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Virgil’s

Sun., August 14, 2005

I ate at Virgil’s, another “big name” BBQ place tonight, with Jimi, his friend Mike from Cleveland, and The Man. I’d been putting off the place, which is located right off Times Square, because it seemed to be a tourist trap. (Indeed, I suspect anything within a block radius of Times Square is a tourist trap.) But the name kept popping on New York “best BBQ lists,” so I figured I should give it a try.

Right off I noticed the pork ribs weren’t very saucy at all. They had more of a “dry rub” texture of baked-in spices which unfortunately tasted mainly like salt. Very disappointing. And at nearly $21 for a standard 1/2 rack, two sides and cornbread, a far cry from my previous meal at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, which was the same amount of food, for $7 less and was much better. Better atmosphere at Dinosaur, too. Virgil’s has too much open space—high ceilings, but for no good reason, and they crank the obnoxious country music up too loud. I won’t be going back, but I’m glad I at least gave it a try.

Not a minute after we exited the restaurant, a torrential downpour smacked down on Times Square. I’ve never seen that much rain start so quickly. People were screaming and running for shelter like it was battery acid. According to Gothamist, it ended up being 3.1 inches of rainfall (by Central Park measurements), shattering the old record of 1.74 inches set in 1873. 1873!

More than 50,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts and more than 80,000 in New Jersey lost power, with thousands more in the NYC suburbs without power.

Rain in the Times Square subway station.

It doesn’t show up too well in my photo, but the rain was coming down inside the subway stations. When it rains, often there will be a few drips or a slow stream of water leaking down from the surface, but it was literally pouring down atop the subways, which made it quite an adventure to exit the car at certain points.

In fact, I took this photo after I exited the subway, which was suddenly cancelled because of flooding uptown on the 1 line. Everyone had to trudge over to the ACE trains and pack on like wet, cranky sardines.

Virgil’s

Tags: 52 Meals Project (2005), BBQ | Comments have been closed.