Deep fried goodness

Somehow, when the temperature plunges, the thought of deep fried foods becomes even more appealing than usual, so when my friend Jane expressed curiosity about Forte Baden Baden Restaurant yesterday, well...!

BBNY now has its own website with photos but nothing is quite as hilarious as the visual directions provided by one humorously named website, since there is almost no signage in English, and the actual entrance door on the second floor is a very unwelcoming dark brown metal with only the letters "BBNY" indicating that you MAY have the right place.

It somehow seems appropriate, in a NYC kind of way, that my nice engineer (Scottish-Ukrainian heritage) introduced me (Chinese-American extraction) to it, so that I can bring my native New Yorker, Korean-American high school friend to a Korean-German beer bar in K-town.

Since my sweetie was home in bed with a nasty chest cold, it was up to us three (me, Jane, and her husband Jim) to demolish giant platters of deep fried rotisserie chicken with double-fried french fries, deep fried beef strips with onion rings, and sticky rice cakes (accompanied by 2 hard boiled eggs and fish cakes) covered with spicy kimchi sauce. I almost hurt myself (it was a close thing) but we managed to kill most of the food, and still leave 4 giant slabs of chicken.

Actually, though you can't tell in this medium, I had to take a quick break and inhale, er, I mean -- savor one of the leftover pieces of chicken as my mid-afternoon snack. Yum...

These photos were actually taken during a visit on December 20th with friends visiting from Pittsburgh, but what can I say? I stick with the same fabulous dishes.

Although I have tried others here, when introducing first time visitors, I am happy to order my top 3 recommendations. As you can see from the post-destruction oil stains on the empty doilies, my friends usually have no problems with my suggestions.

The last photo was also taken on the 20th, and shows the restaurant's sign in the upper right corner, along with an uncharacteristically deserted West 32nd Street. It was the night of the 8"+ snowfall in the city.

While that may not seem like a lot to some people, for NYC, that was huge. To give you an idea of the storm, that same evening, my sweetie's parents were blanketed under 24" of snow in south Jersey.

These days, we're not having lots of snow, just 0 degree wind chill.