Address: | 13 E 37th St, New York, NY 10016, USA |
Phone: | +1 212-213-2810 |
Site: | cafechinanyc.com |
Rating: | 4.3 |
Working: | 11AM–10:30PM 11AM–10:30PM 11AM–10:30PM 11AM–11PM 11AM–11PM 11AM–11PM 11AM–10:30PM |
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Iris Yung
Dont get me wrong, the food is superb and the decor takes you back in time. The best dishes are the cold conch, pork dumplings, dan dan noodles, braised fish with tofu, kung pao chicken, fish with red sauce, and the double cooked pork. I have tried almost everything on the menu and nothing has ever disappointed. There is also a decent bar. With that said, the wait is absolutely terrible and they are very disorganized. I am a regular here, both sitting at the restaurant and getting delivery, but they do treat regulars worse than visiting customers. I still order from here but I hate coming in, particularly because they do not take reservations, or so they say. This is especially inconvenient, and sometimes embarrassing, for my visiting friends and family. --Recent experience-- Day 1: I brought 3 Asian girlfriends from out of town here and we tried getting in on 2 separate days. We were told the wait was 30-45 minutes. I saw groups of 4 that arrived after us getting seated, a few couples with "reservations", and several empty tables that were "reserved". After 30 minutes of walking around Lord & Taylor, I asked the hostess if they were almost ready and she gave me a tone as if I had already asked her 10 times. We left and ate elsewhere. Day 2: I called to make a reservation for the same girlfriends but again was told they do not take reservations. The guy did say that there were a few tables for 4 available if I were to arrive in the next 10 minutes. I live only 5 minutes away so we rushed over. With no one else waiting, a few empty tables, and the promise that tables were available, I was still told that there would be a 30-45 minute wait. Seriously?! Again, I saw groups getting seated before us and decided to eat at Reichenbach. If you do not take reservations, how are some tables "reserved" and how do people get seated before us? For the love of all that is good, please start using ***OpenTable*** already.
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Lady Ace
Lapin and I were in the neighborhood and decided to stop by for lunch. We were seated rather quickly in the back and given menus. We were ready to place and order and had to flag down the delivery guy because our waiter was flirting with a waitress. We ended up missing the timeframe to order from the lunch special menu but we noted that it wasn’t our fault that our waiter was not paying any attention to us. After much back and forth, they allowed us to order from the lunch special but we had to make it quick (whatever that meant). Lapin ordered Shredded Beef with Asian Chili and I ordered the Sautéed Chicken Fillet. The lunch special prices online noted it $11 but I remember paying more when we sat to dine in. Each of the entrees came with one small spring roll which was pretty standard tasting. The dishes took a bit of time to come but the dishes came out piping hot. The portions though were on the smaller end of the spectrum. Lapin enjoyed his dish and thought it was tasty. I wasn’t enthuse by mines. I thought it would have been doing like Chicken and Broccoli style from those sketchy places with artery clogging brown sauce. Instead, I received chicken filets with chinese broccoli (which were bitter and I avoided like the plague) and maybe a spoonful of translucent clear color liquid. The sauce was okay but it tasted like a healthy steamed dish. Not what I had imagined and perhaps this was my fault for ordering it.
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Stephanie Han
A friend had been wanting to try this place and I was totally game for whatever so we met up here for lunch. It was surprisingly busy for a Monday, but its a pretty small place and I think is still running on some good buzz. Its definitely not your no-nonsense first generation Chinese food joint. This is Chinese Food: TNG. The place has a youthful, hip vibe, with its vintage 1930s Chinoiserie decor and uniformly young-looking wait staff. The menu has a lot of familiar Sichuan favorites and my friend and I decided to try their lunch specials: I got their mabo tofu with hot and sour soup, and I think my friend got the three pepper chicken--it was good but VERY spicy. I also got an order of their soup dumplings to see how it compared to a place like Din Tai Fung. I liked my mabo tofu a lot, but the dumplings were a waste; not even close to DTF--dont even bother. The portions were generous and the waiter was nice and on top of refilling our water and stuff, so overall a pleasant experience, but not sure if Id be clamoring to go back any time soon. My friend speculated that perhaps if wed opted for a non-lunch special the food might have been a little better? Its a reasonable assumption, as that generally seems to be the case at most places.
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Maxwell Feiner
Overall a very nice, authentic Chinese restaurant. I went with a friend, and we ended up sharing two orders of appetizers, one dim sum dish, and one entrée. For our two appetizers, we got the mung bean jelly and pig tripe. The jelly had a very nice mouth feel, and was in a pleasantly tongue tingling hot chili oil. The fresh Vietnamese iced coffee I got helped me deal with the spice. On the other hand, the pig tripe was very savory, also in chili oil. For our dim sum dish, we ordered the dan dan noodles. Their thick composure combined with the perfect use of scallions really brought out the best. For our entrée, we ordered the duck with ginger. Although the taste of ginger was not noticeably present, it was made up for in the superb cooking the duck and stir-frying of the vegetables. At the end of the meal, we did not intend on getting dessert, but once we saw the menu it was impossible to not get dessert. I got the green tea gelato on top of red bean mochi. Let me say, the dessert was superb. The green tea gelato was smooth and creamy, supplemented by the firm mochi. I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone who is hungry for some delicious Chinese food.
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Denby Liu
Was interested to try this Sichuan restaurant out to see whether it would be to our taste. We had 3 appetisers and one main course. The dumplings were both fine though didnt really stand out very much. The pastry was reasonably thin though. The dan dan noodles were spicy (for us) but we liked them the most out of the appetisers we had. We werent so keen on the tea smoked duck though. I thought it was a little dry and my husband thought it was a little too salty. We avoided the more spicy dishes so our picks probably arent representative of the restaurants cuisine. So, you may only want to come here if you can take spicy food as the non-spicy food was okay, but not anything to get too excited about. The service was very efficient and we didnt have much problem getting a seat on an late Sunday morning, just before noon. Though there was a parade going on that day which may have caused the number of visitors to drop. Wed previously tried to come on an evening and it was packed. As others have mentioned theres no tipping required, which I prefer. Just wish more restaurants would pay their staff a decent wage and scrap tipping altogether.