Go! Go! Curry

The other day I found myself in one of my least favorite areas of New York--The Garment District, including Herald Square and environs. Though I enjoy Lazzara's Pizza Cafe on 38th St., the area is seriously lacking in non-chain food options compared to most of the rest of NYC. Not to mention the oppressive crowds around Penn Station and the whole 34th St. corridor.

If I ever find myself working in this hellscape, I will definitely frequent the diamond in the rough I visited the other day--Go! Go! Curry. This is a small outlet of a popular Japanese chain that, bizarrely enough, is centered around Yankees left fielder Hideki Matsui. Go means "five" in Japanese, and 55 is Matsui's number. The last four digits of the place's phone number are 5, and it opens at 10:55 and closes at 9:55. It was written up in both New York Magazine and Time Out New York's "Cheap Eats" issues in the last couple weeks--I discovered it in the former's pages, where I learned the aforementioned information about the obsession with "5." The specialty at Go! Go! Curry is a black gloppish substance upon which rice and toppings of your choice are mixed. The glop ounds kind of gross, but it's actually pretty zesty. The menu, which incorporates pork, chicken, shrimp, and possibly something else, includes "single, "double," "triple," and "grand slam"--did I mention there's a baseball theme? I chose the fried pork cutlets to go over the curry, and those succulent cutlets haunted my daydreams for days after I ate them. Always a sign of a good meal.

The decor, other than Matsui articles all over the walls, is bright and inviting, and the woman at the counter was charmingly overfriendly and even cautioned me against ordering too plain a dish when I initially went with the most spare option on the menu (if she hadn't spoken up, I wouldn't have feasted on the pork).

In the end, for just over 10 dollars--or clams, or bones, or whatever you call them--I enjoyed a memorable lunch in the midst of a culinary wasteland. Huzzah!

Where: 273 W. 38th St., (212) 730-5555

Requsite seizure-inducing website: http://www.gogocurryusa.com