UNLUCKY CHENG'S?

A lot of my drag sisters work at this drag-themed Asian restaurant and many are very talented and can pull a fab look together. But honey, a good "read" makes for a good read! And Hal Rubinstein lets this place have it! Not only is it funny as hell, it's also complimentary to me so I just HAD to post it! (In Cheng's defense, this review is a few years old, so maybe they've improved. Then again, one doesn't always visit theme restaraunts for the food. But of course, Hal hates the theme, too!)

Hal Rubinstein reviews Lucky Cheng's---EVIL!!!

Lady Bunny and RuPaul are things of beauty. Lypsinka is a joy forever.
What makes these men who do drag wonderful is not the drag, though no
queen was ever given demerits for overdressing, but what they do once
they've put it on. Any man can zip into a sheath (I didn't say "wants
to," I said "can") and just stand there looking stupid. Being in drag
doesn't mean you can do drag. And considering we live on an island
where razzing gendrification has reached a level of scholarship equal
to studying French literature at the Sorbonne, New Yorkers have every
right to expect the best when paying to be surrounded by
sleight-of-gland.

That's why Lucky Cheng's is for geeks, nerds, twerps, starched oxford
East Siders, tourists who sit in bridge traffic to eat at an Empire
Szechuan, and anyone else who gets off on wasting an hour of their life
enducing the incompetence of a no-reservations policy for the privilege
of spending their money according to someone else's schedule. The
rusetaurant's current popularity is Max Factor - based solely on a
staff bewigged, befotched, and enskirted. That's it. Some may look as
if inspired by Chita Rivera in Spider Woman, or Gale Sondergaard in
almost anything, but not one of them has adopted a persona entertaining
beyond the initial schlock value. Not that I expected any of them to be
my concubine or M. Butterfly, but what makes drag work is reference and
humor. Not only are they devoid of either, but the crunch for tables
revealed something more damaging than an exposed falsie. They're bad
waiters. The first rule of waiters is "never let them see you sweat."
Here it should be amended to read "especially when you've bought your
makeup at Duane Reade."

It gets worse. John Waters's fans tempted to come here are hereby
advised to review one of his seminal works, Eat Your Makeup. Because
that's what you'd rather do once you've tasted this
left-in-the-cardboard-container-overnight-on-a-stoop freshness of this
nervy charade of Chinese food. How can you screw up brown rice to taste
fried and gummy in a glaze of acrid oil? Deep-fried fish was too raw to
gnaw off the bone. Spring rolls increased the winter of our discontent.
But why bother going on? Like picking up one of the ladies of the street
on 11th and 27th, if you come here you get what you deserve. As for the
dubiously "lucky" ladies working not hard enough for their money, why
don't you study Lady Bunny? Observe Dame Edna. Learn from Lypsinka.
Watch an old movie. Watch a new movie. Think character. Think funny.
Think pink. Or think again.