"On Instagram and TikTok, anything worth eating comes with a line. Whether social-media fame is sparked by an influencer or is the result of a concerted marketing effort to engineer a food's digital moment, timeline domination does not always correlate to actual quality. With this in mind, our "Underground Gourmet" columnist queues up each month to try some of the city's most-shared, most-liked foods to determine what phone bait is actually worth the wait."
"Naanini - a portmanteau of naan and panini - is my new favorite word. A new Indian deli in the West Village offers a few versions on its menu; a version with saucy chicken tikka oozing out of both aluminum-swaddled halves went rightfully went viral on TikTok. I waited about ten minutes in the tight shop packed with modern jarred sambals and spicy snacks for my order to be taken."
"It took another 15 before the burrito-heavy unit was in my possession. It evoked Taco Bell in its gourmandise, a grilled gordita-esque exterior stuffed with saucy cheesy chicken, but with a brisk heat and warm spiciness to the secret sauce, as well as properly large and juicy chunks of chicken. Worth the wait? Yes, and the time it takes to get one ensures you're hungry enough to finish it."
Fonty's Deli and Dukaan on Bleecker Street offers a Naanini, a naan-and-panini hybrid filled with saucy chicken tikka, cheese and sizable, juicy chicken chunks. The compact West Village shop is crowded with jarred sambals and spicy snacks and typically requires about ten minutes to order plus another fifteen minutes for preparation. The sandwich pairs a grilled, gordita-like exterior with brisk heat and warm spiciness that many find worth the line. Doc's Cake Shop in Bed-Stuy is a generational family bakery experiencing TikTok virality; its refrigerated banana pudding is fluffy and creamy with softened Nilla wafers and a discernible, fully integrated banana flavor.
Read at Grub Street
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