Beauty in the Beast

Ever since one of my friends took me to Rutgers to the grease trucks, I have recommended the Fat Cat sandwich to everyone, even though it is a good drive away.  They have variations of sandwiches and I always call it an entire meal between bread, and it's really good combinations!

I don't get to have the Fat Cats that often as it's a good trip into NJ, but when I do, I love eating them, just not enough to eat three in a row ... well perhaps I will try that one day, maybe!

Here comes a known secret that I have just recently been told about!  I heard about this from my niece and nephew when I called and they told me they were at "Cherry Valley" and for some reason it registered as they were in Cherry Hill in NJ.  Then they told me it was a deli in Whitestone and they have insane sandwich combinations there, again I brought up Fat Cats and how they are the bestest ever!

Cherry Valley
1229 150th street
718-767-1937 www.cherryvalleydeli.net

Saturday night came and after some last minute late plans for bowling, we made our way to this Cherry Valley deli that I heard about a few times before.  It was about 3am and I saw that there were a lot of people in the deli ... hmmm reminded me a lot of the grease trucks when I first saw it.  My mouth was watering, I do admit that.  Before leaving the house I looked at their menu and saw what was in this "Beast" and that's all I could think about all night long. 

There had a huge menu of different sandwiches and other fast food type items, I almost couldn't decide but I went with ... the beast.  The contents of this "sandwich" was chicken cutlet, bacon, swiss cheese, onion rings, topped with gravy on a toasted garlic roll/hero bread ... sounds good?  Just reading that over makes my stomach want it right now, seriously it's making noise.  Now you add a special side of extra gravy and you have yourself a knockout, dipping the sandwich ... errr I can't call it just a sandwich, it's an experience.  So dipping this experience in the extra gravy is just wonderful. 

Pictured below is half of the beast ... and you can't tell from the picture but the taste is an explosion of awesomeness in your mouth!  If you're skilled enough, look passed the picture and see the beauty that's within the beast.  The extra gravy is almost so good you want to "accidentaly" drink it thinking it's hot chocolate!

Have you ever seen a unicorn or seen a rainbow and tried to get to the very end of it to find that pot of gold?  Well if you haven't, then go to Cherry Valley and get some experience (sandwiches)! 

I can't tell you how good it is, but I do want to go again.  I'll have to limit to once a week though, as I don't think my body can handle more than that.  There is something else there that I want to try, it's called their loaded fries.  It's either waffle or regular fries topped with bacon and then ranch sauce! 

So ... who wants to go and when!?  I'll drive you get my food!

Taste : 9.5
Price : $ out of $$$
Restaurant : 8 (small and a little crowded at 3am, but clean)

+ mon

Tebaya - Chicken Wings!

I've decided to add a "food review" category on my blog since I do eat a lot!  So the first review will go to:

Tebaya - Japanese Style Chicken
144 West 19th Street (between 6th and 7th ave)
212-924-3335 www.goojapan.com

After finding this place from www.cheapassfood.com and reading reviews on www.yelp.com about this place I decided to take a little trip down to 19th street and give it a shot.  Yeah I know, for those of you who have read my entries from today ... so much for healthier eating huh!?  So hard to detox from the delicious calories and cholesterol when you're surrounded by it and it's just soooooooooo good!  Give me some credit, I didn't go off an eat a burger from good ol' McDee's did I?!

Tebaya says they have a special sauce that they use for their wings, and when they said "wings" I thought it would be wings and drumsticks ... but they are just the wings.  So for you drumstick lovers out there (like me!  You might want to go elsewhere or adjust your habits).  

The place is a small little hole in the wall place but as soon as you walk in you can smell the wings.  I've read the reviews and people were raving and ranting about the wings and the rest of the things on their menu was just "regular" so I skipped everything else and went for the wings. 

I got the 8 piece wings with rice, salad and soda combo for $6.95 lunch special.  The wings are small, but for me it did a good job of "filling me up."  They make their own dressing for the salad, it's not the regular orange dressing that you might be used to seeing, it's good and when some flavors combine it's even better - I'll get into that later.

The taste of the wings have a garlic, salt, pepper and a sweet taste to them.  So it's pretty much a party in your mouth and all the flavors are invited.  They are covered in sesame seeds and deep dried twice to make them nice and crispy on the outside and on the inside soft and juicy.  

In a matter of minutes the combo meal was finished and I was left sucking on my fingers for the remainder of the sauce that was left over.  The salad was the first thing to go and it left a little puddle of dressing.  For those who know me, I'm not an expert with chop sticks so here I was trying to eat the rice with the chop sticks ... needless to say this was quite a task.  The rice kept on falling into the left over dressing which was a good touch to the flavor.  One of the wings accidently fell into the puddle as well while I was scooping out rice from under it, this was a good thing!  I like the taste of the wings moreso with the dressing on it, it adds a little something to it, or maybe I just can't taste things like I used to since my tongue has been soaked in soy sauce for about 29 years!

Everything went down quick and I sat there wondering if these were as good as everyone had been saying.  The only thing that came to mind was the salt & pepper chicken wings from Royal Mandarin ... for as long as I can remember all the chicken wings post snpcw have been compared and have never won.  This was no different, I compared the taste to that of what I remember the snpcw taste and again Royal Mandarin wins.  But if I were to judge it without comparison, this is definitely a good chicken wing!  There's this flavor with the wings that I like, and after downing the entire meal, I wanted more.  So here I sat with the box that was only left with chicken bones trying to calculate which selection would be most economical.  I think it calculated out to being $0.68 a wing to the cheapest benig $0.65 ... the more you bought the cheaper it was per wing.  

I sat for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if I should buy some more wings, I tried everything to resist but the smell and taste overcame me and I ended up ordering another 23 pieces ($16.50) with two extra salad dressings on the side.  Hey when you find a good combination, you gotta stick with it right??

I'll definitely go back here to get my chicken wing fix, but this isn't the crack chicken that's being served at Royal Mandarin.  Sorry, I can't stop comparing and I guess I'm just looking forward to having some in about two weeks!  

Taste : 8.5
Price : $ out of $$$
Restaurant : 6 (since it was quite small, good for max 10 people) 

 

+ mon