Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Bon Chon for Vegetarians? 12-09-2010





Location: 207 W. 38th St.
Time: 1pm

Feelings: Vegetarians do not usually get to appreciate the spoils of the Bon Chon take over. But luckily for us, they do have various vegetarian friendly, equally greasy items available in case your chicken loving friends want to come with you for lunch.

I decided to place a take out order of Sesame Ginger Tofu Salad ($8.99, spring salad mix, tomato & fried tofu seasoned with sesame ginger dressing and other seasonings.), carelessly thinking that this would be the quickest turnaround. It is just the salad after all. But I was utterly wrong. After I placed the order, I was given a buzzer a la Outback Steakhouse and told that it would light up when my food is ready. Am I in Long Island on Friday night, or am I actually in Manhattan? What is the need of this buzzer?

I must have spent at least 15-20 minutes fighting my strong urge to sanitize the buzzer with Purell when the buzzer finally lit up. With its unpleasant light, the buzzer seemed to say, "You just waited 20 minutes for a salad."

The salad had an overpowering aroma of garlic which is not appropriate for a cubicle lunch. However, the tofu was crispy and had a full of flavor. When you hear "tofu salad," you might imagine something quite sensible and clean. This is quite the opposite. They literally substituted the chicken with tofu, so all of the other elements of Korean fried chicken were present.

The portion of the salad was small, but the amount of mints and gum I had to consume afterward managed to also quell the hunger. I don't think I would ever want to wait 20 minutes for one rather small salad, but it was tasty nonetheless.

3 comments:

Samantha said...

That's disappointing... as a vegetarian, I went to Bon Chon for a work thing and just ended up eating their fries in a spicy sauce (sad, right?). The fries were actually great, but I definitely would've liked more veg options. But then again, I shouldn't have gone to a place with "chicken" in the title!

Yosh. O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yosh. O said...

I hear ya! Your blog looks great, by the way.