Mr. Bing
1284 Broadway (Herald Square, Midtown)*
*Note, this was a pop-up location. Will not be here after this week.
7/15/16
"Is this really a sandwich, though?" - Yehuda Charm, with the last official comment of the session
Noteworthy occurences:
- Zoe's first time eating duck!
- The first sandwich(?) that Saliym actually liked (the duck bing, anyways)
Jianbing (Green bean & rice flour crepe with scrambled egg, sesame seeds, scallions, hoisin sauce, crispy chili paste, cilantro, and fried wontons)
~Flavors sampled: Classic vegetarian, Peking duck, BBQ pork
The bings were quite stunning, with the egg, scallions, and sesame seeds embedded into the crepe itself. However, they were quite greasy and did not travel well at all. They did come on cool, wood-style styrofoam plates, though.
Overall, we were not impressed. It was a resounding 'the flavors are okay, it's just bland/boring.' Woody did give it credit for the fact that at least "it wasn't disgusting." It just didn't help that it was supposed to have crispy fried wontons inside, but by the time we were eating them, they had reverted back to their spongy texture (and with the grease from the crepe itself, it was just soggy breading upon soggy breading).
For those who had the pork and/or duck bings, however (sorry Janaki), the protein made it (as reflected in the separate scores below). Both the duck and pork bings packed more flavor, and the proteins added a texture that the almost-gummy classic veggie bing was lacking. A lot of people did have difficulty going through all of the crepe/breading, and had the leftovers piled on their (cool-looking) plates to prove it.
And price-wise, it was a lot more expensive than expected for what we could see were not extraordinarily pricey ingredients (in the classic, at least).
Honestly, we kind of avoided the discussion as to whether this was really a sandwich or not. When Yehuda brought it up at the end, everyone seemed to conveniently disperse. But according to Mr. Bing's founder, Brian Goldberg, whom I asked as I went to pick up the order, he said that it could definitely be considered a sandwich.
Well, whatever the case may be, it seems to be out of our sandwich-philosophy-scope for us to answer. So with that, here is the score, taking into account both the classic and meat-filled bings:
CLASSIC BING'S AVERAGE: 2.2/5.0
BING w/PROTEIN'S AVERAGE: 3.8/5.0
FINAL SCORE:
3.0/5.0