teach

1) It is perfectly fine if the first few days of class seem "boring" to
your students - it doesn't matter. You are probably doing the right thing
and you have to be OK with it. It is not your job to entertain your students
or to be the anti-teacher. If the kids are calm, that is a plus.

2) Always have a backup plan that is not photocopy dependent. In other words,
let's say there is twenty minutes (or less) left in class and you are done
with what you wanted to do for the day, have something for them to do. This
thing does not necessarily have to have anything to do with what you are
doing in class. There are times like this when a little "busy work" is OK.
It is better than saying sit quietly for ten minutes. The kids are given
stuff like this to do all the time. Just tell them it is practice/review.
If it is a worksheet that you can hand out, good. If you weren't able to
photocopy it for any reason be prepared to write the problems on the board.

3) Be resourceful, find solutions to things. Simple solutions. Like above,
the copy machine was not working? Write stuff out on the board and have
kids write everything you write, not just the answer, even if it is an easy
problem. Explain to them that if they look at their work later and it just
has the answer they won't know what the question was (and neither will you,
the teacher.) Tell them to keep their work organized, even if it is on a
blank sheet of paper. I always kept a stack of computer paper or loose leaf
around.

4) Don't be self-conscious. For example, dress appropriately, but don't
drive yourself crazy about what "appropriate" means. No one is going to
care/remember what you wore except for you (unless you are the teacher who
wears the same exact thing everyday - and even then, so what?)

5) You are going to be exhausted the first few weeks of school in a way
you have never been before in your life. Just remembering names and details
fo school procedures, not to mention how to solve/present math problems,
is mentally exhausting. When you come home, you may feel too tired to prepare
anything for the next day, which is scary. Here are a couple of important
things to think about:
a) I used to sleep for twenty minutes to an hour each afternoon. That was
the only way I could clear my head and think about what/how to teach the
next day. I was still able to sleep at night.
b) Don't be afraid to just plow through the textbook the next day. In other
words, if you are up to chapter 1, section 5 teach it and make that the
goal for the day. Stay focused on a goal and get through the day.
c) If you can get a jump on planning this week - do it! This is such valuable
time, because the kids aren't around yet. Don't give me this, "What about
planning to the diagnostic" stuff. You can always change stuff later, but
have something ready to go for the first week.
d) Don't even think about going out on a school night! You are crazy. By
this I even mean going out to dinner, unless it means you will still be
home by 8pm. You will be tired and irritable the next day. You will wind
up lesson planning until 1am OR winging it the next day. Either situation
is a you-know what (I am trying to limit my use of the word 'nightmare.')
Trust me on this one - be a really boring person for a couple of weeks until
you get your bearings.
e) Do your work a little bit at a time. Don't say, "I'll grade those later."
If you can grab an hour to grade twenty diagnostics, do it. Don't try to
grade all one hundred at the same time. You will be hating yourself, or
you will wind up grading them over Christmas vacation, just out of curiosity.
f) Keep life really simple: (1) have a clear goal for class each day, (2)
take attendance right away, (3) move through your daily procedures at YOUR
pace, if the kids are sitting and waiting for you, that's fine, you are
the teacher, you should not feel pressured or rushed. If you try to rush
through your routines (assigning homework, taking attendance, etc.) you
will just wind up tripping over yourself. It is better to go too slow than
too fast, initially. And you will seem more in control.

6) If you are talking too much you are messing up. Don't over explain things.
Gain your composure, think about a clear simple way to explain a couple of
small steps and then give the kids a chance to figure it out. If they are
still confused, highlight the key points and going over them one at a time.
Write steps out on the board and have the kids write them in their notebooks!
If you don't do this you will wind up saying the same thing to them 1,000
times and you will say it in different ways. Write it down and then just
point to it. If one of your steps is confusing the kids may ask questions
that force you to rewrite it and better articulate what you are trying to
say - that is good, that is what should happen.

7) If you put a problem up that you realize is trickier than you originally
thought and is getting you off-track, do not hesitate to say, "I just realized
something about that problem that makes it inappropriate for us, I'll explain
why later, try this one instead." And move on. Don't get bogged down in
feeling like you have to prove to them you know exactly what you are doing.
You DO know. You are the teacher. They don't need to know everything tha
tis in your head.

8) When you are lesson-planning keep it simple. Don't start off by thinking
about what you are going to SAY (there is tons you can say about even the
simplest math concept), think about the kind of problem you want them to
solve, be specific and choose some model problems, AND THEN think about
what you will say to describe how to solve THOSE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. You
are not giving a lecture on the topic to a group of distinguished colleagues,
you are teaching some kids how to solve a problem. Mechanics and concepts
are not mutually exclusive, but once they get some basic mechanics down
regarding a specific problem, the conceptual part will start to make more
sense to them.

9) Number 8 is true for daily lesson planning, but is the exact opposite
if you are introducing a big topic that will be followed by at least a few
days of problem solving. Patrick's "Cartesian Plane with Ropes" lesson comes
to mind. He clearly thought about what he wanted to say AND DO with the kids
(not just talk) so that when they did start graphing they has a conceptual
framework/mental model to work with and then he could plan each day that
followed referring back to this experience. But once you are in the day-to-day,
be specific about the problems you want them to be able to solve each day
and how to break down the small steps to get them to solve these problems
correctly.

10) Have a good attitude and treat everyone with respect, peers and students.
This does not mean you have to bend over backwards for anyone. Sometimes
the best thing you can say is, "Not now", "No" or "I don't know", depending
on the situation. You don't have to be all things to all people. Teenagers
can be very dramatic, don't get sucked into their dramas. They will survive.
If a kid is demanding attention recognize it for what it is and don't drop
everything to accommodate them or them will own you. If a kid is really upset
that they are not getting the attention they want they will either play
the "You don't care about me, you're just like every other teacher" card
or they will be blatantly disrespectful. In either case, don't fall for it.
They just want attention. You can give it to them, but it has to be on your
terms. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO PROVE. Your willingness to drop everything for
the kid who is being a drama queen/king is not a testament to your desire
to be a great teacher and change the world. Instead, you are being manipulated
by someone who is acting like a five year old.

11) Keep your mouth shut with your colleagues. They don't want to hear how
smart you are, how much you know and how enthusiastic you are. DON'T COME
OFF AS A KNOW-IT-ALL, there is nothing worse for a veteran teacher to witness.
Don't take stands with your colleagues, listen and learn. Save your energy
for the classroom, grading papers, preparing for class, and administrative
items. You are new at this - you are not an expert and you are not expected
to be, no matter how smart or clever you are. Be humble. If you are right
about something that's great, but time will tell.

12) Don't be the center of your own drama. Don't play out the "Did I do
the right thing by becoming a teacher" scenario on a daily basis. If you
have a couple of bad classes, bad days, bad weeks, whatever, that's life,
get over it. Go back to the drawing board. Organize yourself and don't allow
yourself to become overwhelmed. Be a grownup. You are allowed to make mistakes
and not be great in your first year, but be proactive. Create simple, clear
lesson plans based on simple, clear objectives. Have clear expectations
of what you want your students to know and be able to do by the end of the
class and then figure out how to get them there without talking too much
and giving them time to work and support each other - you do not have to
do all the heavy lifting. Create a class climate where the kids on not dependent
on you to do everything, teach them to be independent and expect them to
work in pairs and help each other. Find people (including me) that you can
call on if you need some support, but be proactive and problem solve. If
something happens that makes you say, "I didn't expect that" or "I don't
know what to do in this situation" just say to yourself, "Wow, that is new
or unexpected, I'll have to get some advice for that one." Problem solve
and figure it out - you are not expected to know how to handle everything
all at once, but you will know better next time. One of the best ways to
do this is to support each other. Do not feel embarrassed to say to each
other, "I messed up today, can you help me figure this out?" Humility is
often the best teacher.

13) Keep your diagnostic simple! You don't want to start the year off by
grading 400 pieces of paper. Revise it now if you have to and cut it in
half. (I am attaching the diagnostics that I showed you - don't forget, I
took those kids over halfway through the year and new some things about
them, so my diagnostic may have things in it that don't make sense to you
when planning one for the beginning of the year.) I never gave the diagnostics
back to the kids. They were for me to see what the kids could do. If the
kids ever asked for them I would say, "I told you that they weren't counting
towards your grade, so don't worry about it." If a kid was really cocky
like he knew it all, but did terribly on his diagnostic, I would show it
to him one-on-one after class to bring him back down to Earth.

14) Be clear and decisive in the classroom. Set high expectations and treat
the kids respectfully, they will usually rise to the occasion if they feel
respected. Provide structure, but don't play cat and mouse games. You can
always call a parent later. If you have a particular kid who you think may
turn your class upside down, don't have a standoff with them. Talk to someone
(an AP, etc) who may actually be able to help and make it clear that this
kid is a real outlier. Don't be afraid to say, "What do you think I should
do?" Is it the administration's job to support you. If the person you are
talking to seems overwhelmed, find someone else, ask each other, another
teacher, em, etc.




To sum up:
Get a routine down (hw, attendance, etc)
Go at your pace, don't feel pressured or rushed
Keep plans simple and clear
Don't talk too much
Don't think about what you are going to do, think about what the kids will
do
Have a backup plan (a worksheet, problems you can put on the board)
Plan out the first week now
Never operate from position of fear ("I'm afraid this lesson may be boring")
Don't seek out or expect approval
Get plenty of sleep
Do work in small chunks
Be respectful
Be humble

Chinatown Journal; Great Sandwiches, Cheap. But Please Buy Something Else.

Chinatown Journal; Great Sandwiches, Cheap. But Please Buy Something Else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/nyregion/chinatown-journal-great-sandwiches-cheap-but-please-buy-something-else.html


By SUSAN SAULNY

AUG. 22, 2003

The Sau Voi Corporation is a tiny convenience store on the outskirts of Chinatown with about 200 square feet of jampacked retailing space overwhelmingly devoted to three things: ladies' underwear, Vietnamese pop music and lottery tickets.

The music and the bras don't sell much. In fact, Richard Lee, Sau Voi's owner, said he could not remember the last time anyone bought underwear, and much of his music is dusty.

Still, on any given weekday, especially around lunchtime, Sau Voi is likely to find itself with a near-capacity crowd (which, given the store's dimensions, is only about six or seven people). They come because Sau Voi, despite its bad luck with bras and CD's, also finds a little space to sell a full menu of very good, very cheap sandwiches.

The most extravagant? A ham, turkey, pâté combination on a six-inch loaf for $2.75.

Sau Voi, at Lafayette and Walker Streets, looks more like an old hardware store from the outside. But the place has come to be famed in the neighborhood for its crunchy toasted baguettes and pepper sauces served over the sounds of rocking Asian dance tunes, lending Sau Voi the tone of a misplaced discothèque in a community of courthouses. And that just might make it one of the quirkiest little shops in a city with no shortage of quirky little shops.

''It's funky and fun, one of these non-obvious things that you just have to know about,'' said Guido Maus, who sells antique furniture and art at his TriBeCa store, Lili Marleen. ''You wouldn't believe that the sandwiches are just gorgeous. To die for.''

As Mr. Maus walked out with three sandwiches on Wednesday, he looked back at the store's gritty, congested display window with the neon sign that stopped working long ago, a hodgepodge of cosmetic items and publicity posters for Asian pop stars.

''It's exquisite,'' he exclaimed with a big smile. ''The construction workers in my shop told me about it. When you get five or six people in there, it's packed. But it's really worth the wait for the food. I haven't bought anything else in there, though.''

That's the main problem for Mr. Lee, that hardly anything else in his store sells. So when his rent nearly doubled last fall, he said he was forced to raise some sandwich prices a quarter, to $2.75 from $2.50, and he was loath to do it.

''You can tell, we try to sell everything,'' Mr. Lee said. And sure enough, a closer inspection of the racks revealed a few rhinestone earrings, and batteries, film, Vietnamese novels, pens, utility tape, phone cards, MetroCards, makeup brushes and ginseng among a limited selection of snacks.

If Wal-Mart tried to be Wal-Mart in less than 200 square feet, this is what it might look like.

''If you want to make a store bigger, you have to invest,'' Mr. Lee said. ''But we don't have that much money.''

Michael Lee, the owner's brother, chimed in: ''It's not so bad that you can't survive, but it's not so good either.''

When asked why the Lees do not consider raising their sandwich prices, Michael Lee said: ''The prices are because this is Chinatown. If you sell for $2, the other people are going to open next door and sell for $1.50. It's very competitive, and people demand lunch for under three or four dollars, drink and everything.''

The Lees grew up in Saigon. Michael, 50, was one of the boat people who fled Communist rule in 1978. Once settled in the Bronx, he sponsored Richard, 52, who in 1984 moved his family to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, after getting them out of a refugee camp in the Philippines.

Michael Lee, a gregarious gourmand, works part time at Doyers, a Vietnamese restaurant nearby, but everyone in the family helps out at Sau Voi, which is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.

Sau Voi was named after a popular sandwich shop in Saigon, the Lees said. They picked the name hoping it would bring good luck, they said.

''Americans seem to want a certain ham and cheese sandwich, and they don't seem crazy about anything else,'' Richard Lee lamented. ''We think that if they try our sandwich, they will like it. But if they don't try it, we don't know what to do.''

The Sau Voi classic is pâté, ham, turkey, cucumber, carrots and hot sauces on warm, crunchy French bread. On the menu, a customer also finds dozens of other selections: shrimp fried noodles ($2), coconut jam sandwiches ($2.50) and shredded green papaya with shrimp and fish sauce ($2).

When asked about giving up on trying to sell anything but food, Richard Lee said he did not have that luxury. Laughing, he said, ''A better dream is the lottery.''

His brother added: ''We work hard for the second generation. We look at our children and see that they have a better life than we had, and we already have our dream.''

Just then a customer walked in, and, unlike most, did not turn to order at the sandwich bar.

''Do you have pens?'' the man asked. ''Yes,'' Richard Lee replied, turning to survey an array of miscellaneous items before sliding a Paper Mate across the counter.

He had just made 50 cents.




http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/nyregion/in-chinatown-an-outbreak-of-fear-herb-shops-and-rumors-thrive-on-virus-panic.html
In Chinatown, An Outbreak Of Fear; Herb Shops and Rumors Thrive on Virus Panic


By SUSAN SAULNY

APRIL 4, 2003

Chivy Ngo found himself in the awkward position this week of hearing the details of his own demise, a horrible death that was said to have happened on Monday after a lost battle against SARS, the mysterious, sometimes fatal respiratory disease.

Mr. Ngo owns a restaurant on Bayard Street and is well known in Chinatown. So news of his death, which was widely and wrongly circulated on the Internet and in the local Chinese press, caused pain among his friends. It also caused widespread alarm in the community, a dense enclave of tens of thousands of people with close ties to Asia who feared the worst: that severe acute respiratory syndrome had come to Chinatown.

''It's absolutely untrue,'' said Sandy Mullin, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Public Health. ''A rumor. We checked it out, and there was nothing to support the story as it circulated.'' The source of the rumor has not been identified.

Although there have been roughly 20 suspected cases of SARS in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- all in people who had traveled to the Far East -- as of yesterday, not one was known to have occurred in Chinatown, city health officials said.

No matter, the damage had been done. Mr. Ngo got condolence calls, and many other people got face masks, bleach and antibacterial soaps. Concerned shoppers have nearly depleted neighborhood herbalists' supplies of isatis root, which, according to Eastern tradition, wards off infection in the lungs.

''Hot herbal tea available that prevents SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and cleans your system!'' read a sign outside T's Herbal Inc., on Hester Street in Chinatown. A store clerk said she sold about 40 cups at $1 each yesterday.

But beyond drinking more tea, some people have begun to change their routines.

''I think people are scared -- I'm scared, too,'' said Kay Cheng, the manager of the Excellent Pork Chop House on Doyers Street. ''On my day off, I stay in my home. I don't want to go out.''

Sandy Sang, a photo shop worker from Bayside, Queens, bought 20 face masks yesterday at a pharmacy on Canal Street. ''My friend asked me to do her a favor and buy them, and I'll keep some for my family,'' she said. ''At least we'll have something to protect us, because you never know. And everybody's buying them, so why not? It's only $2. I spend it and then my family feels comfortable.''

As Mr. Ngo looked through some e-mail messages yesterday about him and his restaurant, he said: ''The messages are so cruel. It's terrible. They are not just against me. They say, 'Don't go to Chinatown for a while. They have SARS.' I thought, 'What kind of April Fool's is this on our community?' ''

According to business leaders in the area, Chinatown suffered tremendously after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, just blocks away. Dozens of Chinese-Americans died when the towers collapsed. Chinatown was off-limits to visitors right after the attack, and trucking restrictions slowed shipments in and out of the area to a trickle. The neighborhood, home to 100,000, has been hit hard by the general economic downturn.

A few restaurants went out of business. Dozens of garment factories closed. Many workers were laid off.

''And now this,'' Mr. Ngo said. A native of Vietnam who fled on a boat in 1975, Mr. Ngo, 36, runs Bo Ky, a modest but popular restaurant, with his mother, Jenny Wong, and brother Chi Hung Ngo. Bo Ky was closed for six weeks after the 9/11 attack, and the family and the restaurant's dozen workers suffered financial hardships, Chivy Ngo said.

''They ought to sue whoever started this rumor,'' said Chan Ming Chien, the vice chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of New York. ''They, and all of Chinatown, are only almost recovered from 9/11. Something like this that is not a fact hurts everyone here.''

He and others said they wanted the city and the world to know that it was O.K. to visit Chinatown, that it was clean and safe. He said residents and businesses were concerned about SARS and were taking reasonable measures to protect themselves; some people are canceling plans to travel to Asia, he said.

If anyone should be worried about the disease, it should be the residents of Chinatown, said Ying Bin Hon, a salesman for a Chinatown florist. ''You can take precautions, like wearing a mask, but if it comes, it comes and what can you do?'' he said. ''Eventually, I think it will go around the world. People who are too worried about this just don't have enough to do.''

Nevertheless, the disease has caused great concern worldwide, because it is highly contagious and, though its fatality rate is only about 3 percent, there is no vaccine or treatment other than nursing and help in breathing.

Grace Ho, a prominent Chinatown herbalist, said many people have been coming to her ''wanting to buy something to clear the lungs, to prevent the disease.''

''They are asking because of some of the rumors on the street and in the papers, but I think it's overexaggerated,'' Ms. Ho said. ''It's not good for Chinatown or New York or the U.S.A. 'We have a lot of problems already,' I tell people. 'Why add what's not true?' ''

Ms. Ho said that people come to consult her in the small, sweet-smelling Kam Tat Trading Store on Mott Street where she works and that she advises them to ''have a healthy lifestyle and a positive attitude instead of being scared.'' She added, ''That's good for preventing any disease, not just SARS.''

Ms. Ho also advises her customers to buy a $5 package of herbs. She prepares what she says is a protective herbal cocktail, combining honeysuckle (to get rid of infection) and licorice root (an antioxidant, she says) with chrysanthemum, isatis root and many other herbs.

She has sold so much of the formula that only half a bag of one ingredient, the isatis root, remains.

''The market is almost completely out of this because of the rush,'' she said, looking at the root. ''Everyone is trying to get it.''

At Bo Ky, business is trickling back, but some customers are as interested in Mr. Ngo's health (which a doctor has reassured him is good) as they are in eating his noodles and dumplings. When diners walk in, he has begun to ask: ''Are you here for takeout or for the rumor?''

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/28/dining/in-chinatown-a-taste-of-revival.html
In Chinatown, A Taste of Revival

By REGINA SCHRAMBLING
NOV. 28, 2001

IF every day were the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Chinatown would almost feel like its old self again. But the bustling streets, crowded markets and long lines at so many restaurants last weekend were unlike what the area has generally experienced since Sept. 11, when the attacks less than half a mile away left the neighborhood sealed off and without phone service.

For two months, Chinatown was the forgotten downtown as concerned diners headed to struggling but trendier places in TriBeCa. In addition to their empty dining rooms, restaurants were left with no way for customers to call in orders or make reservations, no system to process credit cards, no cash to buy fresh fish and produce. The road to recovery has been so rough that many restaurateurs in Chinatown still count themselves lucky if business is off only 50 percent.

But the restaurant business still appears to be the brightest spot in the neighborhood's economy, which has lost 6,000 jobs, according to the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields. Garment factories are struggling, and gift shops are often so empty that salesclerks can be spotted sleeping on their stools in midafternoon. Yet enterprises founded on food are surviving and, more than other types of business, showing signs of slowly coming back to life.

Phone service has been partially restored, and most streets are open, with state troopers helping to direct traffic as best they can in unfamiliar terrain. Distress signals like ''For Rent'' signs and boarded-up storefronts are few below Canal Street.

Things do move a little slower -- soup dumplings at Goody's arrive in 20 minutes instead of 5, the cook hacking up ducks at NY Noodletown is languid at best -- but the compensations are everywhere for the few patrons. One recent afternoon a street vendor actually greeted me when I stopped to examine his greens. Waiters were unfailingly patient, even solicitous. With streets less clogged, I could walk on the sidewalk instead of in traffic and get close enough to the open-front seafood markets to see that one big barrel was full of squirming frogs, that a tank was slithering with eels, and that nearly all the fish gleamed with freshness.

Most restaurants have cut back in various ways. Dim Sum Go Go in Chatham Square has let go half its employees, and some days Sweet-n-Tart Cafe closes at 11 p.m. instead of midnight. Others are offering discounts, like the 10 percent reduction given weekdays at New Wonton Garden on Mott Street. A group of restaurateurs has banded with local and city organizations to run flashy campaigns in windows, newspapers and tourist literature to lure patrons back around the lazy susans.

Ms. Fields is organizing a ''Manhattan Night Out'' tomorrow to bring 300 to 400 business and civic leaders into Chinatown ''to visit the shops and eat in the restaurants to boost the businesses that are still not coming back as quickly as the owners need.'' They in turn, she hopes, will spread the word that Chinatown is open.

Unlike Little Italy, which it abuts and partially surrounds, Chinatown has evolved over the last 20 years, particularly as new immigrants from Hong Kong have invested in the neighborhood. A better name for the area, in fact, would be Asia City now that so many Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants have opened in the congested blocks north and south of Canal Street. Many are lavishly designed, and they have been joined by sleek tea salons catering to a hip young crowd with pearl tea jazzed up with tapioca, and by very modern bakeries that would be at home on upper Madison Avenue if not for the steamed pork buns sold along with the French-inspired pastries.

Chinatown is now being promoted with Little Italy and Harlem in a get-out-the- diners campaign by NYC & Company, the city's convention and visitors bureau. Business in those other neighborhoods is also off by 45 to 50 percent, according to the bureau, but Chinatown is easily the most competitive restaurant environment.

That handy gazetteer the Zagat Survey lists 36 restaurants in the area bounded by Hester Street on the north, Lafayette Street on the west and Allen and Pike Streets on the east. But on Sunday I counted 26 restaurants open and one closed just on the four blocks of Mott Street between Canal and Chatham Square. And that did not include all the bakeries and tea salons on that stretch, or the Hong Kong cake stall with the long line at Mosco Street.

Even before Sept. 11, the ground had started shifting under Chinatown. Already more and more immigrants -- and restaurateurs -- were settling in Sunset Park in Brooklyn or in Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, where rents are lower. The closing of the Grand Street subway stop last summer had slowed pedestrian traffic. And increasingly there was competition closer in, from trendy Asian spots in NoLIta like Funky Broome and Clay.

After Sept. 11, things got radically worse with restrictions on traffic and telephone service for weeks. The smell from the wreckage still lingers on some days.

Cooks and busboys had difficulty getting to work when the neighborhood was sealed off, and only those with identification were allowed in. ''These workers don't have ID,'' said Eileen Leong, the manager of Canton on Division Street. Her restaurant had to close for two days after the attacks because it had no staff in place.

Worse, the courthouses were shut down initially. Most places in Chinatown operate on margins so tight that any drop in business is brutal. On a good day it's hard to make a profit on $3.50 beef. Lose a few days of jurors' lunches and things get scary.

E. Charles Hunt, president of the local chapter of the New York Restaurant Association, said a drop of just 20 percent in sales could put a restaurant at risk, even if it laid off staff and cut purchases. The last quarter of the year is especially important, he added, because restaurants do 40 percent of their business then.

Many workers in Chinatown indicated that cutbacks had already begun. On the afternoon I stopped into NY Noodletown to buy a couple of roast ducks the place was so weirdly quiet that I could ask the usually swamped cashier how business had been. She gestured: down, down. ''I work only four days now,'' she said.

Kenny Wong, the manager of Ping's, the acclaimed seafood restaurant on Mott Street, said he had had to lay off workers, especially while the phone service was out. ''If no one knows you're open,'' he said, ''you close.''

Colette Rossant, a partner in Dim Sum Go Go, said that her sales had dropped from $4,000 a day to $1,500, which is not enough to pay the rent.

At Joe's Shanghai on Pell Street, Raymond Wong, the manager, said business was starting to build on weekends but was still down 30 percent overall. And so he had had to lay off 6 of his 30 waiters and cooks and cut hours for those still working.


While he, Kenny Wong and Ms. Leong all said business was virtually back to normal last weekend, they each attributed the rebound to the holiday and the resulting influx of visitors. ''If hotels don't get full, I don't,'' Ms. Leong said.

Many Chinatown workers, Raymond Wong said, are relying on emergency cash from private groups like Safe Horizon. Immigration issues apparently keep some workers from trying to file for government benefits. Others were paid in cash, off the books, and are not eligible for help, according to John Wang, president of the Asian American Business Development Center. And their empty pockets have a ripple effect throughout Chinatown, in the butcher shops and fish stores as well as the restaurants.

Some restaurateurs have turned the disaster to advantage, though. Bo Ky, a Vietnamese place on Bayard Street that shut down for lack of business after losing its phone service, is now undergoing a complete renovation thanks to a $60,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. Chi Vy Ngo, an owner, said the restaurant had been heavily dependent on business from the World Trade Center, and on takeout orders picked up by car. After the streets closed, so did he. Meantime, he has asked his 11 full-time employees to hang on until he reopens.

Some of the biggest restaurants seem to be bouncing back fastest. Golden Unicorn on East Broadway has 600 seats, yet the general manager, Peter Yau, said sales are now down a mere 10 percent. At their worst, in September, they dropped only 30 percent, he said.

What made the difference was the restaurant's focus on wedding banquets. After Sept. 11, Mr. Yau said, ''they didn't cancel, they postponed.'' Most of the guests come from the metropolitan area, he said, so he is not feeling the drop in tourism and travel.

For Thanksgiving, in fact, Golden Unicorn was fully booked, Mr. Yau said, since the holiday has become a popular occasion for Asian weddings. At 2 in the afternoon on the Sunday after the big day, every table on two floors of the restaurant was occupied, and lines of people waited to be seated.

My own experience at dim sum best brought home why so many in Chinatown are optimistic, even insistent that, as Paul Lee, an assistant to the president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, put it: ''Business is going to come back, but whether it's sooner or later we can't figure out.''

The places that live by the tourists may die by the absence of tourists. But those like Triple Eight Palace that depend on New Yorkers may be able to keep the woks fired for the long term. Even on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the four people in my party were among the few Caucasians waiting to be seated while the M.C. at a big Chinese wedding shouted through a microphone in the sprawling restaurant, in the Broadway Mall under the Manhattan Bridge.

Considering the noise, the absence of English and the surfeit of tripe, chicken feet and pork balls, we could have been on an eating expedition to another continent. It felt as far from Manhattan -- and ground zero -- as we could possibly get without braving a river or an airport. And the credit card machines were working.










http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/10/magazine/what-s-for-breakfast-hanoi.html
What's for Breakfast?; Hanoi

By MOLLY O'NEILL
MAY 10, 1998


In Hanoi, before the cyclos creak or the motorbikes begin their morning's roar, groups of Vietnamese squat by roadsides or along sidewalks, chopsticks in one hand, soup bowl in the other. Oblivious to the rising sun, they are intent on the first order of any Vietnamese day: pho.

This soup, which is really a meal in a bowl, is Vietnam's own breakfast of champions. It can also be lunch, dinner or a snack.

At its best, pho (pronounced ''fuh'') is a rich, amber-colored broth made of oxtail, beef and shrimp paste that is perfumed with cinnamon, star anise and ginger and then ladled over rice noodles and topped with wafer-thin slices of scalded beef, as well as scallions and mint.

In ''Vietnamese Culture,'' Huu Ngoc writes that pho is his country's ''contribution to human happiness.'' The novelist Duong Thu Huong writes of pretending to stroll the streets of Hanoi in order to inhale its perfume.

Hanoi is the home of pho, though it is eaten everywhere in Vietnam. Purists and poets argue about the soup's precise formula; some southern cooks have even dared to substitute chicken or eggs for beef. But throughout the country, the best pho is made by street vendors.

Street carts selling pho have begun to appear in the Chinatown sections of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. And the soup is a fixture in Vietnamese restaurants. In Manhattan, the version at Bo Ky is the closest to Hanoi's best pho. (Bo Ky, 80 Bayard Street, on the corner of Mott Street, is open from 8 A.M. to around 10 P.M. seven days a week, telephone: 406-2292).







http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/20/garden/chinatown-meet-vietnam.html
September 20, 1995
Chinatown, Meet Vietnam
By ELAINE LOUIE


AT the Pho Bang restaurant at 117 Mott Street in Chinatown, Vu Bang, the chief cook, has a way with a knife.

He can slice a cucumber so it unfolds like a fan, sliver carrots into threads and cut chicken so thin that light shines through the pale pink flesh. After wrapping grilled pork in a ruffled green lettuce leaf and garnishing it with carrot, cucumber and a mint leaf, he offers it to a visitor as an edible gift.

Mr. Bang is a gracious man who nonetheless remembers a brutal time when a knife was not so much a culinary tool as his only means of survival. Once a major in the South Vietnamese Air Force, he was held prisoner by the Communist government from 1975 to 1985. For four of those years, 1976 to 1979, he and 5,000 other former South Vietnamese officers were held in the far north, near the Chinese border.

"We were put in the forest to cut trees to make homes for a prison camp," said Mr. Bang, who is now 55. "They give you a knife only," Mr. Bang said. For food, they grew sweet potatoes, manioc and corn. In 1991, after supporting himself in Vietnam by selling clothing and medicine, Mr. Bang arrived in the United States.

In 1993, there were 12,266 Vietnamese-born people living in the five boroughs (4,094 in Brooklyn; 3,655 in Queens; 2,703 in the Bronx; 1,707 in Manhattan, and 107 in Staten Island), said Frank Vardy, a demographer with the New York City Department of Planning. "We may be getting more Vietnamese than what the Census and immigration figures show," Mr. Vardy said. "These are Vietnamese who settled originally in California, Minnesota or Arkansas -- and then came here."

Most of those who are opening restaurants are clustering them in Chinatown, where they put up brightly colored awnings with signs in two languages: Vietnamese (whose Roman alphabet is given an exotic fillip by tone marks) and Chinese, in characters and transliteration. The ingredients of Vietnamese cuisine are increasingly visible at fruit and vegetable stands: fresh bunches of mint leaves, stalks of lemon grass, and three-foot lengths of fresh sugar cane ready for squeezing.

Although Manhattan does not have the largest Vietnamese population in the city, it does have the largest number of Vietnamese restaurants (at least 11 in Chinatown), along with at least two supermarkets and at least one bookstore. The sounds of Vietnamese videos and cassettes waft out of shop doorways along with Mandarin and Cantonese favorites.

The first of Chinatown's Vietnamese restaurants opened in 1981; two opened this year alone. And for the growing number of Vietnamese customers, some Chinese restaurants, like Sun Say Gay, at 220 Canal Street, have added Vietnamese signs.

Bilingual signs often indicate that the owners have a dual background, that they are Vietnamese by birth, but ethnically Chinese, said Harry Mai, publisher of The New York Vietnam Business News, a newspaper that appears twice a month; he is a former professor of physical sciences at Saigon University. Many ethnic Chinese fled in 1979, when China attacked Vietnam. Some went to Hong Kong and some to mainland China, Mr. Mai said. Many found their way to the United States.

Despite historical animosity, the Chinese and Vietnamese seem to coexist happily in Chinatown. They work together. They marry. "Governments may not like each other, but people, the Chinese and the Vietnamese, can get along," said Mr. Mai, who is Vietnamese and whose two sons married Chinese women.

When Mr. Bang arrived, in 1991, he called the owners of Pho Bang, a nationwide chain (there are five in New York City) to look for a job. He eventually became head cook and a manager-partner at Mott Street.

There are between 150 and 200 dishes in the Vietnamese culinary repertory, says Marcia Kiesel, a co-author, with Binh Duong, of the "Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking" (Prentice Hall Press, 1991). It is a sprightly cuisine, with an extravagant use of fresh leafy greens -- lettuces, basil and coriander -- played against hot grilled meats and seafood. It is spiced with ginger, garlic and nuoc mam, the ubiquitous fish sauce. The food is given a subtle fire with chilies, and tartness with lime and tamarind. It is as complexly flavored as it is low in fat -- toothsome yet healthful.

The first dish a Vietnamese learns to cook is perfect rice, followed bythe centerpiece of Vietnamese cuisine, pho (pronounced FOE), noodles in a long-simmered beef broth. There are as many variations of pho as there are edible things in Vietnam. "We use every part of the beef -- the navel, the stomach," said Bac Nguyen, the manager at another Pho Bang, at 6 Chatham Square, in the heart of Chinatown.

Tiny, two-inch-long spring rolls are another Vietnamese delicacy, which Mr. Bang stuffs with pork, shrimp, chicken, crab, mushrooms and cellophane noodles, then fries until golden. Unlike the Chinese, who eat their spring rolls plain, the Vietnamese wrap theirs in green leaf lettuce and dip the packet into a sauce of nuoc mam spiked with vinegar, lime juice, garlic, chilies and a few bright strands of carrot.

Although some Vietnamese restaurants serve only Vietnamese food, others, like Bo Ky, at 80 Bayard Street, are bicultural.

The owner of Bo Ky, David Ngo, moved to New York in 1979 and began selling vegetables at a store on Canal Street. In 1986, he and his family opened Bo Ky, a plain restaurant with 40 seats, where napkins are paper, cups are plastic and customers are legion: the place is mobbed.

Mr. Ngo's family had owned a rice-noodle factory in Saigon. But In 1968, shortly after the Tet offensive, it was set afire with napalm. "Our concrete house was the only structure standing in the neighborhood," said Angle, Mr. Ngo's 33-year-old son.

After that, "we sold cigarettes, one by one, then pack by pack, then carton by carton," said Angle, who remembers hawking them with one of his uncles or his grandfather from a cyclo, a three-wheeled pedicab.

As the Ngos reinvented themselves, adding snack food to their repertory, their mode of transportation became a little fancier. "We went from cyclo to a tiny Honda with an open back," Angle said, with a grin. "Up and up!"

In their restaurant, the Ngos have given a new spin to the soy-sauce duck, a Chinese dish. They serve it with a dipping sauce of vinegar laced with garlic, to which Angle adds a dot of red chili paste. The sauce cuts through the sweet-salty richness of the duck. Each day, Bo Ky's customers go through more than 60 ducks and at least 200 bowls of pho topped with sliced beef or plump beef balls.

At Vietnam Restaurant, down a flight of stairs at 11 Doyers Street, Ken Tu, the 19-year-old son of one of the owners, Minh Tu, is half-Chinese and half-Vietnamese. He speaks both languages, eats the food of both lands, but dreams of marrying a Chinese woman, not a Vietnamese one. Asked why, he said, "There's no difference between the Chinese and the Vietnamese, but I communicate better in Chinese."

His mother, however, cooks primarily Vietnamese food in this small restaurant, where the smell of incense wafts up the stairs at the entrance. A specialty is a salad of shredded green papaya tossed with lightly poached shrimp and threads of chewy beef jerky and dressed with a delicate mixture of vinegar and nuoc mam.

The first Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown was probably Viet Huong, at 73 Mulberry Street. Chuong Chau, the owner, and his wife, Ly Anh Chau, were among the first to show Americans how to eat shrimp paste on sugar cane. They wrap the scallion-flecked shrimp paste around fresh sugar cane and grill it. After sliding the shrimp paste off with chopsticks, they wrap lettuce around the paste and dip the leafy bundle into nuoc cham, a sauce of vinegar, nuoc mam and garlic. (Afterward, some people enjoy a discreet gnaw on the sugar cane.)

They also introduced the traditional hot and sour fish soup into Chinatown -- its broth is spiced with tamarind, chili, fish sauce and lime juice.

Two months ago, the Chaus took their soup and other family recipes uptown to 1425 Third Avenue (81st Street), where Danny Chau, their 29-year-old son, opened Miss Saigon. The food is the same, uptown or downtown.

The unifying factor is Mrs. Chau, who each day takes ground beef with roasted peanuts, garlic, lemon grass, ginger and onions and wraps the hand-prepared mixture in grape leaves. After that, she blends crab meat, pork and chicken for the spring rolls.

Three years ago, another son, Bill, graduated from Hunter College with a degree in computer science. But immediately, he started working as a waiter and host at the family restaurant. "My parents," said Bill, 26, "they needed me."

Soon, maybe in a year, he will have a new career in computers. But meanwhile, he is explaining to customers, probably for the thousandth time, how to pull the shrimp paste off the sugar cane.

Photos: Each day, the Bo Ky restaurant serves at least 200 bowls of pho, soup with noodles topped with sliced beef or beef balls. Top left, Michael Ly and Minh Tu (seated), owners of the Vietnam Restaurant, and her son, Ken. Top right, hot and sour fish soup from Viet Huong. Above, grilled pork and spring rolls from Pho Bang. Left, the Vietnam Restaurant's grilled eel with lemon grass. (Photographs by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)(pg. C6); Vu Bang the chef, above, with his grilled pork and spring rolls; top, as a major in the South Vietnamese Air Force. Above left, Ly Anh Chau and her husband, Chuong Chau, owners of the Viet Huong restaurant; behind them are their sons Bill, left, and Danny. At left, Hai Ngo (left) and Angle Ngo of the Bo Ky restaurant. Below, some landmarks of Indochinatown. (Photographs by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)(pg. C1) Map: "A Growing Presence" shows locations of Vietnamese restaurants in the Manhattan area. (pg. C1)




http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/11/arts/diner-s-journal.html
January 11, 1991
Diner's Journal
By MOLLY O'NEILL
Correction Appended

Year of the Noodle

After a decade in which the $10 appetizer, $25 entree and $10 dessert became commonplace, a $15 bowl of noodles topped with an elegant-sounding Italian something or other seemed like a bargain. Fancy restaurants began offering them as an "inexpensive" alternative, and trattorias where pasta was king became as common as spaghetti and meatballs. Lately Chinese restaurants have moved onto noodle turf, and pesto and sun-dried tomatoes have begun to be unseated by sesame sauce and soy-roasted chicken. Taking a cue from Bo Ky, the closet-sized storefront on Bayard Street in Chinatown that serves meal-sized bowls of noodle soup topped with roasted meats, vegetables or fish for under $5, noodle shops are sprouting uptown.

The pioneer -- and still the best -- is Ollie's Noodle Shop, which opened at Broadway and 84th Street last year. Nearly a dozen cooks whirl like dervishes behind the long lunch counter that snakes along one wall of the cafeteria-style place, as they turn out a gargantuan menu. Just as a typical pasta joint offers basics like veal chops, broiled fish or steak, Ollie's and its imitators have menus that can ramble from No. 1 (egg roll) to No. 159 (shredded pork with Peking sauce). Usually, these dishes are there to sate the ordinary "Oh let's just have Chinese takeout" sort of appetite. The real ticket is the wonton soups -- with roast pork, chicken or duck, ribs, chicken wings or fish cakes -- and the noodle soups: spicy beef stewed with noodles, or noodles with pickled cabbage and shredded pork, or with soy-roasted chicken.

While their soups are universally rich and real, all of the noodle shops have things they do well and things that confound them. At Tang Tang, which opened several weeks ago at Third Avenue and 78th Street, it would be foolhardy not to sample the cold, fiery sesame noodles that are turned out with remarkable finesse. The place also serves decent dumplings. But fie on the fatty ribs and greasy scallion pancakes.

At Mr. Wong's on Broadway between 102d and 103d Streets, on the other hand, the sesame noodles taste like a peanut butter sandwich gone awry and all but the shrimp dumplings are clunky. In the restaurant, which is a reclaimed Burger King, the little pork buns are wonders and the soups can be so delicious that one can have moments of certainty that Chinese noodle shops will eclipse burger joints nationwide. Unfortunately, the rest of the cooking at Mr. Wong's isn't as consistent as its predecessors, which may slow the Chinese noodle revolution. A Range of His Own

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the four-star chef at Restaurant Lafayette in the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue at 56th Street, has resigned in order to open his own establishment. "There is nowhere I can go at Lafayette; I need to move on," said Mr. Vongerichten, who has been at the hotel for nearly five years. His restaurant, as yet unnamed, is on the site of Bar du Theatre, 160 East 64th Street. Mr. Vongerichten, who plans to leave Lafayette in mid-February, said he would open a "casual and fun" 80-seat bistro with moderate prices. He still plans to serve his signature-style food, with sauces based on herb-infused oils, but with less costly ingredients. Mr. Vongerichten said the new restaurant should open by the beginning of March.

Jacques Hamburger, the Drake Hotel's general manager, said he had already begun searching for a new chef.







http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/16/arts/diner-s-journal.html
November 16, 1990
Diner's Journal
By Molly O'Neill


Southeast Asian

Despite waves of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai immigrants in the past two decades, Indochinese cooking has been slow to make a name for itself in New York City.

Locally, the Cantonese bias is entrenched in our ethnic eating impulse, and masters of other exotic fare inevitably tailor their specialties to appeal. Instead of opening Vietnamese restaurants, for instance, many cooks from Vietnam have opened little soup kitchens, like Bo Ky at 80 Bayard Street, that serve big bowls of Vietnamese noodle soups. But when pressed, the cooks claim that the soups are of Chinese soo chow inspiration.

Likewise, Thai restaurants around town almost always offer chopsticks (a Chinese, not Thai, eating implement) and use Cantonese-style sauces in the stir-fried creations from their woks.

I've only found three Thai restaurants that are more Bangkok than Hong Kong, and a full meal is usually less than $15.

Siam Grill is a small, dark storefront in midtown where the cooking is much better than it ought to be this close to Broadway and Off Broadway theaters. The soups are all made from real chicken, duck or fish stock.

The best dishes are the warm beef salad; the squid with chili peppers, onions and basil; the deep-fried fish with ginger sauce, and the stir-fried vegetables with a coconut milk sauce that is spiked with red curry.

(Siam Grill, 586 Ninth Avenue, between 42d and 43d Streets; 212-307-1363.)

On the East Side, Bangkok Lodge is a more sophisticated Thai haven. It's a slightly fancier storefront and not all the food is perfect: the baby-finger-sized Thai spring rolls are a little greasy, and so are the honey-dipped chicken wings. None of the fried rice or noodle dishes further the cause of discreet Thai tastes.

But the fresh frog's legs are superb pan-fried with garlic and white pepper, the steamed whole fish with mushroom and ginger is good, and so is the sweet and sour pork with minced fresh cucumber, onion, tomato and scallion. The house curry is strong and is smoothed by coconut milk and tossed with sliced beef or chicken.

On a good night, the Bangkok Lodge's tamarind duck -- a whole hacked duck that is deep fried and glazed with a tart tamarind sauce -- could draw a mass exodus from Chinatown.

(Bangkok Lodge, 1069 First Avenue, at 58th Street, 212-752-9277.)

The exiting droves would be well-advised to continue across the East River and on to Astoria, Queens, to Ubol's Kitchen, home of the cleanest-tasting, and most unusual Thai cooking I've had in the city.

The restaurant, which originally opened four years ago in a Queens bar, moved last summer to more cheerful quarters on Steinway Street. And, in the process, it has managed to preserve its energetic kitchen while taming and refining its dining room.

Of the appetizers, greasy, deep-fried crab-meat balls are the only losers. Pork satay is smoky, the accompanying peanut sauce smooth and rich with a mean, chili-pepper punch; tiny spring rolls are addictive, as are the deep-fried chicken and potato curry puff.

The beef, the squid and the shrimp salads, as well as the spicy sausage salad, are sensational.

Of the main courses I tasted, only the chicken Masaman, the jungle curry, the pot roast and the Pad Thai were ordinary.

The duck soup with preserved lime, the crisp-skinned barbecued chicken, chicken with peanut sauce, squid with lime and chilies, frog's legs with garlic and white pepper, eggplant with chilies and yellow pepper sauce, vegetables steamed with coconut milk, and shrimp roasted in a clay pot with tofu, lemon grass, coriander, chilies and bean thread will have me running back for more. Chopsticks available on request.

(Ubol's Thai Kitchen, 24-42 Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens; 718-545-2874 or 718-932-0927.)







http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/04/magazine/food-it-cures-what-ails.html



February 4, 1990
FOOD
FOOD; IT CURES WHAT AILS
By Molly O'Neill


CHICKEN SOUP SEEMS TO BELONG to New York. It is a curative, a panacea, a culinary medium. Its aroma rushes from the doors of Jewish delis and waves like steamy ribbons behind the bicycles that deliver Chinese food throughout the city. The scent of chicken soup lingers over kitchen stoops in the Italian section of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and above the homes of Greek families in Astoria, Queens. An epicurean archeologist could piece together a social history of the city by studying the permutations of its chicken soup.

Sharing a taste for chicken soup is about as close as the city comes to communion. But, this is New York, and with communion comes dissension.

Since the 19th century, bowls of golden broth - shimmering with a slick of rich fat, laden with kreplach or matzoh balls - have linked successive generations of the city's Eastern European immigrants. Louis Auerbach, co-owner of the Stage Delicatessen in Manhattan, says that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Cher and Woody Allen, among others with New York ties, have grown misty-eyed just inhaling the steam from his chicken soup. The aroma is ''Mamma's perfume,'' according to the comedian Jackie Mason.

Historians are divided as to exactly which Catskill comedian first uttered the words ''Jewish penicillin.'' But from that unidentified mouth to God's ear: In a 1984 newsletter, the Mayo Clinic endorsed the use of chicken soup to soothe cold symptons. The first creeping aches of a cold continue to push many New Yorkers to light a fire under their largest stockpot.

No wonder a balm of well-being wraps around most cooks as the steam from the soup fogs their kitchen windows. Local lore holds that several ambience manufacturers have attempted to synthesize chicken soup room scent. The real thing can draw bigger crowds than most Broadway shows. Al Yeganeh, who sells 75 gallons of homemade soup a day from his store-front cubbyhole on West 55th Street, calls the smell of simmering chicken ''a magnet that New Yorkers can't resist.'' It also elicits the typical New York response: an impassioned defense of each cook's own formula.

Descendants of the Dutch who originally settled the city continue to simmer chicken along with ham bones and split peas, to make the porridge they call snert. The grandchildren of the 19th-century Eastern European immigrants still serve their chicken soup garnished with dumplings, egg noodles or matzoh. Still, there are clashes about the proper variations on this rich elixir.

Last year, for instance, at the Stage Deli's Matzoh Bowl, Elizabeth Neuman, whose entry was round and about the size of a golf ball, claimed that egg whites must be beaten separately in order to make perfect matzoh balls for chicken soup. Burton Berinsky, another competitor, cringed. ''I'm not making matzoh souffle,'' he said. ''Matzoh balls should be heavy with flavor. You don't beat the eggs, you add the chicken fat.''

A few blocks south, at a Seventh Avenue coffee shop, the granddaughters of Greek immigrants discussed the proper proportion of lemon to broth for the perfect avgolemono, the stuff they call chicken soup. Further downtown, the descendants of immigrants from mainland China add vinegar and chili peppers to chicken broth to make addictive hot and sour potions; nearby, first-generation refugees from Southeast Asia add noodles and ginger and beef to make irresistible soo chow style soups.

There are those, like Brazilian Ermina Apolinario, who can't fathom a broth that is not a clear, deep gold. But 76-year-old Mary Stacey, like many of the Italians who moved to New York six decades ago, believes that the magic of chicken soup is unleashed only when the carrots and onions are mashed into the broth. She still carries such a soup to her nephew, Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa, when he patrols the subways.

Diverse aromatics and add-ins give the city as many different bowls of chicken soup as there are neighborhoods, but the pot of basic broth remains the same. Like a good cup of coffee, good chicken soup begins with cold water. To extract the most flavor, the soup should be brought slowly to a simmer and skimmed frequently. A heavy hand with herbs or vegetables can overpower the flavor of the chicken. The older and fatter the bird, the richer the broth. Some people believe that chicken feet make the difference between a good soup and one that is a religious experience. In some states, chicken with feet are sold only in specialty stores. A turkey wing, chicken wings or two additional legs and thighs are close substitutes.

Chicken soup experts agree about one thing, an accord shared only in whispers: ''If you tell anybody, I will deny knowing you,'' promised one prominent Manhattan soup maker. (Add a quarter of a chicken bouillon cube, a dash of chicken base or a splash of commercially made chicken soup to the pot for a perfect broth.)

AUNT MARY'S RICAN PENICILLIN

Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa's 76-year-old Aunt Mary still makes this chicken soup in her Howard Beach home and takes it to revive ailing Angels on the New York City subways. Strained, it makes an excellent medium for a myriad of soups. The strained broth can be frozen in small containers for future soups or in ice-cube trays to use in sauces.

1 4- to 5-pound chicken, quartered

2 chicken feet or 4 chicken wings or 1 turkey wing

1 clove of garlic, bruised

1 medium onion, peeled

2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

2 stalks celery cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 bunch parsley, tied

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

4 quarts cold water.

1. In a large pot, place four quarts cold water. Add the chicken, garlic, onion, carrots, celery, parsley, bay leaf, salt and peppercorns and slowly bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for three hours, using a spoon to skim the soup as thoroughly as possible. Cool. (The soup can be strained at this point, to use in the recipes that follow. Mrs. Stacey proceeds with the next two steps)

2. Strain the soup. Discard the onion, parsley, bay leaf and peppercorn, and save the other vegetables. Skin and debone the chicken and save the meat. Return the chicken meat, carrots, celery and garlic clove to the pot and bring back to a simmer, seasoning with additional salt or pepper to taste.

3. Serve the soup in big bowls, over pastina, rice or very thin spaghettini. The soup's curative powers are released only when the vegetables are mashed together in the bowl. Use a fork for mashing. Use a big spoon for eating.

Yield: Three quarts.

CAROL WOLK'S MATZOH BALLS

This recipe won the grand prize at the Stage Deli's first Matzoh Bowl contest in 1988.

8 cups basic chicken broth (see recipe)

1 1/4 cup matzoh meal

5 large eggs

1 3/4 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon Russian vodka

2 tablespoons club soda

1 tablespoon chicken broth

4 tablespoons vegetable oil.

1. Place the chicken broth in a deep pot over medium heat. Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, combine the matzoh meal and eggs. Add the salt, vodka, club soda, chicken broth and vegetable oil. Mix well. Put in the freezer for 45 minutes.

2. Use two tablespoons to form matzoh balls that are about two inches in diameter. When the broth is hot but not yet boiling, use a slotted spoon to place each ball into the soup. Cover the pot and cook for 40 minutes and serve.

Yield: Eighteen large matzoh balls.

KATHERINE POLYZO'S AVGOLEMONO

6 cups basic chicken soup (above)

1 cup of rice

4 egg yolks

Juice from 3 lemons (6 tablespoons)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

1. Place the chicken soup in a large pot and slowly bring to a boil. Add the rice, reduce the heat to medium and simmer.

2. Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, use a wire whisk to beat the egg yolks until frothy. Continue to whisk the egg yolks while drizzling in the fresh lemon juice.

5. When the rice is tender, slowly ladle the chicken broth and rice into the egg and lemon mixture, beating constantly until all of the soup has been added to the egg and lemon. Adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Yield: Four servings.

MARIA ROSA'S ITALIAN EASTER SOUP

8 cups basic chicken soup

1 carrot, peeled and minced

1 onion, peeled and minced

1 stalk celery, peeled and minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup shredded cooked chicken

1 pound ground beef

1 pound ricotta cheese

1 egg

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/4 cup chopped parsley.

1. Place the chicken soup in a wide pot over low heat. Add the carrot, onion, celery and garlic and simmer over very low heat for 40 minutes. Add the shredded chicken.

2. Meanwhile, place the ground beef in a bowl. Season with a half teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of black pepper and one tablespoon of the minced parsley. Form the meat into balls that are about one inch in diameter. Using a spoon, gently slide the meatballs into the broth. Do not raise heat or stir, but use a spoon to gently turn each meatball, so that they cook evenly.

3. Place the ricotta and the egg in a bowl. Season it with one teaspoon of salt, a half-teaspoon of black pepper and one tablespoon of the minced parsley, then stir well to combine. After the meatballs have cooked for 20 minutes, use a teaspoon to form ricotta dumplings and carefully slide them into the broth. Do not raise the heat or touch the dumplings until they are set, about seven minutes.

4. Adjust the seasoning of the soup with additional salt and pepper. Carefully ladle the soup into warmed bowls, garnishing each with the remaining minced parsley, and serve.

Yield: Eight to 10 servings.

ERMINA APOLINARIO'S CANJA

8 cups basic chicken soup

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 onion, sliced thin

4 cloves garlic, sliced thin

2 green peppers, sliced thin

1 teaspoon minced chili pepper

3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 1/2 cups rice

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup minced fresh parsley.

1. Place the chicken soup in a pot over low heat. Meanwhile, place the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and peppers and saute until they are very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the minced chili peppers and the tomatoes to the onion, stir well, cook for three more minutes and set aside.

2. Add the rice and salt to the chicken soup, partially cover the pot and simmer for half an hour. Add the sauteed vegetables and the parsley and simmer, uncovered, for 10 more minutes. Adjust the seasoning with a dash of chili pepper sauce to taste and serve.

Yield: Six servings.

MAI LOAN-BASS'S VIETNAMESE SWEET-AND-SOUR SOUP

2 garlic cloves

3 1/2 cups basic chicken broth

2 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar, or fresh lemon or lime juice

2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/4 tablespoons oyster sauce or fish sauce

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 medium carrot, thinly sliced

3/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots

1 small zucchini, thinly sliced

1/4 pound medium-sized raw shrimp, peeled and deveined, sliced in half lengthwise

1 cup fresh mung bean sprouts

6 to 8 fresh mint leaves, minced

1 green chili pepper, seeded and thinly sliced

Freshly ground black pepper to taste.

1. Rub the two garlic cloves with oil and roast in a shallow pan at 400 degrees until golden, about 15 minutes. Cool, then peel, mince and set aside.

2. In a saucepan, heat the chicken stock with the vinegar, sugar and oyster or fish sauce. Just before it reaches the boiling point, add the onion, carrot, bamboo shoots, zucchini and shrimp. Simmer until the shrimps turn pink and are cooked, about three to five minutes.

3. Place the raw bean sprouts in four warm soup bowls and add the hot soup. Garnish with mint leaves, roasted garlic and sliced chili pepper. Season with black pepper to taste.

Yield: Four servings.

DAVID BO NGO'S SOO CHOW SOUP

6 cups basic chicken broth

1 large onion, peeled, studded with 4 whole cloves

1 2-inch piece fresh ginger root

4 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

4 parsnips, peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks

1 teaspoon salt

1 pound sirloin

2 tablespoons Vietnamese hot chili sauce (tuong), or any other hot chili sauce (such as Tabasco)

3 tablespoons Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam)

1 pound wide rice noodles

The garnish:

2 cups fresh mung bean sprouts

2 fresh red chili peppers, minced

1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves

2 scallions, minced

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves

1/2 cup basil leaves

1 lime, sliced thin.

1. Place the soup in a large pot over low heat. Over a gas burner or under the broiler, char the clove-studded onion and the ginger root and then wrap them in cheesecloth along with the star anise and cinnamon. Place the cheesecloth bag in the soup, along with the parsnips and salt, and simmer for one hour. Remove the spice bag and stir in the hot chili sauce and the fish sauce.

2. Meanwhile, use a very sharp knife to slice the sirloin against the grain into paper-thin slices and set aside. Cook the noodles, drain and set aside.

3. Divide the mung bean sprouts and minced chili peppers evenly between six very large bowls. Divide the cooked noodles over the sprouts and top each with an equal portion of sliced raw beef. Bring the soup to a rapid boil and ladle it over the noodles and meat, which will cook immediately. Garnish each bowl with coriander, scallions, mint, basil and a slice of lime, and serve immediately.

Yield: Six servings.

Photos: Above: Soo Chow Soup at the Bo Ky Restaurant in New York. Near right: Matzoh-Ball Soup in the kitchen at the Carnegie Delicatessen. Far right: Al Yeganeh, owner of The Soup Kitchen International, serves it up. (Todd Weinstein) (pg. 45)