The Best Thing I Ever Ate is a Food Network show featuring celebrity chefs and food personalities. It’s always themed around something. I always find myself frantically adding new restaurants to my Yelp bookmarks while I watch it. It’s no secret I love to eat and I love to travel. So, when I travel, I find all the out-of-the-way local spots to try, diners included, and try to stay away from the tourist traps. I’ve eaten some great dishes, but one stands out.

I’ve only ever been to New York City once, if you can believe it. It was back in November 2017 for work, and I was in the city for less than 36 hours. I made the most of that 36 hours – visited Alexander Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church (he’s my favorite founding father), met up with an old intern from Oklahoma for dinner, caught a Bruins/Rangers game at Madison Square Garden, and had the best single dish of my life from Xi’an Famous Foods’s location on 45th between Fifth & Sixth Avenues in midtown Manhattan (I think this is one of the sites they closed during the pandemic). I saw Times Square (it’s tiny) from the backseat of an Uber on my way to Newark to fly home, and I experienced the Lincoln Tunnel in rush hour traffic.

I don’t say this lightly when it comes to my taste buds. The. Best. Thing. I. Ever. Ate. It’s their famous spicy cumin lamb, and my mouth is salivating typing this. Anthony Bourdain christened Xi’an as one of his favorite places to eat in NYC, which is how it got on my radar when I searched for lunch spots near my hotel. It was a late lunch the day I arrived, but as soon as I dumped my stuff in my room, I made a beeline for the restaurant two doors down.

I tend to ask the staff for their recommendations sans my allergies, and I usually go with it unless the Yelpers are adamant about a particular dish you should order. Here’s how to describe this dish: it’s like the Fourth of July in your mouth. My lips were still tingling on my (very long) walk back from the Garden to my hotel (up a lighted Fifth Avenue, for the record) later that night.

I haven’t stopped talking about it since – or devising ways to get back to NYC to have it again (I have considered making the drive during my annual trip to Massachusetts – more on that soon). They don’t deliver but have at-home meal kits you can order if you live in the area. But seriously, next time you’re in NYC, check out one of their locations and try this dish. And if you can’t get to NYC, check out this video from CBS on them!