BEST CHEAP EATS in New York's CHINATOWN Pt. 10 (Under $8)

Literally tastes like dad's cooking on Sunday morning. A hidden dumpling spot inside of an underground mall, Peking duck bao's, late night skewer carts, and the pho restaurant that we frequent the most out of any spot in New York City. Most of this all under nine dollars and I know you thought this series might have been over but you don't know just how deep this goes and maybe at first we didn't know either. So let us know in the comments down below if we should keep going with this Andrew, we have been transported to Taipei, Taiwan. Between the weather outside, the decor in here, this is the most classic Taiwanese spot in Chinatown. I feel like I'm in Taiwan 20 years ago. I didn't even go to Taiwan 20 years ago. David, in front of us we have Lee, the quintessential Taiwanese cheap eats in Chinatown. Everything here is five dollars or less, even in 2020. You have the spicy wontons, we have tea marinated duck. Andrew, Taiwanese people really love to marinate meats in tea. So they stuff the sticky rice into the holes of the lotus root. Come on man. If you guys are looking for something different in Chinatown that's not Cantonese food, this is it. Salted salt and pepper pork chop with the five spice on it. Andrew, this popcorn chicken, this is not your boba style. David, this is a dish that I do not look forward to trying. This is some um intestine soup. Taiwanese oyster pancake. This one's super valid. It does not have any of like um the sea flavor I'm personally not a big fan of. Sometimes at the night market you're gonna get like very cheap oysters, which I'm not saying they're bad or bad for you, I'm just saying they're gonna have kind of a cheap flavor. But here, high quality. Taiwanese pork chop. It is called Taiwanese pork chop house and honestly this is a very juicy, salty, and peppery Chinese pork chop. It's very good, man. This is one of the best ones I had in New York. Andrew, you got the yensuji popcorn chicken. I got the tea marinated duck. I was first introduced to this at tea station in San Gabriel. Wow, one of the many tea flavored Taiwanese foods out there. One of the things I really do miss about living in the 626, Andrew, are the tea flavored Taiwanese meats. Finishing up here, David, we have the Taiwanese sausage. You have the Taiwanese tea egg right here. This is not a boba shop. No disrespect to boba shops, this is not a boba shop. David, I feel like I just walked into a 7-Eleven in the Da'an district in Taipei City. Last but not least, Andrew, we got to try some of the most traditional things here. You got the Taiwanese kimchi. I got the lotus root with sticky rice in the sweet syrup. Yo, I'm not gonna, straight up David, I didn't know Taiwanese had their own version of kimchi. This lotus root is an interesting dish. It's cold and it's very sweet. It's almost like a dessert. We got the intestine soup for you. Yo guys, if you guys have watched the channel long enough, you know one of the few things I don't like to eat are intestines, but since I want to show my respect to Taiwan Pork Chop House and all the great and fond memories I've had in Taipei and Taichung and Kaohsiung, here you go. It wasn't that bad. They were able to cook out the funkiness of the intestines. You can't travel right now, it's 2021, who knows when we will be able to go again. If you want to taste the Taiwan, I don't care if you like modern things, old things, come to Taiwan Pork Chop House. The only thing they're missing is Teresa Tang in the background. All right you guys, we're in front of Fuzhou Weizhong right now. This is the deepest cut of the deepest cut spot. We are like in an essentially an abandoned mall. For $11 we are getting Shui Jiao, Guo Tie and the Fuzhou Xiaolongbao. All right so you guys know man they close at seven even though Yelp says eight, they close at seven. They said Yelp is wrong. All right David, we just got the Fuzhou Xiaolongbao. Let's go check them out. By all means necessary. All right you guys, we have secured it for $7. You get seven Xiaolongbaos. The Guo Tie and the Shui Jiao, which is the dumplings and the pot stickers, were two dollars each. My total was $11. Here they give you some vinegar. This is the very first time in my life I'm having the Fuzhou Xiaolongbao. It's hot, it made them fresh. Honestly it tastes like I'm in Shanghai. It tastes a little bit more like a Tianjin Baozi, a Guys, one thing I know about Fujianese food is that they really like to braise the meat so it's always really dark brown. And I like even on the dumplings a lot of the meat is dark brown, but that just means it's got flavor. But you can also see the dark brown seep into the bun right here as you can see. You're going to be able to see the brown juice in the background. Man this was pretty good. I'm pretty glad I got the Fujianese Xiaolongbao. Does it taste exactly like Shanghai Xiaolongbao? Not really. But is it worth getting? Yes. So if you're thinking about coming to Fuzhou Weizhou, at the bottom of this East Broadway Mall, make sure you get there before 7pm because that's when they're closing up shop. All right everybody, I got the fried guotie, which is fried dumplings. I had the steamed dumplings, the sui jiao, and I had the Fuzhou Xiaolongbao all for $11 at Fuzhou Weizhou. Guys, it just opened at the bottom of the East Broadway Mall. This is a super deep cut. If you guys are looking to come here, make sure you get there before 7pm because that's when they're closing up shop because you don't want to eat in the dark. All right everybody, this was a deep cut spot. Chinatown Cheap Eats 10. Chinatown Cheap Eats part 10, guys. You know that we're analyzing things that very few people, you know, dedicate their brainpower to analyzing. We're on Bowery and Hester right now. In my opinion, one of the most underrated food streets. Now most of these spots on the street are more designed for, you know, $20, $30, $40 a person. However, we are going to be showing you today how to order for $10 from places like New Hong Wong right here. This is an amazing seafood restaurant. I've never personally been here. They said it's super underrated. A lot of people don't know about it. Funny BBQ. The original malatang, you know, chua spot until the spot across the street straight from Dongbei opened up. So that's a Dongbei chua spot. This is a Sichuan chua spot. Plus, we've got the Chinese version of the Louisiana boil. You know, we shot a video there. Subcrab. And you've got the Windham Hotel with some very interesting dishes like shrimp garlic fries. Real quick, I gotta let you know that this episode of Chinatown Cheap Eats part is sponsored by YouScooters. Guys, YouScooters are the scooters that you see us riding around town. We've said it on our Instagram. We've shown it in other YouTube videos. They are our favorite scooters to ride around the city. They're super lightweight and portable. You can pick them up. You can fold them up. You can take them upstairs. You can take them down the subway. The acceleration is great. They're super durable and the suspension will surprise you. All I gotta say is to be honest that we could not get the series like Chinatown Cheap Eats done this quickly and go to this many spots if it wasn't for the scooters. So if you guys are interested at all, check out YouScooters.com and we actually have a code called Fung Bros that if you use it, you will get $60 off. All right, you guys, we just ordered takeout from the Bowery Beer Garden. They do have some interesting Asian inspired items. The owners are Asian, but obviously they want to cater to a very diverse demographic. Here are Cajun garlic shrimp fries. Yo, you guys, I know a lot of people might be skeptical of bar and grill food and even the way it looks is just kind of interesting, not necessarily delicious. I'm going to go ahead and give this a four out of five. Okay, for $12, they give you three of these tacos, but they're really high quality. The chef's Cantonese, but they do tacos well here, guys. They give you two different types of sauces. This is it right here. Make no mistake, guys. It's bar and grill food, but it's elevated. So I got 10 tofu skin skewers for like seven bucks. This is a Dongbei Shaokao specialty for about $5. I got this grilled eggplant. You could not get this cheaper almost if you made it yourself, if you had to get all the garlic and get it all up in your eyes and everything. This is really the best barbecue you can get in Chinatown that mimics mainland China. This is all the different Chinese barbecue seasonings that are obviously influenced from around the world due to the Silk Road. Straight up, guys, this tofu is silky. It almost kind of feels like a cheese. I'm going to go ahead and give these a 4.75 out of five. But you know what? I'm just going to go with the five. I'm going to give the tofu here at Friendship BBQ a five out of five. If you want to order this dish for $5, I believe they just call it cao qianzi. I'm also going to go ahead and give this the five out of five. It's good. It's cheap. It's right here. It's underrated. Hey, guys, not all Cajun seafood spots are going to look this clean, this nice, this kind of pretty. You got the little lights up top. You know, Sub Crab is trying to do something. OK, what I've just opened up are two extremely hot steaming plastic trays of food here. I have the minced herbal noodle with an egg on top. And then I have the la ji ji, which is your spicy diced chicken with chili, obviously based off the Sichuan dish. The thing that's really cool about Sub Crab is that you can actually spend almost like $100 per person here. If you're getting, you know, the king crab, the snow crab, obviously all the seafood, you can drop $100. But you can also eat here for only like $12, $10 a person. This noodle dish right here, let me just break up the, oh my gosh, this right here was only $9. And then here, your la ji ji, which is fresh piping hot and spicy fried chicken, la ji ji. A lot of spots serve this dish, but not all spots also specialize in seafood. So for a spot that specializes in seafood, I'm going to give this a 4.5 out of 5. This is solid, made by the same chefs that are cooking the $100 seafood, right? So they put the same mastery into this dish. This is a 13 herbs dish, got 13 herbs and spices. Come on, a real chef had to come up with that. Guys, we're inside of Funny BBQ right now. I'm not going to lie, it does actually feel like China because they are serving all the dishes that you might actually eat in China. But while your dinner here can get kind of pricey, I'm going to show you the cheapest eats and the best deals right here at Funny BBQ. And let me just start off with the number one best lunch special deal here at Funny BBQ. Shout out to Car from 12Pell because he posted this on his Instagram first. And this is the beef malatang. This is only during lunchtime, $7. Look how much food they give you. Look at all those noodles. You get veggies, you get your greens, you got your bok choy, you got your lotus root, you have thinly sliced beef, you have tofu, you have thinly sliced potatoes here. For those of you who don't know, malatang is probably the top three most favorite dishes of the youth in China right now. And it's super popular. I mean, they serve it at a lot of different spots and a lot of different people do different variations. I'm about to show you a dry version of it. But man, this malatang, you know, coming from Sichuan, this is all the rage right now. People love this dish. Okay, guys, for a $7 lunch special malatang, I'm gonna go ahead and give this a four out of five. It is super solid. And I think it's a great segue for people who are trying to get more into mainland food and Sichuan food in general, because I know like a lot of ABCs, maybe you didn't grow up eating this food because that's not your your mother's or father's region food. The next killer deal here at Funny BBQ is actually this dry pot. Okay, you can call or maybe on the menu, it might be gone. But basically, it's a dry pot. I have instant noodles, I have three types of meat, I have all the veggies that you need. Guys, for this much food during lunchtime, this is only $11. Okay, dry hot pot. I'm going in for a second bite already. That's how you know it's legit. I'm going to give this a five out of five. Definitely get the dry pot. I prefer it over the malatang. I think the soup can get a little bit spicy and plus it's really hot outside. But this just tastes like instant noodles tossed with spice and all these other different ingredients. I think you could easily share this between two hungry friends and you'd be good for lunch. Okay, they also sent over some of their skewers. Now skewers here. They're a little bit more expensive, but they're super high quality. They range anywhere from like, you know, $2 to $4 each. I've actually never had this one. I'm gonna try this one. Grilled crispy rice cake, baby. This is only something you're gonna see at a Chinese spot. Okay, you have a hot dog, but it's cut in a way where it almost looks like a flower stem or like a rose stem. Funny hot dog at Funny BBQ. It's not bad. It's kind of good. Base pepper on there tastes like the Taiwanese one, so not bad. This is a popular Fujianese dessert here. It's like an ice ball. You got like sticky rice on the top. You have nice sliced watermelons. You got a little bit of sweet syrup, some peanuts. I actually had this dish a long time ago, but I don't get to eat it often. I'm chilling now. Wow. I needed that. All right. So if you guys are nostalgic at all and searching for a vibe like it is in China, you can go to Friendship BBQ across the street or Funny BBQ across the street. Why do they have similar names? I do not know, but I can tell you this. Funny BBQ is probably more for the youth. It's gonna remind you more of like a middle class spot. Okay. It's a little bit more lit, a little bit more like a club. And then Friendship BBQ is gonna be like a slightly more expensive, maybe higher quality, more family sit down spot. So you got your choices here, but there is mainland China in Chinatown now. All right, you guys, we're looking at the New Hong Wong lunch specials. They're about $6.75 each. The only thing that was $9 was this steamed soy sauce fish. Of course, we've got some very classic Cantonese dishes that are very traditional. This is a seafood centric spot, New Hong Wong. You've got the squash, winter melon. You've got the ha mai, which is this tiny shrimp right here. Kind of looks hilarious in a way. You might not think this has much flavor, but it's actually a very subtle, complex flavor, multi-layered, but all subtle. This is just the black bean rock cod filet with the diced string beans, which is a little bit more dai pai dong, which is like a little bit more of a outside hot fired wok chiu jiao influenced style. Of course, here we've got the jin dan omelet, which is a crepe egg. All Cantonese people know that this is how we grow up eating our eggs, whether it's in a sandwich or it's on anything else. This is how we get down the crepe egg. This is $9, but this is an incredibly complex dish to get for $9 and to get the homemade flavor for nine bucks. You've got the black bean pan fried fish filet, $6.75. That's the perfect lunch dish. You've got the jin dan. This is a crepe egg, $6.50. Oh my gosh. Five out of five, a mm out of mm. This was a banger. I'm not going to lie, man. Why? Why? Ding gai. Ding gai. Ding gai. Ding gai means why. Honestly, it's like the eggs that mom and dad used to make, but maybe better. Last, but not least, you've got the winter melon fan si bu. Yo, I'm not going to lie. Andrew, of all the dishes, this reminds me the most of dad's Sunday morning cooking. Of like all the spots in Chinatown. New Hong Wong. Yo, David, I'm not gonna lie. Mom and dad actually cook like three out of four of these dishes. New Hong Wong literally tastes like dad's cooking on Sunday morning. This is actually bugging me out, Andrew. You say that, you know, taste, smell, brings you, activates, you know, memory receptors. I'm going back! What are we calling this? New, New Fung Wong? New Hong? Fung! Ah! Chinatown Cheap Eats, part 10, no tourists, locals only, a lot of interesting concepts. What I love about Eldridge is that it is in Chinatown, but a lot of the businesses actually serve Japanese or American food. Here you got Flower Shop, you got Zest Ramen, you got Takumi, you got Simple. These are all great lunch spots. And by the way, a cafe granddaddy right there. So shout out to them. But we're gonna hit these businesses up. We're gonna show you what to get. We're gonna show you what's a good value. Eldridge Street, let's go. All right, I'm here at Takumi. I got some lunch specials. They are Fujianese owned, but Fujianese Japanese spots, man, they're getting really good. Here I have the Yellowtail and Scallion Roll. Boom. Here I actually have a Snow Crab Roll. And these two rolls together for the lunch special price is only $12. That's saving you about $2 to $3 here. Here I actually have a Teriyaki Salmon Combo. And I gotta say, this slab of Teriyaki Salmon is actually really, really big. Look at that. Wow! They give you a lot of salmon for $14. They even give you the Xiaomai, which is more the Japanese version, but obviously it does look like the Cantonese one. Here you have a little California Roll salad and rice. And by the way, we wanted to keep this whole series under $8 or $10, but of course, we kind of went to all the cheap spots already. So we are expanding the price out to the $14, $15 range. These are still really good deals and really good quality food. But of course, you might have, we're saying this is a nice lunch, maybe. Maybe not every single day lunch, but this is a nice lunch. Not dry, tender, flavorful. The Yellowtail Scallion. This is the roll that's gonna give you a little bit more of that premium feel. I gotta say, for $12 on Eldridge Street, guys, you can get decent Japanese food and sushi here on Eldridge Street. Last thing I gotta try, Japanese Xiaomai. I'm usually not a big fan of this, but let me see what I like. Soft, it's more made out of fish cake. A little bit sweet, not bad. Chinese-owned Japanese spots, I know maybe for many, many years before, they kind of got a bad rap because they were like, oh, it's not authentically Japanese. But I mean, doing this type of food, they're doing a good job. They're learning, they're getting better. Yo, Andrew, how are you enjoying your Takumi lunch special? I think Eldridge is a low-key Japanese street. For cheap Japanese food, Eldridge is a pretty good street. All right, while Andrew's next door, we are getting the lunch special here at Zest Ramen. So I got the vegetarian tomato ramen here at Zest. It is owned by Thai Chinese, so they also have Thai shrimp rolls. They also have squid skewers. So these are actually miniature squids in some sort of like spicy Thai reduction. So it's kind of a fusion between Thai and Japanese culture. And of course, we've got the Japanese street snack from Osaka, the takoyaki balls. All right, you guys, this was pretty cheap. This, along with a free shumai appetizer, the Japanese-style one, was $15. These were all about $5 or $6 each. So it could add up, but also, if you want to keep it light, totally could be a cheap eat. I know that they hired a lot of Japanese chefs to consult with the menu here. Tomato-based vegetarian ramen. Yo, David, I had to run over because I look so good. I know that David is a huge fan of anything tomato-based. When it comes to yunshan miso, David loves the tomato-based one. Ramen, he's got to try it. Tomato, egg, everything. He's a tomato guy. This tomato-based one, and maybe a little bit more Chinese influence. I do know some Japanese spots have this as well, though. And I actually highly, highly recommend this. I'm going to go ahead and give this a four out of five. Andrew, I noticed you were quick to abandon your teriyaki bento. Hey, teriyaki salmon is solid, but you know what you're getting? This looks really new. This is a Thai shrimp roll, and you can tell that the crust is kind of like, kind of has that spindly flour on top. I think it could have been vermicelli noodles or something else, but it got really crispy. What do you think about how they have a fusion of Thai culture and Japanese culture here? Takoyaki. I actually think Thai-Japanese fusion works pretty well. All right, Andrew, I'm going to need you to compare the Japanese renditions of the shumai from takumi with zest. So I had a takumi. Okay, let me try this here at zest, but I'm not going to lie. They look exactly the same. They might get them from the same spot. I think they're both frozen. Listen, guys, I know that, you know, the Japanese culture is a master at innovating, but I got to say that the Chinese shumai are way better than Japanese shumai. It's not even close. They here, look, they got the little poke bowl street. Matcha, waffles, oatmeal, cranberry cookies. So it's going to be tasty to Chinatown people and non-Chinatown people. Exactly. It's going to be tasty and healthy, all right. And this is like a Japanese style, like kind of dish. And why do you think there's so much Japanese food on Elridge? I believe the reason is because in this area, the residents, the people who comes here and dine in, they, most of them, they like Chinese, but they like Japanese food, they like Asian food. So anything Asian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai. Like any type of Asian. Right, they're all doing really, really great. So Andrew, it is really interesting that Elridge kind of has this like Chinese, Japanese fusion. Zest Ramen was trying to find that like inflection. It's partially because this spot, this street was not already overpopulated with Chinese restaurants. So that- Well, it's sort of like Chinatown extended. Yeah, it was kind of a low key street. So it's kind of forming. So you have fujiao, you have shujiao, fujiao dumpling, right? Which is one of the cheapest, best dumpling spots in town. But then you have all these Japanese spots. Cool. I got this ume. Yeah, choya soda. Choya soda. And they let you know it's 0% alcohol. Choya. Yo man, let's try this spicy salmon right here. Yeah man, take it. Kind of hard to- Oh, you gave me everything. You gave me everything. Spicy salmon poke. I can see why they survived the poke wars. I love how it's really cold. It's really chilled. It's got a lot of flavor. Guys, this was only $12.75. That is not even very expensive at all for poke. I don't eat poke all the time, but if I do, I'm gonna come to Simple. Andrew, you've got a Japanese hamburger. Hamburger curry. It's pretty good. That meat tastes really clean. I like that. That must be really high quality ground beef. Once we expanded out of like $10, $11, Andrew, and maybe even stretched it to $16, a lot of options opened up. Actually, nothing that we've even ordered today is over $15 retail. And listen guys, it's 2021. If you wanna have a certain type of lunch, you probably gotta at least drop 15 bucks. All right, last but not least, we have this matcha cream waffle here. It's really cool looking. Matcha crescent. I've never had a croissant waffle before. It's pretty good. I give that a four out of five. I love to see people transfer their masterful chef techniques from other provinces or other countries, and then transfer them to cooking things like Japanese food. Listen, I think if you wanna cook something very traditional, you go for it. But if you don't, go for it too. Because to be honest, that's the great thing about being in America. You're exposed to all these different things. And America, you know, still is pretty open to non-traditional foods, of course. And sometimes those even sell better than the super traditional stuff, you know, for better or for worse. So go for it. All right, so one of the best Chinatown cheap eats is actually a late night eat. It starts at 5 p.m. And it's on Grand Street. Yes, you know what I'm talking about. I don't think we filmed this yet. It is the Chinese skewer cart on Grand and Christie. So you know it's the cart because you can start to smell it when you're even like, you know, 20, 30 feet away, depending on where the wind is blowing. All right, it is ran by this really cool couple. They're actually Fujianese, but they know how to make these kind of like Northern style, like Xinjiang skewers. So I'm about to order a few. G-R-O, G-R-O. All right, you guys, we are looking at my chiu chai and then jin zheng gu. And those are my yang rou chuan. Okay, in front of me here at the Shao Kao truck on Yelp, it's called Chinese Pinchos. I don't know why that is called that. I have a G-R-O and a yang rou chuan. So that's lamb right here. I got chicken right here. Was that the lamb? That's the yang rou, okay. Four out of five, much higher quality than you'd think. Not a lot of fat, but I think some people might prefer that. Let's get into the chicken one. Very solid. Go with the yang rou. All right, because of David's recommendation, I'm going to just try the lamb because not that the chicken's bad, you know, it's probably just not as strong as the yang rou. They got better. Very solid, kind of spicy. Not going to lie. Quality is good here. Got the pork, aka the churro. And I can actually see, I do think it's pork belly because I can see the layers of fat and then the layers of meat right here. Not going to lie, there's a little bit of stickiness, which is good. The skin is really crispy. The pieces of fat were a little bit harder, but they started to melt in my mouth as I chewed them. All right, wrapping it up here at this skewer cart on Grand Street. Here I have the jiu cai with bacon. This is the green chive. And this is actually one of my favorite skewers because who would have thought just grilled chives was going to be so good? Wow. I highly recommend this one. This one's called jin zheng gu. And this is the enoki mushroom wrapped in bacon. I'm not going to lie. I think this is another go-to. Get your veggies in, get a little bit of bacon fat in. It wraps it all together. All right, here we got the king oyster mushroom. This is the da wang gu. And these are, you know, the big, huge mushrooms that you've seen. You know, they're up to like 10 inches long. A little salty. I think all the sauce really stays on this one and absorbs it. Overall guys, having this at Grand Street is very, very rare because this is a cart that you're probably going to mostly find in like Flushing. It's a very hardworking couple. I say, check it out. They're open late from like 5 to 12 AM, I think. So check them out, tip them, treat them nice. You know, keep them safe. Obviously this area is relatively safe for the most part, but you know, hardworking. I've seen them out even when it was like kind of cold too. So check out the skewer cart on Grand Street. Late night eats. Let's go. All right, you guys, we're in front of 456 Shanghai Restaurant. And as you can see, Andrew, there's quite the commotion because New York Times just said that this place has the best value xiaolongbao in Manhattan. It was written by a non-Asian, I believe. So I'm not saying that they don't know. Well, you know, I think it's fair that we give our opinion because New York Times has just said that these are the best cheap xiaolongbao in the entire city. Get eight xiaolongbao for $8. Now that is not the cheapest, but that's still pretty cheap. The thin shavings of ginger right there. Let's get it. I'm just gonna dunk it. 456 Restaurant. They are good. They're good. The skin is still a little thick for me. It's actually kind of like a weird mix between a jiaozi, you know, like a shui jiao and a xiaolongbao to me. That's a big meatball. You're not wrong if you say it, but definitely the meat is like a little bit too big and not refined enough, but it does actually have a very good taste to it. Yeah. These are not anything close. So I would say in Chinatown, there are some xiaolongbaos that are gonna give you more of a din tai fung feeling. These are not it. These are definitely a lot bigger, a lot bulkier. The meatball's larger. It does kind of taste like more of a regular jiaozi, like dumpling. Eight for $8. You can't go wrong. It'll fill you up. But I think for the Western taste buds, they like it more. Yeah. Yeah. I would say for Western people, I could totally see why this gets the number one XLB xiaolongbao in Chinatown. But if you're looking for something more authentic, it's probably not four, five, six, but it's good. All right. For four, five, six, I give this a four out of five though. They're pretty good. Yander, we're in front of Canton Lounge right now. And I actually had no idea. They serve dishes that are like a hundred bucks here. Bro. Like it's in the middle of a street that's like, you know, pretty cheap. Goes to show you that amongst all these cheap foods, you actually have restaurants and you've always had restaurants where you could easily drop a hundred dollars per person. 24 bucks. Now you guys are thinking 24, that's way too not a cheap eat. But if you split this between two people, that's only 12 bucks a person for lunch. So in front of us, we have a $25 Peking duck lunch. This is legit Peking duck. You have your buns, you have your scallions, you have your cucumber, you have your tianmianjiang or your hoisin, depending on what kind of sauce they use. Oh my goodness. So let's see how many buns that this actually makes. I think legitimately it's enough food for two people. Peking duck lunch, $25 at Canton Lounge. Very fancy. I'm going to say it. It's worth it. If you want Peking duck for lunch, split it between two people, $25. That's only about $12.50 per person. And you get a Peking duck lunch. Now, is this the top quality da dong, you know, Peking duck that would usually retail for maybe like a hundred or $150? No, but it's quite good. Gets the job done. Gives you that vibe. I like it. I think I'm going to come back to Canton Lounge and try some of the $40, $50 dishes. Okay, so following our theme of finding really good lunch deals, it kind of takes us out to East Broadway, a little outside of Chinatown, but still where a lot of Chinese people live. David, we're outside of a new Thai restaurant that is serving healthy Thai lunch food called Seven Elephants. It's got a cool, fast, casual concept. I personally have really yet to see Thai food served in this context. Let's go see what they got. Hello. Hey, what's up, guy? Hi, hi, hi. Okay, hey, yeah. So is this an authentic style of eating Thai food? Yes, it is, but we just put it in the same box. Okay, so could we call this a Thai bento? Of course, in Thailand it's called khao gan or bento. All right, so here's what I love about Seven Elephants. I know that it kind of just looks like a regular kind of Thai bento lunch spot, but you have to understand, the food has got a lot of flavor. It's cooked all fresh. I mean, even the fact that they do kind of have like a cafeteria style food that's kind of like a chipotle, and they also have their fresh food here. I mean, I just think that's just a style of Thai food that's not that popular in America. And you got this green curry with this little layer of oil on top. I'm about to pour that on top of my beef, like half of it. Boom, look at that. Beautiful, let it run down. Let me try this drunken noodle out. I've never seen a drunken noodle so peppered. Everything here was $28, including tax. I like it. Letting the jalapeno shine. And he was saying everything about this dish is pretty authentic, except for the change of chilies. Obviously, they wouldn't use jalapenos in Thailand. They're probably using the red Thai chilies. Let's try this beef right here with the curry. It's good. Beef is tender, simmering in the sauce. You got their pad thai right here. Solid pad thai as a side dish, no egg in it. Here you have your king oyster mushroom. Now, what I think is cool about this dish is that they told me that this dish got more popular in Thailand in the past like 10, 15 years. So it's somewhat recent. So that's why a lot of Thai American restaurants don't serve it because most Thai American restaurants are opened up by people that probably have been here for more than 10, 15 years. A lot of people go to Thai restaurants hoping for a lot of spice, a lot of peppers, you know, something that's really spicy. So this is actually on the sweeter side. All that food, I give that a solid 4.5 out of five. I could eat that multiple times a week. Other things they got. You have your Thai iced tea right here. It's very sweet, but very delicious. Your Thai iced coffee. I would say Thai iced coffee is one of the most underrated Thai items out there, to be honest. And they also actually have this dessert of this like roti green matcha. That's like this sweet matcha syrup that you're dipping the roti in. And I just didn't get it, but you should definitely get it if you check out Seven Elephants over on East Broadway. So onto the next spot. All right, so when talking about Vietnamese spots on Grand Street, I got to give a shout out to Pho Grand. We've actually eaten here so, so many times. And let me tell you what we like to get. So this is the number one. This has all the different beef in it, right? And this is only 9.25. Now here's the cool thing about Pho Grand. You can get rice noodles with it, or you can actually special request and you can get Thanh Mien, aka egg noodles with your pho, okay? So now most people would not choose to do this. I'm not gonna say categorically it's better, but definitely try it when you get the chance. It really goes well with the bowl call here. Egg noodles, right? I know for David, David likes to use more of the sriracha and the hoisin. For me, I don't use sriracha at all. I only use the garlic chili and the hoisin sauce right here. So I do the half, half mix. I honestly do believe that this is the cheapest pho you can get in Manhattan that is actually worth eating. Now there might be, you know, for the number one that has all the meats, 9.25, you can get a pho that's 8.50 here. Very beefy, the broth is good. I've eaten here probably a hundred times in my life. I'm not even gonna lie. All right, so one of the most underrated and unknown hidden gems on the menu is their bun mee. It's actually super good. The baguette is really nice, really fluffy. Now they do use romaine lettuce, so I'm not gonna say that this is the most authentic bun mee ever, but it is delicious. I do like it. Things do not have to be authentic for you to enjoy them. One thing you gotta know about Pho Grand is that their grilled meats here are very, very solid. They have lots of little barbecue and char flavor on them. Here's the chicken, and I would say it really cuts the difference between maybe like a more Western kind of grill spot and an Asian grill spot, but man, I think that's a nicely done bun mee. For the convenience, the price, the quality, and the reliability of Pho Grand, it being on Grand Street, I have to give Pho Grand a five out of five. I come here at least twice a week. David, we come here twice a week? At least once a week, for sure. Up to three times a week. Let's go. One of the things I like to do when I have some Pho broth leftover and a bun mee, of course, dip that, baby. Mm. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. See you at Pho Grand. And they got it back, too. Mm. All right, so our next Vietnamese spot on Grand Street is Nam Son. Now, this is a spot that actually specializes a little bit more in different dishes, so each spot has their specialty. Here, they got the avocado smoothie, but each Vietnamese spot is probably initially owned by Chinese-Vietnamese people that speak both Chieu Chau, Cantonese, probably Mandarin, and Vietnamese. Let's go. What you're looking at right now here is the number one. This is the classic Pho, but it has brown noodles, which makes Nam Son different, the fact that they even offer this, and that means that they're trying to also reach a different audience who might not want the rice noodles. Here, we got the bánh cuốn, which is the Vietnamese churn fun, so they are like really thin rice rolls with meat inside. The way they make them is a little bit different than churn fun, but they pretty much have it on a white pan. They steam it, they roll it. All right, so here we got the Nam Son special combo plate. This is actually $32, so obviously, it's not a cheap eat, but if you share it between like four people, that is definitely a cheap eat. Here, you have your daikons and carrots. You have your grilled pork right here. You have your beef that's wrapped in betel leaf, and then you have your shrimp over sugar cane right here. This is a classic dish. All right, I'm gonna try the bánh cuốn. This is a dish that we really got into in L.A. at a spot from a spot called Bà Mì Chà Cà Lì, a super-budget Vietnamese spot. Shout out to that and the 626. I know a lot of full Vietnamese people that always kind of talk down on the Chinese-Vietnamese-owned Viet spots because they say that the food does not hit hard enough, it doesn't taste as authentic. I don't know, to me, it still tastes pretty good, but hey, I'm about to put the bánh cuốn, wrap it over the bò lát lát. Get a little veggies. I'm about to wrap it up here at Nam Son, guys. Listen, the experience here is a little higher end than Pho Grand. I love Pho Grand, and I do think the price point is a little bit cheaper at Pho Grand, but you're not gonna get this experience. All right, you guys, we are on a very busy, hectic, but very fun, energy canal street right now. We're in front of Chikarashi, which is sort of like a premium poke spot, but this is only like 15 bucks. David, what we're looking at is a Szechuan crisp salmon rice bowl. So you have the raw salmon, it's doused in the sauce. It's gonna be a little bit spicy, laying over a bed of rice with lots of furikake. It's cool to see like Szechuan flavors be implemented into poke. Yeah, so David, we got extra fish. This one costed us $15, but you can get this for what? $12, $13? The Dole Whip was $4.50. This is watermelon Dole Whip. Wow, everybody loves Dole Whip, but now they got the watermelon one. You know, for me, I'm more of a watermelon guy over pineapple guy, so here we go. Chikarashi, cheap Chinatown eats, part 10. It's not bad, I like it, but you know, it's cool. Okay, so right off the bat, the salmon got that little Szechuan buzz going on right now. It definitely hit my taste buds right away. I wish there was a little bit more of like the salad elements. It's really not a bad bowl. If I was you and you're into salmon, I would definitely try it for $13. And you know, shout out to this Dole Whip. It does kind of taste like a Jolly Rancher, but in a good way. Kind of addicting. Yeah? So are you gonna up the score? Four out of five. All right, you guys, we're in front of Alimama Desserts right now. You've got mochi donuts, you've got all types of rose petals. Lychee rose tea, you have your cold brew royal milk tea right here. Guys, everything here is made to look aesthetic. And so you got a Vietnamese cafe souda cream puff? No, no, it's a brown sugar boba. Oh, this is a brown sugar boba cream puff. I'm sorry. So that's this one right here that I'm busting open. Very much, you know, I mean, it looks like a boba on the inside. It looks good. Mochi donut with the gold on top. Now mochi donuts originally came from Japan. Japan got them from the West. And they innovated on it like as many things in Japan are. So check it out. For me, the chocolate flavor is actually really high quality. I like that a lot. Donut is a bit chewy for me. Cream puffs with boba inside. It's almost like the cream has laid boba eggs inside of the cream puff. Yeah, you're right. It's chewy. You guys, if you are at all into that Instagram West Coast, Asian IG girl lifestyle, come to Alimama, no doubt. Let me just tell you that they are playing all of my top favorite EDM remixes. Refreshing drinks though. Dave, you have mini boba in there. Yeah, they have, I can tell there's a lot of that pea vine that gives it that blue color flavor, which is a very difficult flavor to describe. It's almost like a... You said pea vine like it's Daomiu. I think it's pea flower. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pea flower. That's what I meant. Chocolate. My man is gonna be able to put coconut and chocolate on the gai dan cai. Okay. This is a Hong Kong favorite, the egg waffle. It does come from Hong Kong, just so you guys know, but this is another cheapie. This is only gonna be $5. Toysaw man making gai dan cai over on Bowery and Pell. Let's get it. All right, let's be real, everybody. I cannot wait to eat this because we all know that egg waffles, they're only good for like 10 minutes. So they poked a little hole on top to let the steam out so it doesn't get soft. Let me pop this open. Wow. Chocolate, coconut, condensed milk. This looks super delicious. All right, I'm about to dive into this. There we go. That bite has everything in it. Do you see that? Mm, not bad, $5. One of the best parts of doing this series is showing the faces and personalities behind these small businesses. It's easy to walk in and grab food and not even exchange maybe a smile, but if you try, I think they'll try too. I'm just glad to see a lot of these people weather the storm. So let us know in the comments down below what your favorite spot is and if we should continue this series. Thank you for watching. Peace.