Over the past 18 months, I’ve spent five weekends in New York City to see everything on my list. I didn’t have anything left to see on my sixth weekend there, so I decided to make a series of bad decisions over 48 hours. I showed up without a plan and just called up three friends to see what would happen, I ate at a 2.8-star restaurant with fewer than 50 reviews, and boarded a helicopter charter with five deaths recorded by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The first evening, I went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday and we walked past a Chinese restaurant on our way from a hot pot place to an ice cream parlour. There was a large group of patrons outside the restaurant taking a smoke break and the manager was outside chatting to them. I asked my friend if it was a good restaurant since it appeared the diners were having a good time with the staff.
He told me it was a great place. The prices are reasonable, the food is delicious and the ambience is comfortable. But he also said it only had 2.8 stars on Google reviews because the Chinese community wanted to keep the place a secret from white patrons to maintain its low prices and low wait times. I kept that in mind.
The next day, I told another friend about its rating and allegedly tasty food and we agreed to try it for lunch. We took the subway from Midtown Manhattan to Chinatown to see how bad it could be. There was no line at noon on a weekend, the service was courteous, the food was tasty, and the bill only came to $30 including tax and tips for two people. Tea was free.
On our way out, we walked past a white-owned candy shop called Bon Bon’s and a Jewish delicatessen by the name of Katz. Both were rated around 4.5 stars and had lengthy queues. Katz’s queue went around the short side of the block, or around 90 metres long.
(The restaurant averaged 4.1 stars and suddenly received 1,900 more reviews within 60 days after I ate there.)
