into the kitchen and listen to my boss start shouting at everybody, “Hey! Who made this last batch of coffee? Why did you use so much coffee? Everyone’s complaining. And look, there were too many coffee grounds, they all got in the machine. Come on guys, this stuff is portioned out individually for a reason!”

It’s funny because, they actually have a whole industry set up for people who are particular about their coffee. Yeah, you can just go to Starbucks or some other coffee shop and they’d probably know exactly what you’re talking about when you ask for your strong coffee.

It’s like people that come in and ask for a stiff cocktail. You know what? All of that stuff is portioned out also. You want free booze? Too bad, buy another drink. And that just gave me another idea, hey Mr. Strong Coffee, get a shot of espresso. Or even better, order a red-eye. Stop trying to get free strong out of me.

Give me a half-regular, half-decaf. All right, all decaf for you. I’d like a thick steak. You’re just getting a regular steak. Give me a nice sized baked potato. You’re getting whatever baked potato the line cook is closest to. I’ll have a sweet soda. What do you think I’m mixing the syrup back there?

OK, nobody ever asked for a sweet soda. But come on, just order like a regular person. People ask me for crazy stuff and I just want to be like, come on, stop asking me for crazy stuff. Stop asking me things in general. Just point to what you want on the menu and that’s it.

Meatless Mondays

I wanted to try out Meatless Mondays, but I work on Mondays at a restaurant, and so while I made myself this super healthy breakfast, well, I don’t know if it was super healthy, but it was definitely meatless, just a bunch of cereal, just like three bowls of cereal, I just kept eating bowl after bowl until I was full, and then when I got into work, my boss was like, “Hey everybody, I made hotdogs for lunch!” and you know I say lunch loosely, because it was like four, but when you start work in the afternoon and keep on trucking until close to midnight, four is kind of like lunchtime, especially when you consider my breakfast, my box of Frosted Mini Wheats, what time did I eat that, like eleven? Eleven thirty? It’s all off, everything skewed toward a little later in the day.

And there was this tray of hotdogs and I was like, fuck Meatless Mondays, I’ll do Meatless Tuesday this week, because I seriously love hotdogs. One time last summer I ate thirty of them in less than ninety minutes. It’s kind of a long story, or, I guess it’s really not that long of a story, I just have this habit of saying, “It’s kind of a long story,” whenever I want to beef up something boring, you know, when I’m talking about one thing and I get sidetracked and I start talking about another thing. But it was just this regular day last year, I think I had hotdogs for lunch and I was talking about how good it was, I said something like, “Man I fucking love hotdogs, I could eat hotdogs forever, no limit, I could eat thirty hotdogs in an hour.”

I don’t know why I said that. Sometimes when I start talking, especially if I’m talking about something that I like, like if I’m getting really excited about it, I won’t stop, I’ll keep going, I started thinking about Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi and all the great hotdog eating champs. That’s not so hard, I thought to myself, if they could do it, I could totally do it too.

My proclamation was met with an immediate rebuttal, and I doubled down, “I absolutely can do it, thirty hotdogs in an hour,” before eventually scaling back slightly, “Ninety minutes,” never having admitting that I ever said an hour in the first place. Whatever, they gave me the extra half-hour, everybody came over my house, one of my friends tried to be a wise guy and he bought these really doughy potato buns. “No way pal,” I pointed toward the door, “I want real hotdog buns.”

And I did it, even though I felt like shit right after, my fingers were tingling, I thought I saw Jesus coming down from the clouds, he was holding this tray with even more hotdogs, he was like, “My son, eat more hotdogs. For hotdogs are the kingdom of heaven,” yeah, like a bunch of nonsense, total hallucinatory garbage, but I’ve got to say, his hotdogs looked a lot better than mine, and even though for strategic purposes I decided to forgo any condiments on mine, the Lord’s wieners were perfectly dressed, just the right amount of sauerkraut and relish, the buns were these artfully crafted artisanal loaves, they almost looked like mini pretzels, garnished with coarse sea salt, brown on the outside, fluffy on the inside.

But that only lasted like fifteen seconds, then I kind of snapped out of it, people were throwing water on my head, drawing stuff on my face with permanent marker. I never got to bottom of just who drew that hotdog on my cheek, but whatever, permanent marker, you’ve just got to keep scrubbing, it comes out eventually.

So I woke up today and I got myself a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. And right after my first bite I was like, shit, what about Meatless Tuesday? But one, I already ate a bite of sandwich, so I’m not about to throw it away, and two, again I already ate a bite of sandwich, so whatever I wound up doing from here on out, regardless of how little meat I ate for the rest of the day, it would never be a true meatless day.

Meatless Wednesday it was, I guess. I figured, let’s enjoy the rest of the day. I ate the rest of that sandwich with gusto. I got to work extra early that night, licking my lips on the way in, man, hotdogs yesterday, I wonder what’s on the menu tonight. But it was this lentil salad. Totally vegetarian. And then after work I grabbed a slice of pizza. If only I hadn’t had that breakfast sandwich I really could have had a meatless day. I thought, OK, maybe tomorrow will be better. But it was tuna melts. Does that count? What kind of a meatless day are we talking about? How can I really commit to something like this when I haven’t even explored all of the guidelines? And what about that Clamato I had on the way into work? Does clam juice count as a meat? Why can’t I get this right?

No more free refills on soda

At the restaurant where I wait tables, management recently got rid of the soda fountain. Whereas before five dollars would get you unlimited Coke and Diet Coke, now five dollars gets you one twelve ounce bottle of soda. Whatever, I was all bent out of shape about it initially. I hated having to explain a stupid change in soda policy to every single table that I wound up serving.

“What is this?”

“We recently switched to bottled …”

“So no more free refills?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. But I hate you. And I’m not tipping you. And I’m going to follow you home and egg your house. Asshole.”

OK, nobody actually said that last one to me, not explicitly. But I’d stand there and smile and bullshit about how, “We really just want to make sure you’re enjoying an optimal soda drinking experience,” and I could tell these people wanted me dead. They don’t care about quality. If you’re a Diet Coke drinker, you’re not in some sort of a quest for quality. It’s super popular, yeah, everybody drinks it, but come on, does anyone truly enjoy Diet Coke? What is that taste? It’s like a battery that’s been left out to rot out in some old socks for a decade before accidentally being dropped into a vat of Coke Classic.

I’m getting carried away. I realize that now. A couple of months have passed and our customers have since gotten used to no longer receiving unlimited, intravenous Coca-Cola, and so I don’t have to talk about it all that much anymore. But at the time, man was I pissed. I was so angry. I came right home after that first shift and wrote a whole blog post about how much I hate bottled soda, how much I hate my managers, how the restaurant industry is this giant scam.

I sat on it for a couple of weeks, I always sit on my writing for a couple of weeks, and it’s a good thing too. Because I reread my diatribe against the soda policy and I scratched my head, like, huh, I was getting all bent out of shape over this? Over Diet Coke? Come on. That’s lame.

Although I am pissed off that I don’t get to drink free soda anymore. That used to be a really minor perk of working where I work. Every five minutes or so I’d fill up a huge glass of seltzer and I’d pound it down, enjoying that crazy sensation of those bubbles trying to go every which way, up my nose, down my throat. I’d close the back of my throat and squint my eyes really hard, because you know, just try chugging any carbonated beverage, that’s no joke. But it would pass and I’d feel instantly refreshed and recharged.

Now I can’t do that anymore. Before I had a perk. Now, there’s no perk. And I’m not being dramatic. I tried chugging a glass of plain water, and I almost quit right there. One, it’s boring. There’s absolutely nothing going on with a glass of plain water. Two, there is no two. It’s just one, water is boring. No bubbles, no fun.

I also tried switching to unsweetened iced tea, and that worked for about two hours. I’d fill up a glass, squeeze a lemon, and I’d get that refreshment, I liked the added caffeine kick. But you ever try downing more than two large glasses of unsweetened iced tea in a short time? Man, it’s like I boarded an express train to upset-stomach central. I had to sit down. I thought I caught some sort of a virus.

Finally, I’d like to end with a little anecdote. So we have bottles of soda, which means tons of empty bottles that we’re throwing straight in the trash. I can’t believe restaurants can get away without recycling that much plastic. I think that if I tried that in my house, the city would give me a fine. Anyway, this one waiter started collecting all of the soda caps.

I was like, hey man, what are you doing? And he was like, “Oh, well, you see these codes under the caps? If you type them into the Coca-Cola web site, they’ll donate .0001 cents to the charity of your choice.”

I was like, wow, thanks, I guess. But what I was really thinking was, Coke, you’re willing to donate all of this money to charity, but only if some random person gets on his or her computer and types out a long string of nonsense onto the Internet? Don’t be an asshole, Coca-Cola. Either donate to charity or don’t donate to charity. Don’t condition you’re philanthropy on whether or not you can get complete strangers to sit at their computers and do a bunch of mindless, unproductive busy-work.

Justice was served, and I was the server

One night last month I was at work waiting tables, getting people Diet Cokes. My shift had just started and the line was already out the door. My tables got sat immediately and, as per corporate policy, I approached my guests to take a drink order no later than thirty seconds after having sat down.

A middle-aged couple had already brought their martinis from the bar. When I went over to say hi, to get the ball rolling, they didn’t even look up at me. They barked at me dismissively, “We just sat down. We’re not even close to being ready.”

Terrific. Great. I’m doing fine thanks. Nice to see you too. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I hate it when people go out to a restaurant without wanting to have any sort of interaction with any other human being. You don’t want to be bothered at all tonight? You don’t want me to even come over and take your order?

I gave them five minutes. Then I returned and tried to tell them the specials. They still didn’t even look up at me. The man cut me off midway through the fish and said, “Why don’t you come back in five minutes.” At this point I was trying really hard to not appear pissed off; I went to say, “OK, sure,” but before I could even make it through that response, he cut me off again and said, “Maybe ten minutes.” And he and the woman he’s sitting with just kind of extended their smiles, like they were totally conscious of how rude they were being, like they were enjoying it.

Everything went as you’d imagine it would after an intro like that. They sat around for like half an hour before they even picked up their menus. They took another half hour to order. And after their empty plates were finally cleared, they stayed in my section, sat at my table, for the entirety of the night. For five hours they camped out and drank martinis and got drunk and ignored my glances toward the check, my silent pleading to please, please, get out of my life here, go away and let me make some money from somebody else.

They started out sitting across from each other, but as the night progressed, as they downed more booze, they wound up side to side. Then they started cuddling. Then making out. It was gross. All the while I had to just stand there and watch these two get it on. I had to stand back and watch all of my coworkers work, for actual customers, actually making money.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this was one of the worst customer experiences I’ve ever had as a waiter. From five in the afternoon until closing, they just sat there, occasionally ordering a drink, totally blocking me from selling meals, never looking up as to so much as acknowledge my presence, my existence as a human being, casually denying my need to work and make tips for a living, something impossible to do with a couple of graying lovebirds making fools of themselves in the middle of the restaurant.

Cut to last night. It was the beginning of another busy Friday night at the restaurant. The bar was already packed, a line already forming at the greeter’s podium. And guess who sat down right away in my section? That same couple. That same guy with that same bullshit smile. I didn’t know what to do. My heart immediately dropped to the soles of my feet. I couldn’t take another night of being fleeced by these jerks, another night of being leisurely ignored, of being used, stepped on, impotent with boiling rage, forced to smile and say, “Thank you sir. Very well ma’am.”

The night was still early. Maybe one of the day staff would cover for me and work a double. Maybe I could fake sick. I went to one of the other waiters, someone who has worked there for a while, “Is there any way of getting out of this shift, this situation?” He was sympathetic, he remembered the couple from a month ago, but he gave it to me straight, that I was most likely out of luck.

Both the man and the woman were talking on their cell phones. I considered shoving the menu in their face, pointing right to the bottom where it says, “Please refrain from using your cell phone in the dining room.” I wanted to grab a permanent marker, I wanted to add “asshole!” to the end of that sentence and then show it to them.

But I didn’t do anything. What was I going to do? Was I going to blow up? Get fired? Have no job? No, I couldn’t do anything. I was powerless, and that feeling of powerlessness, that knowledge that these people are in complete control of my life, of my job right now, it was just coursing through my body. I was growing numb, something dying inside.

I waited for them to close their phones and I put on my own bullshit smile, “Hello. Can I get you something to drink?” “Just water,” they both said. Huh. No martinis today. Maybe they wouldn’t be staying. Maybe I’m in luck. I dropped off their water. I’m didn’t even bother with the specials, I didn’t want to waste my breath, I didn’t feel like giving them the opportunity to cut off or tell me to go away.

But the lady chimed in, “I had something the last time I was here, a salad,” and she proceeded to tell me all about her previous meal, “and I was sitting right there. It was six months ago.” Six months ago? I said, “No, you were here a month ago, and you were sitting right there. I was your waiter.”

“No,” she told me, “I haven’t been here in at least six months,” and then she looked over at the guy, who cuts in with a “well maybe I was here for lunch.” And then he looked up at me, his smile starting to break only slightly, and went, “you must have remembered me.”

I couldn’t believe how quickly the situation had reversed itself. I made direct eye contact and told him, “Yeah. I totally remember.”

This was unbelievable. This had to have been his wife, and the lady from a month ago must have been a girlfriend or a mistress. That’s why they were staying in the restaurant all night, getting drunk and making out. They had nowhere else to go. The whole thing was illicit. And now he was back in the same restaurant with his wife, and he happened to have the same waiter that he screwed over the last time. What kind of a guy brings two different women to the same place?

There’s this complete emotional one-eighty. Whereas before I was pissed, ready for the worst, trying to weasel my way out of the shift, now I’m pumped, I absolutely hold the advantage, there’s no way I’m going to get pushed around by this guy, not tonight, not ever again. The couple ate their meals in like ten minutes, paid the check, they left like a twenty-five percent tip, and they were gone.

Sweet vindication. Much like a hot glass that’s suddenly filled with ice-cold water, my body was reacting similarly to the extreme change in emotion and temperament. For the rest of the night I was pulsing, on edge in a good way, just slightly on top of everything. I’d been down and then right up again all in the course of like ten minutes. It was almost too much to process.

I’ve never had such good karma pointed immediately in my direction. Somehow the universe righted my wrong. And I showed remarkable, almost inhuman restraint. I could have totally refused to play his game, I could have been like, “No it was dinner. You two ordered a bunch of martinis. Don’t you remember? You stayed all night.” But that would have cheapened it. Looking back, it was all worth it for those few seconds of eye contact, that pure moment of non-verbal communication, my silent, “Fuck you buddy. Just finish up and get out of my restaurant.”