My friend E did not remember she haggled with the Halal food proprietor outside a club on the Lower East Side that night coming out from K’s birthday party. Haggling? In NYC?! Perhaps it might help to know that she’d come straight from working too long a time in Shanghai.
“You have to have Halal in New York,” E said, half tripping over her own shoes as she tried to balance herself on the sidewalk with chicken rice in one hand and lamb on the other. Obviously, her haggling did not work, but it did not prevent her from asking, in all her charms, for “extra white sauce AND extra hot sauce”, which almost set our tongues on fire.
E did not quite remember what happened that night the day after, but I sure did, thanks to the rice. So like a good foodie I tried to track down the best of its kind, and who better to ask than my friend little K whose profile on Facebook is, conveniently, a picture of herself swimming in a bowl of Kimchi Chiggae? In all secrecy, like passing down a kung fu move in the mountains of Shaolin, little K bestowed upon me the location of her favourite Halal vendor like a true master, and added, “In general, you have to look for the big carts - the bigger the better. Even better still if they have colourful lights. And of course, if you see a long queue, that’s always a good sign.”
I did not quite guard that piece of information with my life as I had intended, and was giving myself a hard time for having left that paper at home the other day on my way out from MOMA and for letting my mouth water from the plain wondrous smell and fair sight of a Halal stall not far from it. I decide to give it a try anyway. After all, the line was pretty long for four in the afternoon.
Honestly that was one of the best things I have had in New York. The lamb was flavourful, the chicken tender, the rice cooked just right, and the mixture (in the right amount) of white and hot sauce, perfect. It came hefty in a takeaway box, like how all comfort foods should be.
I eat this all in the soothing afternoon sun at home, and when I finally managed to drag myself away from it, pulled out that piece of highly confidential paper – as it turned out, I had serendipitously found the best Halal stand in the world this afternoon.
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