But a hearty extravaganza, chicken contadina, $29 for two, was a boring, tasteless melange of dry chicken, even drier beef chunks, sausage, peppers and potatoes.

This is usually cooked with beef chunks, as is the Malaysian rendang, in which the meat is browned in spices, then simmered in coconut milk until tender.

His chest was heaving, his face as red as a beef chunk.

A spicy cool beef salad ($9.25) likewise balanced sweet and searing with savory and sour, though I wish the beef chunks had been sliced a bit thinner.

A variation on the classic pitti-patta, a kind of hash of beef chunks, potatoes, onion and raw egg, was delicious.

The bulbously large beef chunks were fat and gristly, the slivers of dried orange peel as tough as tree bark, and the flavor more sweet than spicy.

There are tiny beef chunks, onions, peppers, greens and what a waitress calls "lots and lots of different spices."

For Eastern European food, there is Kiev, where pirogi are $4.50 and kasha varnitchkes with beef chunks are $4.95.

He opens the ones with mushy bottoms and picks through the food remains, pulling out pieces of meat, strips of beef, sausage chunks and chicken wings and legs.

On our visit the beef chunks, carrots, potato and onion were embedded in an under-seasoned brown sludge that did nothing to whet the appetite.