Taste of Times Square

Hope it really is on the regular menu.

The annual Taste of Times Square has a touristy feel, but it's worth walking through, at least down and back, to see a street-fair version of "restaurant wars." Many of the folks who were staffing the tables were also working the crowd, shilling away with big smiles; at the Philippine Independence Day Festival a day earlier, no one had time to do much more than serve up the chow and take in the dough. For that matter, the food tables at Taste of Times Square never handle cash; all transactions are handled with tickets, and since the ticket booths won't offer refunds (they discouraged my credit card, too), many restaurants cook up interesting little bites to help you use that last ticket. (Mine went to a silver-dollar-sized sweet potato tartlet with candied pecans from Ruth's Chris Steak House.)

Chop Suey — the pan-Asian restaurant in the Renaissance Hotel — was still setting up a little before 5:00, the official opening hour, when many other vendors were serving away. Perhaps because they got a late start, they combined their two dishes into one, so for four tickets, their Vietnamese po' boy was accompanied by slices of "kalbi style" short ribs as well as slaw. The glaze on the ribs was too sweet, the slaw was nothing more, but the fried oysters in the po' boy were salty and succulent; mortadella, pickled carrot and daikon, and coriander kept them company. A pleasant surprise, like the bilingual doo-wop singers (The Valentinos) at the far end of the fair.

Taste of Times Square
West 46th St. (Broadway-Ninth Ave.)
www.TimesSquareNYC.org/about_us/events_taste.html
Early June