Can I make a suggestion? If you have been up drinking until 4 in the morning, don’t sleep for 4 hours then go spend 4 hours in the direct midday sun. Or if you do, start with some belly balast, maybe pancakes and eggs? A lean pocket won’t cut it, trust me. And definitely don’t forget the advil. These are things I’ve unfortunately learned from experience. I had a rough day at the Mission Indie Mart (entirely my own fault of course) and then I had a rough time getting a cab to take me home from Mission Indie Mart. I finally made it, it was nearly 7 pm and all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with some food and never ever get up. There was stuff at my house to eat, but I wanted something greasy and carb filled and meaty. I decided to get delivery from Ken’s Kitchen. I knew that usually I found their food too salty but in my still slightly hung over state I thought that a little extra sodium would really hit the spot. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly my order arrived, and really appreciated the delivery guy not giving me any weird looks, even though I’m sure I looked a hot mess. I took my meal back to the couch and started cracking open containers.
Wonton soup was ok, standard thin broth, kind of bland wontons but everything tasted like it was made from real food, no frozen wontons or bouillion cubes were harmed in the making. And I really like that they offer a small and a large size of soup because I love soup, but I can’t eat a regular order size all by myself and still have room for everything else. And it’s nice to have a cheaper option, a small wonton soup was just $3.50, not bad.
Next I dug into the mu shu chicken. Mu shu is a dish I avoided until a couple years ago when I ordered it on a whim at Taiwan Restaurant on Clement. I thought it was like chop suey, some crazy Americanized Panda Express stuff. It turns out it is a dish that originated in China and was one of the first Chinese dishes to be popular in America, and was widely reproduced in less and less authentic versions around the country. Some restaurants for example served mu shu with tortillas instead of the traditional thin flour pancakes. Yuck. Anyway, mu shu is actually a crazy delicious blend of shredded vegetables and mushroom and meat if you choose to add it. You put some of this stuff in a thin steamed pancake with some hoisin sauce and eat it like a little crepe or taco. Ken’s version was pretty tasty, but the pancakes were a bomb, though I think they may have been a victim of the delivery process. They were super dried out. Luckily they only give you four pancakes so I didn’t waste too much food, and the mu shu mixture is tasty on its own. And good thing, because for 8 bucks they give you about a pound and a half. If you order from Ken’s you’re going to have leftovers for hella days.
My last dish was pork fried rice, and I was expecting the standard stuff, with little pieces of sweet, red, dried out meat interspersed in some dryish white rice with some vegetables here and there. I was totally surprised by Ken’s fried rice. There was no red stained pig here, the pork pieces were substantial, about knuckle sized, and they were moist and juicy and fatty and crisp. This was some amazing roasted pork, some one took a minute and had some pride in preparing it. And the rice was deeply browned from soy sauce and frying and it was soft and sweet and salty. The veggies were pretty much the norm, but that’s fine with me. For $5.75, for delivery from the corner of Polk and Eddy this was the perfect fried rice. And, like the mu shu, there was about a pound a half of it. Some of it’s still sitting in my fridge (not because it wasn’t delicious, but because I couldn’t bring myself to eat too much of it. I could feel my thighs growing with each swallow.).
So thank you Ken, for perfectly satiating my electrolyte starved body. I will definitely put you on my top ten post-hangover spots list. Quite the prestigious place to be.
Ken’s Kitchen
700 Polk
Goldentooth 