Thursday, 22 September 2011

• A New York City Restaurant to Avoid

  

  This past Friday (September 16, 2011) my best friends and I tried 456 Shanghai Cuisine (located in Chinatown, a restaurant that was reviewed by Sam Sifton of The New York Times). If you can back track to a post I wrote in response to his review, than you'll notice that I wanted to try this restaurant.  I did try it and the verdict: preposterous.

  

  So what was so preposterous? We had a party of 8, but only four of us got there first before anywhere else. The restaurant wasn't jam packed, so we thought it was okay if we sat down first and begin ordering a few appetizers. A must-have at any Shanghainese restaurant are the soup dumplings, which we did order.

  I was really looking forward to a voluptuous, juicy soup dumpling, but it was a failure. The soup dumpling were so tiny, as small as a golf ball. Cheap much? Typically, the soup dumplings are suppose to be served on a bed of Napa cabbage with the bamboo steamer.

  However, this restaurant didn't place the Napa cabbage in the steamer. The soup dumplings were below it's standard size and there was barely any broth inside the soup dumpling. Shanghainese soup dumplings are suppose to be a pleasuring appetizing, but sadly this was unpleasing.

  The line for the restaurant was stretching outside and one of the most rudest waiters ever kept glaring at our table and speaking in a dialect, that a lot of us didn't understand. According to my friend, he was saying if the rest of our party doesn't come soon, we may have to relinquish our table unless we start ordering entrees. This doesn't portray great customer service at all. Thankfully, the rest of the party did show up in minutes.

  

  We ordered a variety of entrees, but only two or three of them were actually "good". My girlfriend ordered a fried yellow fish wrapped in tofu skin with dried seaweed. This reminds me of bruschetta without the tomato and basil mixture on top. This entree overall was fair.

  The only complaint is that there was no dipping sauce. There was only a small plate of salt and pepper mixture. The fried yellow fish was definitely crunchy, but lacked flavor. We decided to dip it into the scallion pancake sauce which did enhance the taste, but not much.

  

  I decided to order the sizzling beef and scallop platter. Unfortunately, nothing was sizzling when it came out. There was a small cloud of smoke, but no sizzling. This dish had a lot of sauce and actually, it was probably one of the few good dishes we had through the whole dinner. The scallop and beef are worth more, so everyone ate them.

  At any given Chinese restaurants, the dishes we ordered would not be overly expensive but, our dishes were expensive and it's a drag because their food quality is definitely not superb. If you don't live in New York City, but do visit or plan to visit - don't come to 456 Shanghai Cuisine because really the service is below standards and the food it isn't top notch nor well prepared.

  When you come to New York City, of course you want a grand and pleasurable dining experience. 456 Shanghai Cuisine is a casual, but also touristy restaurant. There are much better restaurants in Chinatown. Save yourself a couple of bucks and try somewhere else.

  Have you ever had a bad restaurant experience? Did you take an initiative and expressed yourself to the restaurant?

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