Right Place at the Right Time

It was a long day of walking with my friend. I didn't even notice the time pass by until my stomach began pounding the war drum. It was nearly 2pm and we needed some food as soon as possible.

Everyone knows there's no lunch special on weekends. Our wallets were very thin to begin with. We went back to our dreaded choice, the food court. It looks like some businesses were changed and some had closed. I had a bad experience one time from one of the food stands. I ordered an oyakodon and there was an endless amount of egg over soupy rice. For once, I had wished there was no egg in front of me. So now I'm back again to Food Gallery 32 that had disappointed me a couple of times. This time I picked Pan Pan, a teppanyaki food stand.

I ordered a beef teppanyaki over lo mein noodles for $7.99. I stood and watched the cook do his job. They cook the egg noodles first in hot oil and then stir fry in the cabbage and mushrooms. Once this is done cooking and put on the plate, he starts cooking the beef slices and tops that over the noodles in thick sauce. Before I took my tray up to my seat, I grabbed a packet of soy sauce and hot sauce. The soy sauce was like what my friend had warned me about, it tasted a lot like water and salt. So ended up using my hot sauce instead. On such a cold day, I needed a good kick of heat to warm myself up. The teppanyaki was sweet overall. Typically it is sweet, but I'm not that big of a fan of sweet meats except in subtlety. While the teppanyaki was sweet, he soup that it came with was quite salty so it became my way of balancing the flavors out along with a huge bottle of water. The sauce is your typical cornstarch mixture to give your plate a nice shiny glaze. The lo mein noodles like I called them before are the egg noodles you can purchase in clear bags in Asian supermarkets. They're soft and don't have much consistency to them making it popular to having them rapidly stir fried in restaurants.

For is price in the middle of Manhattan, the food court is the place to go. Quality of food is okay, but at least you don't have to worry about gratuity and seating. That day it was food that had saved my life and my friend's life. Not because we were hungry, but because not so far away, a shooting incident had occurred (We found out hours later when we were back home). If we hadn't decide to stay to eat longer and walked out instead, I think our experience would have been a little bit more different. This time, I think the food court had given me a more positive outlook on their product.