WoknChop

Sula recently sung the praises of this Indo-Chinese place, comparing its chicken wings (nee lollipops) favorably to Great Sea's and speaking highly of other dishes on the menu. Can't say I'm with him on this one, as the wings are well fried but lack the all-dopamine charge of the Great Sea style; the other dishes we tried were clumsy and cloying, particularly the "Chinese Bhel," which seems to remove every pleasurable aspect of bhelpuri--the mixture of fried bits (sev, puffed rice, etc.), the sweet vs. spice tinge of the tamarind chutney, the herbs, etc.--and settle instead for some canned fried noodle bits in a chile-ketchup sauce. (That same sauce is on the chili paneer and is reworked as a chutney for the wings.) The Gobi Manchurian sits in a bowl of sauce so deep that the fried cauliflower are floating unconscious at the surface; they've practically melted by the time you get to them.

A rare miss from Sula.

WoknChop
3456 W. Foster
773-267-7861
woknchopstick.com

chezbrad wrote:A rare miss from Sula.

Oy vey.

=R=

The family and I went to woknchop last weekend, also motivated by Mike's article (and somewhat fond memories of the proprietor's former restaurant, Sizzle India).

I disagree with the assessment regarding the lollipops. For me, at least, I thought them a pretty good rendition, garlicky, crunchy, and flavorful, and in some senses better than Great Seas (less sugar, less saucy)

Unfortunately, none of the Andhra dishes from Sizzle could be had, and I'm not a great fan of the pick a protein, pick a sauce format, which leads to everything done that way being coated fried and then sauced with an already made sauce, so yeah, the bhel which I had hopes for was a fail (oddly because it didn't actually contain bhel, rather the harder longer canned fried chow mein type noodles. The ghobi and paneer Manchurian were frankly awful

However, if you stay away from those format dishes some of the other offerings were pretty tasty. The woknchop hakka noodles, the szechuan fried rice and especially the shrimp tava.

We didn't have it, but given how those dishes were made, I'd surmise that the chicken biryani could be very good

The family and I went to woknchop last weekend, also motivated by Mike's article (and somewhat fond memories of the proprietor's former restaurant, Sizzle India).

Wait, wait, wait, wait... This is run by Sanjay Thumma of VahChef fame? He was the original Sizzle India (on Devon) chef. I thought he closed that and had moved back to India?

When I went to this place on Foster, I was under the impression that this was being run by Pakistani owners? At least that was what I was told when I went there for a Vegan Meetup last year.

Hi, I should clear up something the proprietor is not the former sizzle india fellow, Mike just quoted him in the the article and well, I read too fast

to make up for that, here are a few pics