Doyer’s Vietnamese Restaurant

Lemongrass ChickenAlthough the name of this restaurant sounds nothing like a real Vietnamese name, this place that our Time Out book recommended turned out to be pretty decent. Easily found with a bright yellow sign, and named after the street it sits on, this restaurant serves some great valued Vietnamese food. Its decor is a little bit dated and a little bit old, but is common amongst most restaurants that offer great value for money seem to share.

One of Doyer’s unique aspects are that they serve a big variety of bubble tea – a popular drink found in Asia that is typically made out of some sort of sweetened black or green tea and mixed with ice and chewy tapioca balls that you drink via a very think straw. Our meal first started with the crab spring rolls that actually could have been a meal on their own since they were so big. Each had been wrapped in the classic Vietnamese rice paper wrapped instead of the standard Chinese spring roll wrapper so their crispy skin had a rougher exterior. The filling was extremely tasty but had a little bit too much of a salt for our tastes. The grilled pork chop and the lemongrass grilled chicken and rice dishes were equally pretty good. The chicken was a little dry but the pork was nice and moist, but at least both were extremely flavoursome.

Details: Doyer’s Vietnamese Restaurant
Found on: 11 Doyers St, New York, NY 10013-5104
Contactable on: +1 (212) 513-1521
Highlights: Cheap Vietnamese food served with a large variety of bubble tea. A good variety of both Vietnamese and Chinese dishes.
Room for improvement: After ordering and receiving your food, expect service that matches the price of the food.
The Kua Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Bubba Gump Shrimp Company

Run Forest, RunBubba Gump’s Shrimp Company is a highly successful chain restaurant based on the idea taken from the movie Forest Gump (then again, there are plenty of chain restaurants in America). Its central theme is very simple – serving shrimp in many different ways in each dish including salads, fried shrimp (far too many ways), grilled shrimp, and shrimp in a bourbon sauce. The restaurant does offer more than just shrimp on their menu including chicken, fish, BBQ ribs and several options for vegetarians.

Each restaurant is excessively dressed to look like a real ol’ southern restaurant with far too many tacky memorabilia and items hanging from the roof, and a rusty tin bucket holding all the sauces and a roll of brown paper working as your serviettes (or napkins as they’re referred to as here). Popcorn ShrimpAn interesting variation and probably the only other thing from the movie is a sign that sits at your table that you use to grab the attention of the staff that walk up and down. Leaving it on the blue “Run Forest, Run” sign and for the most part the waiters and waitresses will leave you to your own devices, but if you do need some attention of some sort, you can flip it over to the red “Stop Forest, Stop” sign. It’s a novelty system that although is kind of fun to do the first time, still quite isn’t as effective as actually stopping someone who is going by and asking them for something.

Details: Bubba Gump Shrimp Company
Found on: New York – 1501 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
Contactable on: +1 212-391-7100
Highlights: A different chain restaurant themed on the Forest Gump movie. Each dish has plenty of shrimp and some of it is actually quite tasty. It’s a fun restaurant with a strong family vibe going
Room for improvement: Almost to the point where it’s overbearingly tacky, Bubba Gump is fine as a first time but I couldn’t see myself there all the time. The novelty stop/go signs aren’t as effective as they make out they are.
The Kua Rating: 5 out of 10

Top of the Rock

Since I’ve visited New York City quite a number of times in the past, there’s not a lot of tourist spots that I’m yet to actually do. One of the newer places that opened up last year was the viewing platform at the Rockefeller Center. Called Top of the Rock, it’s an impressive multi level viewing platform that seems like it will hold a huge capacity of people. If anything, I’m impressed by the ticketing and lining system – you can either book times online, or buy them in person (with the latter, it’s more likely you’ll have to buy for a later session) and then you go up whenever it’s close to your session.

Sunset at Top of the Rock

You have to queue again to get into the elevator but the waiting theatre has some interesting mini-clips about the building and its surroundings and you it cycles so you don’t see the same clip twice. When you actually step into the elevator, lights and music play as if you’re about to jump on a ride but at least it makes the trip go faster. When you finally get the top, you have three viewing platforms you can choose from, and amazingly you get almost uninhibited views of all over Manhattan since they use plexi-glass like barriers to block people instead of metal bars. You can stay up as long as you like but we decided to go just before dusk so we got to see everything with the sun and then after sunset with all the lights of Manhattan lit up.

Spanky’s BBQ

BBQWhen it comes down to American BBQ, I think you always get quite strangely named restaurants, so I wasn’t too worried entering a restaurant called Spanky’s. Found just off Broadway in Times Square, this American BBQ joint is approximately half bar and half restaurant serving good ‘ol Southern food including Gumbo, Steak, Fried Chicken, Crab Cakes, a whole variety of BBQ ribs and Roast Chicken. This restaurant’s walls are covered in bits of strange artwork or memorabilia – such as one wall covered with two large paintings of pigs marked for chopping up by a butcher, and another wall covered by massive bottles of Tabasco sauce. Then each table is covered with the typical red and white chequered tablecloth and has the wide variety of sauces you see in your typical BBQ join including hot sauce, ketchup and BBQ.

SpankyWe ordered the sampler platter and the southern fried chicken which both came out as extremely massive portions that we couldn’t finish. The sampler platter was amazingly impressive with a piece of BBQ chicken, some pulled pork, beef brisket and some ribs as well. Like usual the beef brisket was extremely tender, melting in the mouth while the pulled pork was soft and slightly tangy in its own sauce. The BBQ chicken was nicely smoked but the chicken breast was a little bit too dry for my taste. I didn’t taste the ribs but the southern Fried chicken was really spot on with an impressively crispy crunchy coating and a moist juicy meat on the inside.

After not knowing what to expect in this restaurant, I was quite impressed with the quality of the food and the decent service that we received. The portions (like most American restaurants) were massive and most of the foods were spot on. The only downsides were probably the vegetables that we had – the collared beans were obviously well overcooked, having almost lost their colour while the sweet potatoes seemed like they’d added tons of sugar or some other sweetener since they were unnaturally and excessively sweet.

Details: Spanky’s BBQ Times Square (Closed)
Found on: 127 West 43rd Street, Between 6th and Broadway Avenues, New York, NY, 10036
Contactable on: +1 212 302 9507
Highlights: Great portions of quality food that was not excessively greasy. The beef brisket and pulled pork were both super tender and the fried chicken was fantastically cooked. Service was average and the atmosphere seemed proper for the style of restaurant.
Room for improvement: Overcooked beans and over-sweetened sweet potato took away from the meal.
The Kua Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Walking Around Town

Gerrods CoffeeA couple of days ago, I caught up with my mates Gerrod and Kristy who are both based in New York. I’ve done most of the tourist attractions in New York on previous trips before and the crowds between Christmas and New Year are just crazy, so it was nice to actually chill out and hang out with them for a while. Better yet, Gerrod makes some great coffee (and you can see the awesome little leaf design he has mastered in the

After a little bit of X-Boxing, we still headed out for a afternoon walk, braving the crowds via 5th Avenue and walked down to Columbus Circle and the Lincoln Centre, before leisurely making our way back through Central Park before heading home and out for dinner. For dinner we headed out to the East Village that looks like it’s a little less manic than uptown and a little bit more bohemian than other neighbourhoods I’ve seen. We settled for some great Italian food at Gasparino’s, feasting and drinking before finally settling at a bar nearby. Definitely a fun night out.

Slava’s Snowshow

New York’s Broadway is well known for its entertainment, so my sister and I lined up at the TKTS booth to get some discount tickets to watch a show. The queue was massive and by the time we got there, they did not have any great seats for well known Broadway shows left, so we ended up getting tickets for something off Broadway downtown called Slava’s Snowshow.

Slava’s Snowshow is unlike anything that I’ve seen before. I had no idea what to expect and had I known I would have definitely avoided it. The best description for the show is to call it a clown show set in a winter landscape. Probably most suited for a small theatre and for an audience full of kids, this short show (think an hour and a half already including the twenty minute intermission) failed to really capture any real excitement and laughter from much of the audience.

Most of the clown tricks were extremely dull and barely any of them innovative. The clowns’ costumes were at least bright and colourful and that was probably the brightest thing in the show, with the music very cliché or boring and the props not very exciting.

I unfortunately don’t have much good to say about this show, because frankly there’s not much in there, and I don’t think you get any value for your money whatsoever. My only consolation is that we didn’t pay at least full price for our tickets.

TheKua.com Rating: 2 out of 10