Kingchops

As the first U.S. outpost of a Taiwanese restaurant chain founded in 1961, Kingchops specializes in fried pork chops, and perhaps not surprisingly, they’re crazy good — more tender and intensely pork-flavored than Japanese-style tonkatsu. The chilled cucumber and spicy beef soup aren’t too shabby, either. In our experiences here, super friendly service was also a plus, though there’s reportedly been a change in management since our last visit.

Taiwanese food tends to look more earthy than beautiful, but it can be seriously delicious, and Kingchops makes a lot of fairly common ingredients. Another specialty, fried chicken, is as crispy and strongly flavored as the pork chops; we also tried their spicy wontons with Szechuan peppercorn sauce, dumplings, wonton soup, and spicy garlic cucumber. Everything was great, at very reasonable prices.