Penny’s Noodle Shop may be the most annoying restaurant in town, luring the famished with a reputation for quick, tasty, cheap dishes, then repelling them with an hour-long wait under the el. So when the new Penny’s showed up on Diversey–and hadn’t yet strung up a sign–we hoped we could finally sneak a taste, sans wait.
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(Thai Spring Roll) – Someone ordered one of these, perhaps out of a sense a obligation. It was the usual cold white log. Inside some nice crunchy greens mixed it up with those little canned–and un-deveined–shrimp, the ones that make me queasy. Perhaps the sanitary wrapper is supposed to shield us from this lapse in culinary hygiene, but I’m not easily dissuaded.
(Stir Fried Cabbage with Tomato) – Simple. Fab. Everyone else finished mine, so I sulked.
(Sliced Beef or Chicken) – Charming floor plan. Sliced chicken stacked over here, sprouts lounging there, plenty of chopped cilantro and peanuts running a border down the middle. Cute and simple — to a fault. Not a lot holding together the disparate elements.
No dessert, which we were left longing for. Nor drinks. There’s a liquor store next door where we stocked up on beer.
