Last Night's Dinner: GREAT Great Neck

Great NY Noodletown with Sudmann, Betten, Sus and Newell.

As many of you know, one of my Chinatown staples is Great NY Noodletown, which I affectionately refer to simply as Great Neck. Now that I am no longer an inhabitant of C-Town, my visits to Great Neck are rather few and far between. Just the other day, my roommate and I were discussing how much we missed it and longed for some roast crispy pig and salt-baked ANYthing. So we decided to go for some happy hour rooftop drinks at the Delancey Bar, followed by dinner at Great Neck. Despite the happy hour pricing, $2 off any drink, I felt I had overpaid. Since the drinks there are overpriced to begin with, I paid $8 for a Bombay and tonic. Though, I think I may have been a victim of the old bait and switch, because the "Bombay" totally tasted like well gin to me. Do you think they actually fill up their top shelf bottles with well booze? I really hope not. That would be so disgusting.

By the time we were seated at Great Neck, we were all really ravenous. To start we ordered:

- 2 orders of duck and flowering chive spring rolls
- 1 order of salt-baked soft-shell crabs (These were so amazing, I'll never get them out of my head. I feel like time spent not eating them is time WASTED.)
- 1 order of Singapore mai fun (I love the way this tastes, but I can't eat it.)
- 1 order of roast pork lo mai fun (I actually ordered this with roast duck, but they made a mistake and made it with pork instead. The good news is, any mistake involving pork is a mistake I can completely get behind.)
- 1 bbq pork and oyster casserole thingy (I always get this with Ted. Very rich and savory. Many are grossed out by it though.)
- 1 order of chinese vegetables with oyster sauce
- lots of Tsingtaos (Hey, did you guys know this was one word? I just found out - I googled it!)

At the time, this seemed like more than enough food, but we were dead wrong. At this juncture, one would normally go with good old Three Jewels (roast pork, soy sauce chicken and roast duck), but no one was feeling the duck program but me. Instead, we got an order of soy sauce chicken and an order of crispy pig. We devoured it along with the tasty scalliony green sauce, which so perfectly compliments all of the window meats.

Now, most people would think they had consumed enough food after all of that, but Sudmann and I are far from being like most people. Our co-diners were stuffed and our waiter had already brought us our check, wetnaps and oranges, but Suds and I were undaunted. We discussed ordering some shrimp rolls. Sus admitted that if we did, she would need at least a taste. So we decided to get an order of roast pork and some shrimp rolls. Despite everyone's protests (only Sus was honest about her susceptibility to peer pressure), we polished off everything. Newell and Betten definitely helped. I KNEW they would eat more if we ordered it.