Rediscovering Eden Wok’s Hot Dog Egg Roll

eden-wok-store

From the outside, Eden Wok on 34th street looks just like any other generic Chinese food take-out place… save for one thing: a newspaper article in the window from The New York Times. There are number of old school Chinese places in Manhattan that have blessed by coverage from the paper of record- but this isn’t some 2 star review of a Chinese dinosaur (we’re looking at you Shun Lee.)  This article was about Eden Wok’s hot dog egg roll. Yeah, you read that right. Eden Wok is a Kosher Chinese food restaurant, and the star of their menu (according to the NYT circa 2005) is a “Chinese Hot Dog”. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was going to be, but I had to find out… you know… for the sake of science.

chinese-hot-dog-1

I’m not as courageous as Zach, who is eating his way through shady Chinese steam tables, but sign me up for some Chinese hot dogs!

hot-dog

It’s actually pretty simple. You take egg roll skin, wrap it around a hot dog, deep fry this thing… and you have a Chinese hot dog. I guess the Chinese thing to do with a Chinese hot dog is to smear a packet of sinus clearly mustard on it… For $2.50, this thing is not really enough to be a meal. It’s almost like a crunchy corn dog, but since it lacks the substance of a thick cornmeal coating, it won’t fill you up.

fried-chicken-wings

So what do you do? Well since I had just walked by Kyochon and the still-under-construction Bon Chon, I was in the mood for some fried chicken wings. At Eden Wok, most of the lunch specials are over $8.50, so I thought perhaps an order of chicken wings ($4.95) would be a good deal. Upon opening the bag of wings, I found a generous pile of fried wings. The wings aren’t huge, but there’s ten of them in there, all fried to perfection. The outside was extremely crisp. They seem to have the same type of breading as most fried wings at American-Chinese food joints. As awesome as it is to get a bag of fried wings to fill you up, the wings would be better with salt or hot sauce. They’re not really seasoned at all, but when they’re cheap and fried, I really have no complaints.

For those of you who aren’t into fried foods, they do serve regular American-Chinese food items like sesame chicken (although it’s Kosher… so expect mock shrimp and *shocker* no pork!)  They also have sushi. And on their website, they call themselves the ‘finest Glatt Kosher Chinese and sushi restaurant.’ That has to stand for something right?!

THE + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

  • Chinese Hot Dog!
  • A bag full of fried chicken wings is music to my ears
  • I like Chinese food, but I keep Kosher

THE – (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

  • A little salt please?
  • Too much fried foods for me, I’m getting ready for the beach
  • Chinese food without pork is like sex without the purple unicorn playing a banjo.  It just makes no sense.

Eden Wok, 43 E 34th St. (btw Madison and Park Ave), (212) 725-8100

20 Comments

Leave a Reply

You must log in or register to post a comment.