Double Chicken Please

After serving more than a thousand cocktails all across the country from a 1977 yellow VW minibus, GN Chan and Faye Chen decided to stop moving around and open this spot on the Lower East Side. You'll find two big fried chicken sandwiches on the menu here, but we only wholeheartedly recommend the hot honey one, which is sweet, spicy, and herbaceous. (The other one—made with salted duck egg yolk and shrimp—is certainly different, but it comes across as chalky, and the strong crustacean flavor can be polarizing.)

photo credit: Ben Hon

The chicken sandwiches are available in the casual front room, which also offers about a dozen cocktails on tap and a few other dishes such as a jar of smooth and subtly sweet chicken liver mousse with grilled baguette. The back room, which is considered an entirely separate restaurant, has a different lineup of slightly more expensive cocktails and a more ambitious menu with items like kampachi and washugyu tartare (although the front room menu becomes available in the back after 10pm).

If you know how to count to 15, then you’re already equipped to order any of the “taptails.” Try the #5 for a honey-sweetened whisky and tequila drink or the #6 that's reminiscent of V8 juice. The cocktails don't taste very strong at first, but they’ll definitely sneak up on you and put you in the right (fun) mood for when this place inevitably gets crowded and pumps up the music.