Long Sing Market's "Rice Box"

Our friends have been patronizing the Long Sing Market at Walker and St. Emanuel for years now, calling it the perfect lunch on a college budget, not to mention some of the best Asian barbecue in a city full of cultural delights. We frequent the place too and recently got our usual, a $5 rice box full of barbecue duck, pork, bok choy and rice.

We have always loved this tiny little butcher inside an almost falling-in-on-itself Chinese market, but we recently gained a deeper respect for it after a less-than-stellar smoked duck "fajita" from a higher-end Mexican restaurant that can only be described as horrid. The smoked duck entrée cost us $30 bucks and was not edible.

The delicious $5 lunch rice box at Long Sing had three times the duck, at one-sixth the price, and was 100 times as good. Sure, the butcher might be enjoying a cigarette while making your rice box, but hey, in the '70s this was normal.

Lines form for lunch, so we suggest taking a late break and heading over in the afternoon. Ask questions and take a look around -- you never know what mysteries lie in the hallways of this old supermarket.