Calle Dão

Cuba once had the largest Chinese ex-pat population in Latin America. Havana’s El Bario Chino (its Chinatown) occupied 44 square blocks in 1870, though today it is restricted to a portion of Calle Cuchillo (“Knife Street”).

Chinese–Cubans predictably migrated to New York, where Chelsea and the Upper West Side became home to “dozens of greasy spoons, unique in that they served Chinese food and Cuban food in separate measure, side by side.” That era has long since passed. More recently, Jeffrey Chodorow’s Asia de Cuba was a clubby, upscale riff on the same idea. The New York outpost closed in 2011, but it soldiers on in London.

I haven’t seen much evidence that New Yorkers mourned the loss. But Naples native Marco Britti fell in love with Cuban–Chinese fusion cuisine when he lived in Havana. He is betting that the city will welcome its re-introduction. To carry out the concept, he hired chef Humberto Guallpa, who was executive chef at Vandaag for its final year in business, from 2011–12. (Britti also owns Favela Cubana, a more straightforward Cuban restaurant in Greenwich Village.)

Welcome to Calle Dão, a fusion restaurant with a fusion name: “knife” in Mandarin, “street” in Spanish. It’s located on one of those forlorn midtown streets where you’d have no reason to go without an appointment, but I suspect they do good lunch business here. Dinner could pick up if the concept catches on.

But will it? There’s no rule that necessarily limits chefs to the cuisine they grew up with. Yet, when an Italian (Britti) and an Ecuadoran (Guallpa) are charged with reproducing the cultures of China and Cuba, you fear that something will be lost in translation. The dark room feels like the Epcot version of Havana. It’s comfortable enough, but the authenticity seems faked.

I never experienced the greasy-spoon version of Cuban–Chinese fusion, but the elements of both cultures are plainly evident, with chopsticks and silverware at every place setting. You’ll certainly pay more than in Havana, with appetizers and ceviches $8–12, entrées $13–32 (most over $25), and side dishes $8.

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Decoy

Decoy opened in mid-May in a former laundromat below Ed Schoenfeld and Joe Ng’s hit Chinese restaurant, RedFarm.

There’s a faux mysteriousness about the project: the website is just a landing page, without so much as a menu, hours of operation, or really anything except a phone number and social media links. It doesn’t take much googling to find out everything you’d want to know about Decoy, so why the deliberate obfuscation?

In many ways, Decoy is just an extension of RedFarm. Call the phone number, and the RedFarm staff answer. Show up for dinner at RedFarm, where they don’t take reservations, and they’re liable to send you downstairs to Decoy’s ample bar, to cool your heels during the epic wait.

Decoy itself takes reservations (I already like this place better), and the menu is different. For $65, a party of two gets a whole Peking Duck, two small plates from a list of 13 choices, and one rice or side dish. Larger parties receive extra courses from the à la carte menu, in addition to the duck.

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RedFarm (Upper West Side)

The RedFarm guys have been busy. In the last six months, they’ve renovated their original location in the West Village, run a pop-up steakhouse in the basement, opened a cocktail bar (soon-to-be Peking Duck place), and expanded the franchise to the Upper West Side. A Williamsburg expansion is on the way.

RedFarm UWS (in the old Fatty Crab space) looks just like the flagship, with its exposed barnyard wood, red-and-white checkered upholstery, and digital toilets in the loo. It’s twice the size.

It’s also just as crowded. There was a 20-minute wait at 9:00pm on a Sunday evening, when most Upper West Side restaurants are starting to slow down. Call me old-fashioned, but when you have 82 seats, I think you could take reservations. I predict they eventually will, when the hype dies down. But you have to give the team credit for recognizing that a “downtown restaurant” would work uptown without changing a thing. RedFarm UWS is a hit.

You have to worry if quality will suffer, as chef Joe Ng’s attention is divided across multiple properties. Some of the food didn’t seem quite as carefully prepared as I recall at the original RedFarm. But it is still one of the most original Chinese menus in town, and to the extent I can tell from one visit, very much worth repeated visits.

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Hakkasan

Hakkasan is a restaurant practically designed for the New York critics to hate. It’s the tenth branch of an international chain, and the critics seldom have much love for imports. Parts of the menu could almost be considered arrogantly expensive: Peking Duck with Caviar, $295. And it’s built in a “big box” style that hit its apogee in the early aughts, but is now very much passé.

Critics be damned, Hakkasan opened on the eastern edge of Hell’s Kitchen. Damn it, they did. Adam Platt of New York awarded no stars, calling it “Ruby Foo’s for Rich People.” The Post’s Steve Cuozzo gave half a star, calling it “all wet.” Pete Wells of The Times gave it one star, complaining that “prices are too high for extremely restrained portions of food that is, in too many cases, about as interesting as a box of paper clips.”

Then there’s Michelin, the tire man, which gave it one star—the equivalent, on their scale, of two or three stars on the other guys’ systems. The original Hakkasan in London is starred too. I was there six years ago, and for the most part enjoyed my meal.

Here in New York, Hakkasan is a hair too expensive for what it is, and the dining room feels like a Meatpacking District attrocity gone haywire. But the food is very good.

Prices are skewed by a handful of trophy dishes for hedge fund babies and oil barons. Scratch those from the list, and you’re left with prices that are certainly dear, but not downright crazy. Dover Sole in XO Sauce is the most expensive of the “normal” entrées. It’s $46, but you’d pay about that much at any serious restaurant.

Not counting a few outliers, soups and appetizers are $9–26, with most $20 or less. Meat, fish, and poultry entrées are generally in the range of $24–39, with vegetarian and tofu dishes $14–21 and rice dishes $9–18.

We began with the dim sum platter ($24; above), which got a shout out in The Times last week (and even Pete Wells had liked it). According to the published menu, you get two apiece of scallop shumai, har gau, prawn and Chinese chive dumpling, and black pepper duck dumpling. We didn’t take notes, but found the selection as enjoyable as it was colorful.

(There are several other dumpling assortments offered, but you can’t pick and choose from individual varieties, as you can at a traditional dim sum parlor.)

 

The kitchen did a first-class job with a sumptuous braised Maine lobster with noodles in a so-called (slightly spicy) Royal Supreme sauce ($31; above left). The Pipa duck ($32; above right) is in essence half of a Peking Duck without the pancakes or plum sauce, with a crisp skin and luscious layers of fat.

The bill for two came to about $200 before tip, including wine—not a bargain, but the food was well above run-of-the-mill Chineese food. I didn’t look at the wine list, but cocktails, in keeping with the evening’s theme, were well made, but a couple of dollars above par: order the smoky Negroni ($17).

The service is not as coddling as it ought to be at these prices. A host walks you to a seat at the bar, but getting a drink ordered and delivered is too much of a hassle. Service isn’t bad at the tables, but the staff’s attentiveness befits an establishment charging only half as much.

The clubby space isn’t my cup of tea, but the music isn’t so loud that it precludes conversation. The food is compelling, and worth a try if you don’t mind the tariff.

Hakkasan (311 W. 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, Hell’s Kitchen)

Food: Modern Chinese cuisine, skillfully prepared, but at a cost
Service: Good enough, but it ought to be better
Ambiance: A clubby space that would have been chic ten or twelve years ago

Rating: ★★
Why? The food is worthwhile, even if the space isn’t my taste 

Mission Chinese

 

Note: Mission Chinese closed in November 2013 after the Department of Health found a major rodent infestation from a nearby construction site. Chef/owner Danny Bowien had hoped initially to fix the problem and re-open, but eventually concluded that the space was un-fixable. In the interim, Bowien ran a much-admired Mission Chinese pop-up at Frankies 457 in Brooklyn, and later at Mile End in Manhattan. As of September 2014, Bowien planned to re-open in the Lower East Side space that was briefly Rosette.

*

You’ve got every right to be skeptical of hyped restaurants, including Mission Chinese Food, which opened recently on the Lower East Side in the old Rhong Tiam space.

Mission Chinese deserves that hype. The food is clever, well made, and inexpensive. The chef, Danny Bowien, is a Korean from Oklahoma. The food doesn’t replicate any of the well known Chinese cuisines. According to the Times, the chef calls it “Americanized Oriental food.”

Among recent openings, perhaps RedFarm is the closest precedent—not that Bowien’s cuisine resembles Joe Ng’s in any but the vaguest way, but they both take Chinese cuisine as a point of departure, cooking with local ingredients and adapting the tradition to their own style.

Reservations aren’t taken, except for twelve seats at and around the bar. At most reasonable meal times, expect to wait an hour or more. I was seated immediately at 5:45pm on a Tuesday evening. By 7:00pm, when I left, standees were already three-deep at the bar, and the line to get in snaked out the door.

(At least there are other useful places in the neighborhood to cool your heels while you wait—an option not available at the city’s other hot new no-reservations Asian joint, Pok Pok NY, on the Brooklyn waterfront, fifteen minutes’ walk from the nearest subway, and not near anything else of interest.)

The restaurant is similar to a sister establishment in San Francisco, making Mission Chinese one of the very rare examples of a restaurant that has succeeded here after first succeeding somewhere else (which is likewise true of Pok Pok NY). New York is not usually so kind to imports.

The place is a bit ramshackle. You go down a few steps, through a narrow corridor, past the kitchen, and into what looks like a back yard with a makeshift roof that they ran out of money to finish properly. What will that porch will be like when the weather turns cold?

But the price is right, with small plates $4–13 and large ones $6–15. The restaurant donates 75 cents from each entrée to the Food Bank of New York City, a remarkable gesture for such an inexpensive place. The same amount from every cocktail sold will go to a different charity each month.

Even the so-called “small plates” are ample. I ordered one of each, and didn’t finish them. I’d like to try more, though I’m not sure when I’ll be able to return at an hour when the wait would be acceptable to me.

The menu continues to evolve: just today, Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton tweeted that there are two new dishes: $10 red braised pig tails & $9 “married couple’s” beef (tongue, heart, tripe, numbing chili).

 

Thrice-cooked bacon ($11.50; above left) is a devilish concotion, with Shanghainese rice cakes, tofu skin, bitter melon, and chili oil. It merits two “chili peppers” on the menu, and the chef ain’t kidding. It’s a hot dish.

Tea-smoked eel ($9; above right) has rotated off the menu as of today, and from the photos I’ve seen the chef makes it a number of different ways. It was served as an open-ended and over-stuffed dumpling filled with eel, and (I believe) pulled ham, celery, and soy. This was actually the smaller of the two plates, but it came out later and offered a welcome contrast to the blistering-hot bacon.

Cocktails, like the food, are clever, amply portioned, and inexpensive. The One-Eyed Jack ($9) is a characteristic example, with Soju (a Korean vodka), Umebashi (a Japanese plum), mint, and mirin (a Japanese condiment). Another, the Michelada, was made with smoked clam juice, chili, szechuan pepper, and beer.

No, these aren’t grandpa’s cocktails.

I arrived just after the health inspector and was warned the food would be delayed. (I didn’t hear what grade they got, but apparently the gentleman left without incident.) One of the cocktails was silently comped, probably for that reason. Aside from that, service at the bar was just fine. I can’t judge how long the food would take on a normal evening.

In New York, you could eat in another Chinese restaurant every day for years, and not run out of new places to try. There are specialist bloggers who have done practically that. For an assessment of exactly where Mission Chinese Food fits in this vibrant and widely varying community, I would refer you to them.

I can only say for myself, that Mission Chinese has some of the cleverest and most enjoyable inexpensive food I’ve had in quite a long time.

Mission Chinese Food (154 Orchard St. btwn Stanton & Rivington, Lower E. Side)

Food: Chinese-influenced, with pan-Asian and American ingredients
Service: Fine for such a casual establishment
Ambiance: A ramshackle back porch

Rating: ★★
Why? Some of the cleverest and most original food I’ve had in a while

RedFarm

I was put off by the lines—the promise of an uncertain wait for one of the few communal seats. That’s why I didn’t visit RedFarm after it opened last August.

I’d liked the dim sum of the talented chef, Joe Ng, at Chinatown Brasserie. It was everything RedFarm isn’t: a big-box place that takes reservations and de-humanizes the cuisine, but was pretty darned good, for what it was—way back in 2007.

Then Pete Wells gave it two stars, and if he’s a critic of limited range, I’m pretty sure he gets casual Chinese: his review of Wong, in early January, was right on the money. So I was ready to give RedFarm a try.

At 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, all 45 seats were packed, and the host quoted a wait of forty-five minutes to an hour. He offered to take a phone number and text me when a spot opened up (there is no waiting space at all), but I didn’t want it that much. A couple of evenings later, I had better luck. But even at 5:30, there were only about three seats free. That’s how popular RedFarm is.

 

Shrimp and Snowpea Dumplings ($10; above left) might be taken as typical of Chef Ng’s knack for dim sum. They’re not merely cute (with little “eyes” staring back at you), but colorful (the skin is transluscent) and bursting with flavor.

The Creekstone Farms prime dry-aged ribeye steak ($39; above right) is marinated overnight, and served sliced, with crisp french-fry sized mini-spears of asparagus. It isn’t as thick or as musky as the better steakhouses serve, but it is better than you expect it to be.

This isn’t the right way to dine at RedFarm, although it’s the only way I had time for. The dishes are all designed for sharing. Go with three friends. Entrées and rice/noodle dishes are in a wide price range ($15–39), likewise the starters ($6–19) and dim sum ($7–19). Average it out, and you’re likely to spend a lot less per person on than the $49 I did.

Although the décor is bare-bones, it doesn’t feel cheap. What may seem that way is merely a stylistic choice. But it’s a style not designed for comfort or elbow room. Most of the seating is at communal tables; there are a few 2- and 4-person booths. Expect to be very cosy with your neighbor. But the staff are attentive and knowledgeable, within the confines of the format.

The beverage options are fairly limited, with about fifteen bottles of wine and seven beers, but there’s a full bar. Of the three cocktails I tried (all $12), I best liked “Le Club Hot,” with silver tequila, lime juice, agave nectar, jalapeño, and mint.

By the end of the meal, Chef Ng had recognized me, or at least guessed that I was going to be writing about the restaurant. He spoke to me at some length about his forays to the greenmarket, his quest to serve the perfect steak, and so forth. I humbly suggested he do the same with a pork chop.

Although restaurants of this ilk, with their no-reservations policies and cramped seating, are much associated with the younger generation, diners at RedFarm were in a wide age range on the night I visited. It takes patience to dine here, and a willingness to forego many of the standard amenities. So far, people seem to feel it’s worth it.

RedFarm (529 Hudson Street, south of Charles Street, West Village)

Cuisine: “Innovative, Inspired Chinese Cuisine with Greenmarket Sensibility”
Service: Very good, within its limitations (no coat check, reservations not taken)
Ambiance: Bare-bones chic; cramped; not the most comfortable

Rating: ★★

Café China

 

When you think about Chinese cuisine in Manhattan, excluding take-out, two pictures come to mind. The first is the expensive high-end places like Chin Chin, Shun Lee, and Mr. Chow, which get practically no love from the food community. Just mention them on Chowhound and wait for the sparks to fly. At the other extreme are the respected authentic places like Szechuan Gourmet and Oriental Garden, where décor is bare-bones or non-existent, the service hurried and even discombobulated.

Café China, which opened in Murray Hill in early September, looks like an attempt to bridge that gap. No one would call it ultra-fancy, but the narrow, deep space is soothing to look at: decked out in 1930s charm with antique chandeliers and sconces; comfortable banquettes and diner chairs; dark wood tables mostly without tablecloths; old Shanghai posters on the walls, painted powder blue; and understated Chinoiserie dappled around the room.

There are lacquer chopsticks (replaced after every course), but paper napkins; reservations are accepted. You could have a romantic meal or a business dinner here, without paying the extortionate prices (for often forgettable food) of a place like China Grill or Philippe. Heck, even the website feels comfortable.

It’s run by a husband-and-wife team from China, Xian Zhang and Yiming Wang, with a classically-trained Sichuan chef, Xiaofeng Liao, in the kitchen.

The menu doesn’t stint on heat, if you want it, and you’re welcome to test your stomach with the likes of beef tendon, diced rabbit, jellyfish, duck blood, “salivating” frog, and freshwater eel. Traditional take-out staples, like Double Cooked Pork and Kung Pao Chicken, are barely more than footnotes. Orange-Flavored Beef and General Tso’s Chicken are nowhere to be found.

It’s not a short menu, but it doesn’t extend to hundreds of items, as these places sometimes do. Most appetizers are less than $10. Entrées top out at $25, but there are many less than $20.

The two dishes I tried were in retrospect too similar, both swimming in a pool of hot bright-orange chili oil, but that’s my fault, not the restaurant’s. Both would probably have been better to share, but I was there alone.

Spicy Beef Tendon ($9; above left) with peppercorn and chili peppers was satisfying and sinus-clearing. The sheets of tendon had the consistency of taffy. Whole Tilapia in Spicy Miso Sauce ($22) was a messy and unsubtle pleasure. The fish was soft and came off the bone easily.

After that, a refreshing bowl of Lychee Sorbet (left), to get that intense chili taste out of my mouth, was practically mandatory.

You wouldn’t mind lingering in this pleasant spot, and with the space nowhere near full on a Monday evening, they would be happy to have you. Alas, there’s no liquor license yet, so there is little incentive to hang around. I assume that’ll be rectified eventually.

There are folks on the food boards that practically live on places like this. I’ll let them decide, in due time, where Café China ranks in the city’s Chinese pantheon. I will certainly go back.

Café China (13 E. 37th St. between Fifth & Madison Avenues, Murray Hill)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *½

Szechuan Gourmet (39th Street)

Last year, I visited Szechuan Gourmet on 56th Street, the newest branch of that venerable and successful chainlet. I wanted to try the 39th Street branch that had won two stars from Frank Bruni in 2008.

On a menu with 100 items and numerous daily specials, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions from just two dishes. Nevertheless, we liked Szechuan Gourmet 39 much less than SG 56.

I thought that Sun-Dried Pork Belly with Leeks ($14.95; above left) might be the pork belly dish that Bruni liked. On re-reading, I am not sure, because Bruni called it an appetizer and didn’t mention leeks. This was apparently meant to be an entrée, but it is not really a successful one. The bacon was cloying and a bit too greasy. It needed heat or textural contrast, which the leeks didn’t supply.

My son ordered less adventurously, choosing Prawns in Spicy Garlic Sauce ($20.95; above right), a dish offered (in some form) at every Chinese restaurant in town. This was certainly a much higher quality version of it.

If I cannot offer a definitive comparision of the food between the two Szechuan Gourmet branches, I can certainly say that 39th Street is a far less pleasant space than 56th Street. No one would call the uptown branch elegant, but it feels like a restaurant, a place you wouldn’t mind lingering in. Here, you order, you eat, you leave.

At 8:00 p.m. on the Sunday evening of a holiday weekend, when many New Yorkers were out of town, we waited about 10–15 minutes to be seated in a full dining room. Service was inattentive, although the food came out promptly.

There is certainly more of the menu I would like to try, but as more-or-less the same menu is available at 56th Street, I think I’ll go there.

Szechuan Gourmet (21 W. 39th St. between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

Food: *
Service: Fair
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: *

WallE

Note: WallE closed without fanfare in February 2012. It never caught on, and my 1½-star rating was probably a half-star too high.

*

I have fond memories of Chin Chin, the upscale Chinese restaurant in East Midtown where we held the rehearsal dinner before my wedding. The marriage didn’t work out. The meal was fabulous.

Last year, Wally Chin, who co-owns Chin Chin with his brother Jimmy, announced he’d be opening a modern Chinese place nearby. It was delayed almost a year while he dealt with health problems, before opening in March.

He calls it WallE (wall–EE), a play on Mr. Chin’s first name. Or, to give the full name, WallE Restaurant & Lounge. The website plays up the “lounge” aspect of it, which might not be a wise choice. There’s a casual front room with a TV behind the bar that’s tuned to ESPN, and a more formal dining room where we were initially seated. There was a loud private party, so we asked to move up front, where not many tables were taken.

The chef, Chris Cheung, has worked at a bunch of Chinese/Asian restaurants, and even Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar. His menu here is Chinese with American inflections: thus, there’s a burger sandwiched between scallion pancakes, and buns with foie gras.

You will eat like a king, for not very much money. “Small plates” (heaven forbid they call them appetizers) are $7–16, “large plates” (entrées) $16–29, rice dishes $12–19, side dishes $4–9. It’s not cheap the way Chinatown is cheap, but it’s not bad at all for a good midtown address.

Portions are huge, starting with a superb bread selection (above left) that, for me, could be dinner most nights all by itself. Likewise a Pu Pu Platter ($10 per person; above right) with an assortment of lobster rolls, dumplings, and rock shrimp.

   

The aforementioned burger ($16; above left), made from Pat LaFreida dry aged beef, has a compelling, smoky flavor. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s enormous: I ate just half. Shoestring fries that came with it (above center) were pretty good.

A hefty portion of tender Baby Back Ribs ($23; below left) came with a huge side of macaroni & cheese (above right) that we barely touched.

It is a pity that we had almost no room for a rice dish we shouldn’t have ordered, Shanghai Belly ($12; above right) with three luscious hunks of pork belly and a fried egg. The small taste I had of it was wonderful.

The minimal wine list is adequate, though certainly not a draw on its own. The cocktail menu features the likes of a Mai Tai and drinks that end in “–tini” without the “mar–” prefix. Service was good, but the server ought to have advised us that we had ordered far too much food.

I don’t deduct points for décor I dislike, but I found the space sterile and charmless. The restaurant seats 120, but it has a “big box” feel that might have been fashionable about ten years ago. It is as if Mr. Chin were regurgitating decorating ideas that were cool for 15 minutes in 2002, and that he were utterly oblivious to anything that has happened since.

WallE may ultimately succumb to an identity crisis. The owner wans to appeal to the “lounge” crowd, but the space is far too passé for that to work. The chef hopes to serve modern, “interesting” food (and largely succeeds), but the people who’d be attracted to it might find the lounge vibe off-putting.

WallE (249 E. 53rd Street near Second Avenue, East Midtown)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *
Overall: *½

Szechuan Gourmet

Last week, the Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema published his latest list of the ten best Chinese restaurants in the city, nine of which I had never even heard of. That fact will tell you, right up front, my qualifications for reviewing Szechuan Gourmet on 56th Street, which weighed in at #7. If the list had been French or Italian, I most likely would have heard of all, and been to most of them.

It’s not that Chinese cuisine is unfamiliar to me—I’ve probably had it hundreds of times. But I haven’t made a point of seeking out the kinds of places Sietsema does.

So, why did I visit #7 on his list? Convenience was one reason: it’s the only one he listed that’s in Manhattan north of Canal Street, and while I don’t mind a trip to Chinatown or the outer boroughs, on this night proximity was king. The other reason was that I’d at least heard of Szechuan Gourmet, thanks to Frank Bruni’s two-star review of the 39th Street outpost in 2008. (There is also a branch in Flushing; the 56th Street restaurant opened last year.)

The menu meanders, as it does at many Chinese restaurants, with over a hundred items in ten categories. You can be a wimp, and order General Tso’s Chicken or Moo Shu Pork. You can also order duck tongues, pig kidneys, intestines (of an unspecified animal), and eel threads (whatever that means). We ordered between those extremes, choosing the hottest dishes we could find.

 

Szechuan Pork Dumplings ($5.95; above left) with roasted chili soy came—most unusually—in a bowl. They were more delicate and far less greasy than the dumplings most Chinese restaurants serve. Spicy Hot & Sour Cellophane Noodles ($6.95; above right), floating in an intense chili oil, were a challenge to eat, but rewarding all the same.

There are four versions of Braised Whole Black Bass ($21.95; above) on the menu, varying only in how spicy they are. We ordered the hottest of these, to the point that the taste of the fish was nearly obliterated. Best we could tell, the bass had been cooked perfectly, but at certain levels of heat it becomes nearly impossible to say. But the dish was irresistible. With a couple of appetizers and a vegetable, it could really be an entrée for two.

 

The kitchen did a beautiful job with Sautéed Broccoli in Spicy Garlic Sauce ($10.95; above left). By this time, we were too full to appreciate Crispy Boneless Duck ($17.95; above right), but that is no fault of the dish, which was as well prepared as everything we tried.

The service was a cut above most Chinese restaurants in the city. Without prompting, servers poured beer and replaced both plates and flatware between courses—amenities that, at other kinds of restaurants, would pass without mention. The timing of each course was just about right (the usual problem is the food arriving all at once).

The space is not luxurious, but it is a lot nicer than most of those on Sietsema’s list (he is not really an “ambiance” kind of guy). The tables and banquetts are comfortable, and there is a handsome bar. You could bring a date here, as long as you don’t mind smelling like chili powder afterwards.

We walked in on a Saturday evening without a reservation (I don’t know if they’re even taken) and were seated immediately. The restaurant was around 90 percent full, with a mixture of local couples, tourists, and families.

I’m not qualified to put Szechuan Gourmet in relation to the other places on Sietsema’s list, but this is certainly very good Chinese food, and well worth a visit.

Szechuan Gourmet (242 W. 56th Street, east of Eighth Avenue, West Midtown)

Food: **
Service: **
Ambiance: *
Overall: **