Wednesday NOM: Tebaya, Manhattan
Tebaya's wings ($5.75 for eight pieces).
Let’s get it out of the way: This is the best fried chicken I’ve had in many years, and very possibly in my entire life. The wings at Tebaya (144 W 19th St.) are, per the website, fried twice and then intensely flavored with a garlic-and-pepper sauce and sesame seeds. The flesh is firm, the skin crispy, and there is very little grease; these are wings that you can keep eating without getting sick. Which is exactly what I wanted to do after every bite. And, in typical Japanese fashion, they are even being sold as a supposed health food (!): “Collagen… works in our bodies to keep our skin elastic and resilient… To help prevent unnecessary aging, you will find that our chicken wings are a great source of collagen.”
More filling is the karaage sandwich ($6, $8.95 in combo with five wings, salad, and drink):
This is more subdued than the wings, but is a well-executed, consistently fried filling for a sandwich that, again, has virtually no grease.
Also try the potemochi ($2.95 for three), a unique patty of potato and mochi that, with its cloud-like chewyness, is the savory analogue to Cafe Zaiya’s mochi donut:
It comes with ketchup and garlic butter.
The main downside to this tiny storefront is the frequent influx of cold air from a poorly performing front door. It’s a reminder that you’re still on Earth, even as the Platonic ideal of chicken beckons.
Music Tuesday: Asian Kung-Fu Generation – Shinseki no Love Song (新世紀のラブソング)
This video comes fansubbed from the folks at After Dark, and is another reminder that AKFG has come a long way from simply singing about girls.
In which I start to feel like EV Grieve
The Subway/Papa John’s on 37th Street between Fifth and Madison is almost open for business. Which makes me feel like a certain grumpy old man* in the East Village.
(* relative to that neighborhood’s most prominent denizens, perhaps…)
Advances in Applied Bagel Science
Serious Eats: New York covers these inspiring breakthroughs:
First, in a stunning practical application of bagel physics, is the linked-halves bagel, created by the George Hart technique of slicing a bagel along “the surface of a two-twist Mobius strip.”
Second is WD-50’s bagel-flavored ice cream bagel. If bagels grew naturally (perhaps if they were the fruit of the bagel shrub), this would be the Monsanto edition.
Images: George Hart, Metromix.
Friday NOM: Meatball Parm Sandwich, Manganaro’s Grosseria
A good sandwich, distinguished from the average steam table meatball parm because the meatballs aren’t sitting in marinara sauce for who knows how long before being put on the tasty sesame seed-studded bread.
It is not a particularly warm sandwich, having lost most of its heat on the way back to the office. At $10.95, you may be better served trying some of the other, equally priced sandwiches on the menu.
As for the famous abrasiveness of the store’s proprietors, yeah, it’s there. Just grow a thicker skin and roll with it.
Music Thursday: Some Thoughts on Naruto Themes
Watchers of anime (I suppose I’m outing myself here) should be familiar with what might be a new concept for others: The fairly common practice of using multiple opening songs for the same show, each paired with a different video that reflects the current plot arc. This also allows for a new hot band to be showcased with each change in theme song, a smart commercial move. I don’t believe this is totally unprecedented domestically, but I doubt it happens to the same extent; Naruto has easily had 15 different opening themes over its eight seasons, and a larger number of closing themes.
I do like this, and appreciate the diverse range in artists. But you do miss out on a certain feeling that the opening theme is a pure distillation of the show. And you don’t quite get the Pavlovian response of hearing the opening strains of the theme to Firefly, say, or The Wire.
New in the Neighborhood: Cask Bar & Kitchen
This stately looking new bar on 167 E 33rd St. (near Third Ave.) boasts craft beer, a more serious attitude than most of the bro bars in this area, and a likable font choice on the signage. I’m interested.
International Stability Index: December 7
NATO Allies Pledge 7,000 More Troops for Afghanistan – “Twenty-five countries have announced that they will deploy additional troops next year, and more contributions are expected “during the coming weeks and months,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. 
Friday’s meetings marked a sort of roadshow for Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy, which was announced Tuesday and features the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to fight the Taliban and train Afghan security forces.”
Iraqis Reach a Deal on Long-Delayed Election Law – “Lawmakers pulled Iraq back from the brink of a constitutional crisis on Sunday night, brokering a last-minute compromise that will allow for the first national elections since 2005… Essentially, the dispute centered on the allocation of seats in Parliament, with each sect angling to get as many seats as possible in the areas where it felt strongest. Because a national census that was supposed to take place earlier this year was postponed, there is no accurate count of Iraqi citizens, and each political faction was wary of being shortchanged.”
West Africa Bloc Calls for Civilian Control in Guinea – “Gen. Sekouba Konate, the vice president of the military junta, rushed back to Guinea’s capital from overseas to take charge following a Thursday assassination attempt on the junta’s president. A diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter told the AP that the bullet had caused a splinter of bone to pierce [leader Capt. Moussa "Dadis"] Camara’s brain and that doctors still did not know if he would make a full recovery. Konate’s return to Guinea was met with a call from ECOWAS, a regional bloc of West African states, to immediately hand over power to civilians.”
Arrests in Philippine Province – “The military arrested dozens of people and seized caches of weapons after martial law was imposed over the weekend in a southern Philippine province where 57 people were killed in a massacre two weeks ago, officials said Sunday. The military has detained nearly 50 people in the province, Maguindanao, in a bid to quell a rebellion by supporters of a powerful political family accused of carrying out the massacre, said an army official.”
U.S. and Some Allies at Odds Over Honduras Presidential Election – “The United States split with some of its Latin American allies Monday over whether to recognize the results of Honduras’s presidential election, with Washington commending the balloting but Brazil saying the vote will not erase the stain of a coup. The winner, Porfirio Lobo, a conservative businessman, has promised to promote reconciliation in this impoverished country, which was thrown into turmoil when the military exiled President Manuel Zelaya on June 28.”
Music Thursday: Persona 4 – Your Affection
The Persona series (3 and 4) has some of the more original pieces of music to come out of recent video games (though not surprisingly it features a large amount of semi-comprehensible English). See this discourse from Sexy Videogameland, where Leigh Alexander argues that game music is less memorable these days because it’s “become something that perhaps influences the impression or emotion of a scene, but I don’t think it’s intended to be noticed per se. The emphasis on realism means that music’s become more ambient – it’s designed to give the player a mood, but the player mustn’t notice that it’s happening.” (emphasis in original)
