Lou Yau Kee

Lou Yau Kee makes excellent Hainan chicken rice out of a closet-sized stall in the Urbanspace food hall near Union Square. For $15, you can get a poached chicken plate, on a bed of rice cooked in chicken broth. There’s also yu choy, a few cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, and a cup of warm chicken broth on the side. It is a deeply comforting lunch, the kind that could put even a food hall hater at ease—the poached chicken is tender and deeply flavored, and the side of dark soy sauce that it comes with is a nice addition, but mostly unnecessary. It’s the sort of quick lunch that can drastically improve a day, and they sell their whole chickens as well, in case you decide you must do it all over again for dinner tonight.