It’s quiet, or as quiet as a busy gas-station parking lot gets. It was a nice car - Mercedes, silver, windows tinted like aviator sunglasses - and it roared into the lot and squealed to a stop. I was standing in line one afternoon at the aforementioned hot chicken joint when this car pulls up.
What do I mean? Let me tell you a quick Northeast story. It’s too often overlooked when we start talking about the foods or the restaurants that truly define us as a city. Because the Northeast gets too easily forgotten in this city’s mad scramble after every pretty young thing that catches our eye these days. There’s a hot chicken stand in a gas-station parking lot on Roosevelt Boulevard where the lines can stretch out to the street - and if you don’t already know the place I’m talking about, then you, friend, are missing out.īut you, friend, are also exactly why we put this package together.
I mean, have you? Have you gone to Mayfair for dim sum? Cruised through Bridesburg for spicy tots and kelp salad, or hit the corner of Englewood and Castor for malted waffles and Bloody Marys on a Sunday morning? In the Northeast, there’s a spot where you can find excellent foul and saj bread across the street from a storied pizza joint just recently brought back from the dead and 10 minutes from one of the best tomato pies in the entire city. Spread at Bishos / Photograph by Ted Nghiem
