“Some Columbia students told me the Chinese food around campus wasn’t that great,” Wang Yuanzhen tells me in Mandarin, nodding suggestively at Ollie’s Restaurant across the street. “So I opened a cart here.”
And not a moment too soon. After three years of suffering through oily fried rice and greasy lo mein from Morningside’s uninspiring Chinese joints, this little food cart feels like a blessing.
For a month now, Wang’s Northwestern Famous has been serving up delicious, cheap, and authentic Chinese street food next to the Columbia main gates on 116th and Broadway.
When I’m in line, I trade knowing smiles of anticipation with other savvy eaters as we eagerly await famous specialties like spicy cumin lamb skewers, egg and tomato rice, or pork sandwiches. This is the real deal, and we all know it. After seeing a picture of the cart on Facebook, one of my graduated friends bitterly wails:
