Spicy Village

The plates are Styrofoam, the lighting fluorescent, and, judging by the abundance of unreclaimed Formica, AvroKO did not do the interior. Why you go: the da pan ji, or “spicy big tray chicken,” a manhole-size skillet loaded with chunks of bone-on bird bobbing in a sea of oily red sauce spiked with chiles, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorns. Everything else on the menu (soups, dumplings, hand-pulled noodles) is good and cheap, but when hunger strikes, it’s the big-tray chicken whose name you find yourself chanting like someone under the spell of a powerful hypnotist: “Big-tray chicken … must get big-tray chicken.”