R "Meat baby" P.'s Profile

I love how everyone on Yelp thinks this is a joke. People, this disease is killing people around the world.  All it takes is for people to come out from behind their computers and interact with people in real life to be potentially exposed.

Oh wait.  Nevermind.

There's a review for Yelp Jail?  Is there no end to Yelpers' quests to find glory in reviewing something that they think is exclusive?

My opinion of Yelp jail?  It's freedom.  Freedom for me to actually do some work. Freedom from getting annoyed at reading another political thread or, god forbid, another question from someone looking for a birthday bar for 20 ppl that's chill.  

Don't be a bitch and beg for forgiveness.  Or whine how you didn't really violate the TOS.  It's an internet site.  It's not like they took away your vibrator.

It's almost a universal truth that fast food workers hate their jobs. I mean, if I had to wear a fucking uniform, smell like grease, and deal with cheap-ass customers who are also demanding, I would hate my job too.  And I would use every opportunity I could to secrete my own bodily fluids into the food. Lemonade with an extra sour kick, coming right up!

So when I do order fast food, I am usually relieved when I can actually see the workers making the food that I just ordered. Not that I'm a dick customer or anything, but that F&B workers make the food you ordered right in front of you is kinda comforting.

That said, the hot dogs are just ok. I've gotten lukewarm dogs that were not the tastiest. But the fries are good and the fish and chips are REALLY good.

So, if any of you F&B workers are reading this, and recognize me when I walk in, please remember that I sympathize with you guys!

Shit, why the fuck are you people still shopping here?  This brand is OVER.  It ended for me sometime around 2000 when the North Face sold itself to a huge conglomerate and started making shitty products sold on every street corner. It should have ended for most people when it became apparent that EVERY FUCKING TOURIST FROM THE MIDWEST wears a North Face Denali.

But if achieving Fanny-pack status is not enough to convince you to stop wearing this shit, here's something:

The delivery guy for the Chinese take-out spot around the corner from my apartment sports a North Face Summit Series parka.

Over.

Hey you.  Yeah, you- the person scrolling through all the reviews trying to figure out why some people hate this place and some people like it. Take it from me- a real life Chinese person- that this place is pretty good. In fact, it's my go-to dim sum place now.  I've had some not great experiences here, but if you follow my advice, you'll have a great time:

1. Get here by 11:30 at the latest. Aside from the crowds that show up at 12, getting here early ensures that you get fresh food. Dim sum places cook a lot of food early and then cart it around until it's all gone. Only then do they cook new stuff. So if you get there late, you run the risk of them carting around the SAME OLD SHIT for like 20 minutes while you're starving and hung-over and then you just cave and point to the one plate of dumplings surrounded by plates of egg custard and other desserts that should be signaling to you that THIS SHIT AIN'T FRESH but now it's too late and the lady snaps up your little price card before you realize it and then you're stuck eating a plate of fucking COLD ASS dumplings, which may not be so bad in your state, but then 10 minutes later you see a cart of piping hot fresh dumplings coming around and you think to yourself "FUCK! That looks so much better than the shit I'm eating!"

2. Try to get a seat by the front.  The carts all start from the front, so you can get first dibs. If you're in the back, you will notice that there are two large tables near the front that are inevitably filled with families with demon spawn whose appetites know no limits, and whose flustered parents snap up two or three plates of everything in a desperate effort to placate them just so that they kids will shut the fuck up on the ride home because the fucking drop-down DVD player in their Ford Excursion is broken.

3. Try not to share tables.  You might end up sitting across from the Chinese family that has not taught their kids to chew with their mouths closed because, SURPRISE!- the parents don't do it either.

4. Order the deep fried shrimp, and eat them whole, shell and all (I don't eat the heads though). Peeling them makes you look silly.

5. Leave a tip.

They seemed to have changed their policy regarding credit cards. Now they accept Visa and Mastercard but not Amex. This is, of course, after I went out and got an Amex card to avoid a repeat of my original review.

A burger and roast chicken place that is in direct competition with Dirty Bird across the street. Kind of like the Dunkin' Donuts located 5 doors down from Donut Pub. Or the two dance clubs side by side near 8th Ave. Or the Chinese massage parlor on the north side across from the asian *spa* on the south side. West 14th St. is getting mighty crowded!  Here's my guide to all of this:

1. Donut Pub kicks ass over Dunkin Donuts, even though they just raised their prices.

2. Plumm and The Country Club both suck.

3. The Cookout Grill and Dirty Bird offer comparable roasted chicken, but CG also offers char-grilled burgers, pit beef sandwiches and seating. Dirty Bird has mac and cheese as a side, though, and that goes a long way with me.

4. Both the spa and massage parlor offer comparable hand jobs.

Why am I bothering to write the 200th review for this place? Do ya'll need to read one more review before deciding to invest in a freakin' cupcake?

I dunno. Work's kinda slow.

I like these cupcakes. They're not dried out and sitting out in the open like at other cupcake places. Then again, there was a fly trapped* inside the display case the last time I was there, so that wasn't so great.

*Not sure "trapped" is the right word.  That's kinda like saying a man was trapped in a whorehouse.

Chinese restaurateurs are very adaptive people. When I've eaten at a Chinese restaurant in a, shall we say, non-gentrified area, they usually have on the menu stuff like chicken wings and french fries which have nothing to do with Chinese food and everything to do with what their customers like. There's one in Mt. Vernon that has Mexican food because a lot of day laborers hang around there (where the f*ck else in the world would you ever see a Mu Shu burrito?).

Anyway, Vegetarian's Paradise 2, despite its name, is simply a Chinese restaurant that has adapted itself to its environs, Greenwich Village. Lot's o' crunchy vegetarian types 'round them parts, so voila! Wheat gluten fake meat chicken and broccoli!

BUT the thing is, even though these Chinese restaurateurs cater to their perceived customer base, their strength is still Chinese food. You know, the shit they actually know how to cook. And there ain't no vegetarian wheat gluten in China. This is a fact. I've never been there, but I've got good sources who told me this before they got locked up by the government for violating China's TOS for the entire internet.

Result: the food here that uses fake meat is disgusting. Like, Disgusting with a capital D.

But, their Chinese dishes that use tofu are pretty good. Their curry tofu was really good, actually. So they get two stars for that.

One other thing- since this place is essentially a Chinese restaurant, you can expect the same surly and dismissive service that you get at most Chinese restaurants. Also, these cheap mofos don't include the price of rice in their dishes, so expect to pay an additional $2 for a bowl of rice per dish.

And finally, don't order the edamame appetizer. Now, I'm not going to go into a rant about how crappy Japanese food is when it's served in a Chinese owned establishment (that's for another day), but this place managed to f*ck up EDAMAME.  WTF?? Boiling soybeans and sprinkling salt is not hard, especially if you're a VEGETARIAN restaurant, but what we ate last night was so disgusting that Julia and I stopped eating it about 1/10th of the way through (of course, the waiter didn't say anything when he removed the completely FULL plate of beans and nearly EMPTY bowl holding the shells. Like I said before, great service).

As sister restaurants, Westville and Westville East clearly share the same high-quality genes:  the same menu and as far as I can tell, the quality of the food is the same.  I pretty much order  the same thing every time I go: mac and cheese, then 4 market vegetables, which almost always includes snow peas with ginger and garlic and garlic mash potatoes. At both places, it's always been great.

But, unlike the original Westville where I can never get in without putting my name on the list and waiting forever (which sucks because I live 3 minutes away), I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes to eat at Westville East. Hell, I didn't wait AT ALL this past Saturday night at around 8.

If I were to continue with the sister analogy, I would say Westville East is less popular because she is twice as large as her tiny sister and this city is filled with superficial fucks who think anorexia "has its good and bad points" and don't care about what's on the "inside" (this location has a much nicer and spacious interior).

But that's a stupid analogy. The real explanation is that the dumb fucks who stand in line for 40 minutes at Magnolia then saunter over to Westville for some veggies to make themselves feel healthy.

Ok, sorry, that's a bit harsh. That's not the reason. I just wanted to use the line "dumb fucks who stand in line for 40 minutes at Magnolia."

I don't know why the original is so much more crowded other than that it's much smaller. It's not because the quality is any different. Hmmm.

Ok, this is why: the people who walk around the W. Village are fucking sheeple (oooh, look, 4 Marc Jacobs stores within the same block. How charming!) and just like the dumb fucks who wait 40 minutes for cupcakes at Magnolia, they have to try out Westville because they've heard so much about it.