Peking Duck House

A couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the Peking Duck House for—well, you can probably guess.

The ways of this restaurant are a bit mysterious. When I called for a reservation, they claimed not to take them for parties fewer than six, but plenty of two-tops seemed to be waltzing right in (past the long line) to pre-reserved tables.

Our party of three waited at least half-an-hour to be seated at around 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. When we left, less than 90 minutes later, the walk-in line was even longer. As I noted in a previous review, this restaurant is geared to turning tables with military precision, though the food they serve, by its nature, takes a while to eat.

Most parties seemed to order the house special. For a fixed price of $36.50 per person, you get  a whole Peking duck (as long as you have at least three people) and some number of additional appetizers and entrées, depending on party size. The amount of food is obscene: even with four people, instead of three, I doubt we could have finished it.

After the appetizers (above), the duck (below) was presented tableside, then whisked away to be carved. There seems to be one chef who does nothing else.

After the superb duck, the entrées (above) seemed almost superfluous. It would probably be better if they were served separately, but as the restaurant wants to turn tables, they were served at the same time as the duck, which made for an awfully crowded table. A dessert of fresh sliced fruit (left) went barely touched.

If you can look past the factory atmosphere, the Peking Duck House remains an essential restaurant for its signature ingredient, which it prepares as well as anyone.

Peking Duck House (28 Mott Street between Pell and Mosco Streets, Chinatown)

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

Tse Yang

I tried Tse Yang last week with a friend visiting from out of town. It’s an opulent place that puts a fine-dining gloss on Chinese cuisine usually associated with take-out. It has been around for 20 years, along with a sister restaurant in Paris. All of the menu items are listed in two languages, French and English, an affectation that I suspect is mostly for show.

Most of the online reviews emphasize that this place caters to expense accounts and well-heeled plutocrats. Soups and appetizers range from $6.50–28.00 (most over $15), entrées $19.50–55.00 (most over $25), vegetables, rice and noodles $12.00–19.50. It’s a little odd to see items listed at $0.25 and $0.75 increments, at a place where the average check size is probably over $75 per head.

There’s a serious wine list (which we did not sample), and service is a big step up from the average Chinese restaurant. We ordered entrées to share, which were plated tableside. The servers are efficient, but they seemed bored—as you would expect at a place with laminated menus that probably haven’t changed in decades, except to raise prices.

We ordered quite modestly: a spring roll (left) plus shared orders of “Your Favorite Tse Yang Chicken” and “Lemon Sweet–Sour Pork” (right). There was nothing revelatory about either dish, but the flavor balances and freshness were well above what you’d get at take-out—as they ought to be.

The final bill was $36 per person before tip. You can probably get food just as good or better in Chinatown for a much lower price, but the refined atmosphere at Tse Yang fits the bill for a quiet, relaxed meal.

Tse Yang (34 E. 51st Street between Park & Madison Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Shang

Note: Shang closed in October 2011. As of April 2012, the space is Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya.

*

New York is often unkind to imported chefs. New York’s Adam Platt, the city’s most clueless critic, once declared, “If I were them, and I had a successful restaurant elsewhere, I would not come.”

True enough, there have been some well publicized flops, especially where the itinerant chef is not in permanent residence: Lonesome Dove, anyone? Alain Ducasse has failed twice here, and at two current restaurants (Adour and Benoit) he has brought in new chefs after less than a year in business. Yet, had Thomas Keller and Joël Robuchon followed Platt’s advice, we would not have the exquisite Per Se or the sublime L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.

Still, these are tough waters to navigate. So it took a dash of audacity for Susur Lee to close his internationally acclaimed Toronto restaurant, Susur, and open Shang on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Like those other chefs, Lee won’t be here full time (he still has another restaurant in Toronto), though he is a partner at Shang and presumably has a lot riding on its success.

In Toronto, Lee was best known for his “reverse degustation” tasting menu, which “began with robust, heavier dishes and grew progressively lighter as the evening went on.” At Shang, he wisely chooses not to demand that kind of commitment. He offers instead an à la carte menu of tasting plates, most of them (except the soups) suitable for sharing.

The menu has 35 items in various categories, priced $3–29, but most are from $13–20. The “small plates” format is notoriously prone to upselling and over-ordering, but the server’s recommendation of four to six dishes for two people was exactly right—we settled on five, plus a half-order of bread, for a total of $88.50, which is remarkable for food this good.

Shang avoids other pitfalls often encountered at this type of restaurant. Sometimes, plates advertised for sharing are actually difficult to share—e.g., three sliders for two people. Here, every dish was evenly divisible by two. (One eGullet poster, though, was annoyed when Shang served six lamb chops for a party of seven. A server ought to have noticed that.)

The other pitfall is timing. At some restaurants, the plates come out in crashing waves, drowning you in food you’re not yet ready to eat. You often wonder if the kitchen’s convenience has trumped the diner’s. Here too, the staff got it just right. We started with a salad—the immense Singapore Slaw ($16; right)—then two appetizers, and finally two main courses, all paced appropriately.

The service impressed us in other ways. Our first half-bottle of wine was slow to arrive. That shouldn’t happen, but the server handled it the right way: by telling the kitchen to slow down, so that we wouldn’t be drinking water with our appetizers.

We asked for an order of the Whole Wheat Manto Bread ($3; left). Without prompting, the server offered to cut it down to a half-order, as a full portion is more than two people would normally eat. We certainly had no way of knowing this, and many servers wouldn’t be alert enough (or honest enough) to point it out.

That Singapore Slaw comes in a volcano shape (there’s a photo on Gael Greene’s blog) before a server tosses its 19 ingredients tableside. I won’t try to describe the blizzard of flavors; you have to try it. The menu describes it as a portion for two, though four could easily share it.

The Mantou Bread is roasted to order, and the server warned it wouldn’t come out for about 20 minutes. It’s absolutely wonderful, but given that it’s only 37½ cents a slice, I wonder why the restaurant doesn’t just send out an order at the front end of every meal?

Chef Lee’s cuisine has been described as Chinese fusion. Everything we tasted was ablaze in flavor and impeccably prepared. Most of it you would find in no other restaurant.

Vegetable Potato Dumplings ($13; above left) wore a crusty cloak—yes, there are four individual dumplings on that plate. Lobster and Shrimp Croquettes ($18; above right) were in a delicate puffy jacket, each resting on a slow-cooked wedge of daikon.

Mongolian Lamb Chops ($20; above left) were as tender and flavorful as I’ve experienced in any restaurant lately, along with glazed bananas and a chili mint sauce. A cold carrot cardamom chutney would have been better omitted. A Young Garlic Chicken ($20; above right) yielded six pieces of plump meat, cooked perfectly.

I was pleased to see an ample selection of half-bottles of wine, an option far more restaurants should offer. It gave us the chance to sample two halves for a total of $41, less than we normally pay for a full bottle. (Now that I look back on it, I think they charged us less for the wine than the prices listed.)

Though Shang is a casual restaurant, the service team would be at home in a more formal setting. Fresh plates and silverware, and extra serving utensils, are provided for each course. Chopsticks are enamel, rather than the disposable wood most places use. Even the starched white napkins are delivered with a flourish.

Some glitches still need to be worked out. The large bar area was practically deserted. Yet, when I asked for a cocktail list, the inattentive and seemingly bored bartender gave me the bottle service list instead, which listed only two cocktails. Only when we got to the table did we realize the restaurant offers a dozen others. Our bar tab was not transferrable to the dining room.

The dining room itself was about 25 percent full when we arrived at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, and about 75 percent full when we left. That’s probably not as good as they’d like, though not bad in a neighborhood that doesn’t come alive till late.

Shang is located in a luxury boutique hotel, the Thompson LES. The space is as gorgeous as it is comfortable. If you’ve been around a while, you have to pinch yourself before you believe you’re at the formerly desolate corner of Houston and Allen Streets. The restaurant’s advertised address—a separate entrance on Orchard Street—is not yet open. You get there via the hotel entrance on Allen Street.

No restaurant opening today can be assured of success, but if Chef Lee keeps his eye on the kitchen, Shang should do very well indeed.

Shang (187 Orchard Street between Houston & Stanton Streets, Lower East Side)

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

Shun Lee Cafe

Shun Lee, is the dean of the pre-Lincoln Center restaurants. It has been serving haute Chinese classics since 1981, when Mimi Sheraton awarded two stars in the Times.

The original space was apparently “dim and dowdy.” It received a snazzy makeover in 1985, but Bryan Miller found the food inconsistent, demoting it to one star in 1987. For the record, Shun Lee’s sister restaurant, Shun Lee Palace, which has been around since 1971, and serves the same menu, still carries two stars, courtesy of Ruth Reichl in 1995.

Shortly after the 1985 makeover, the front dining room was converted into a separate Dim Sum-themed restaurant called Shun Lee Cafe. The main restaurant and the cafe are separately reservable on OpenTable, but they share the kitchen and restroom areas.

Shun Lee Cafe offers an abbreviated version of the full restaurant menu, but when we visited the other day, we had Dim Sum on our minds.

Dim Sum comes on a cart, which a server wheels around the restaurant. There are only a few items at a time on the cart. This keeps the food fresh, but you don’t really know what’s coming next. The server just tells you what she has; either you want some, or you wait until next time the cart comes around. After she serves you, she scribbles on the back of a card. The more scribbles at the end of the meal, the more you pay.

Most items come in pairs, making them well suited to sharing. We had eight servings for a total of $54, which averaged out to $6.75 each. With two cocktails ($10 ea.) and two desserts ($6 ea.), the total cost of the meal was $86 before tax and tip. You’d pay a bit less in Chinatown, but you wouldn’t have Lincoln Center across the street, and you wouldn’t have Shun Lee’s incredibly clever light fixtures staring down at you.

 

We started with dumplings: beef (above left) and shrimp (above right), both done to a high standard.

 

The cart’s next couple of visits featured items from the deep fryer. Our favorite was the Giant Crab Claw (lower left-hand side of the first photo), a large juicy hunk of crab. We loved it so much that we asked for another one.

Shrimp Cheese Puffs (right side of the second photo) came a close second. Shrimp and ricotta cheese made fine company. We also enjoyed the Shrimp Taro Pancakes (left side of the second photo).

The only real dud was the Chicken Sesame Pancake (upper left of the first photo), which had the consistency of shoe leather.

Service was efficient, as it must be at a pre-theater place, though there was some of the upselling, huckstering quality endemic to such restaurants. We asked for just one dessert to share, but the server, perhaps feigning hearing loss, brought two.

Like most long-term restaurants, Shun Lee has its crowd of devoted regulars. Much of the crowd was distinctly elderly. The restaurant has a long-standing relationship with the Jewish community. The owner, Michael Tong, estimates that his clientele is seventy percent Jewish. His busiest day of the year is Christmas, and he can even prepare a kosher banquet on request.

I haven’t been to the main restaurant in many years. Our visit here reminded me that it has been too many years. I’ll have to rectify that. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a more casual option in the area, Shun Lee Cafe is a respectable choice.

Shun Lee Cafe (43 W. 65th Street, east of Broadway, Upper West Side)

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

Philippe

 

I missed the Mr. Chow moment. That was almost 30 years ago, when Michael Chow opened Mr. Chow in East Midtown, building on successes in London and Beverley Hills. It was supposed to be haute Chinese reinterpreted for a modern audience, but it was always more about people-watching. Mimi Sheraton was unimpressed when she awarded one star in the Times. When Mr. Chow opened a fourth branch last year in TriBeCa, Frank Bruni turned in a devastating zero-star review. Not that it mattered. Mr. Chow is still there.

For 26 years, Philippe Chow (no relation) was the executive chef at Mr. Chow in midtown. Last year, he opened his own place just a few blocks away, and christened it Philippe. He hasn’t waited long to expand, with an outpost in Mexico City, and branches in Miami and Las Vegas to come.

Philippe was basically ignored by most of the critics in town. I believe Adam Platt was the only one who bothered, awarding zero stars. The menu is basically a clone of Mr. Chow. Philippe Chow’s aim in life is not to challenge us with anything new, but simply to get a piece of the gravy train that the other Chow has been feeding on for so long. Nevertheless, Philippe does have some advantages: It is not as hideously over-priced as Mr. Chow.

 
Chicken Lettuce Wrap (left); Whole Crispy Duck (right)

To start, we had the Chicken Lettuce Wrap ($15), which my friend Kelly remembered fondly from Mr. Chow. I assume the mystery meat we were served was indeed chicken, but it had that bland generic taste of the take-out place down the street. Kelly said that it was nowhere as good as the wraps at Mr. Chow.

Nearly all of the entrées are priced for two persons. We ordered the Crispy Duck ($54), served with the traditional pancakes, duck sauce, lettuce and scallions. Unlike the traditional Peking Duck (which Philippe also offers, at $65), this duck is deep-fried. It was presented whole, then dissected table-side. We were mightily impressed with the textural contrast between the crisp skin and the succulent, fatty duck meat. It was so tender that the server only needed two spoons to pull it off the bone.

We also had an order of pork fried rice ($8) to share. It was gorgeously presented in a gleaming silver crockpot, but it wasn’t warm enough, and it tasted like it had come out of the microwave. 

There is a tendency to upsell. We didn’t finish anything we ordered—and, in the case of the duck, I was sorry to leave any of it behind. Nevertheless, our server tried his best to persuade us to order a second appetizer, which would have been truly a waste. After the duck was cleared, he brought a tray of dessert samples to our table, a practice normally encountered only at low-class restaurants.

Nevertheless, we did take the plunge on dessert, and I wasn’t sorry we did. Kelly was happy with a chocolate éclair (right), and I enjoyed an orange–carrot tart (left), both beautifully plated.

It’s hard to rate Philippe, because the duck was first-class and the desserts were very good, but our appetizer and fried rice were no better than mediocre take-out. But plenty of places in town are less expensive and more consistent.

Philippe (30 E. 60th Street between Park & Madison Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Chinatown Brasserie

Note: Chinatown Brasserie closed in June 2012. The owners say it will relocated to an as-yet unidentified smaller space. The current space will re-open as a French restaurant helmed by Andrew Carmellini, with whom the same owners are in partnership at Locanda Verde and The Dutch.

*

Chinatown Brasserie is another of the high-concept big-box Asian palaces that have opened in recent years. But my girlfriend and I found it more pleasant and less cynical than many of its brethren. It’s owned by the same team as Lever House and Lure Fishbar, and once again they seem to have hit the mark.

The restaurant’s specialty is Dim Sum (various items, $8–22). We ordered a selection, of which I’m afraid I don’t have a specific recollection. The pièce de résistance was the traditional Peking Duck for Two ($48), which fully lived up to the better preparations of it that I’ve enjoyed elsewhere. (Other entrées were priced $17–28.)

Dim Sum

Peking Duck

Chinatown Brasserie (380 Lafayette St. between Great Jones St. and E. 4th St., NoHo)

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

Ruby Foo's Times Square

 

Ruby Foo’s Times Square is part of the sprawling B. R. Guest Restaurant Group. The owner, Stephen Hanson, seems to have a Ph.D. in populism. Once called “king of the one-star restaurant world,” his empire now stretches to sixteen restaurants—some of them clones, and most of them in New York. They are usually riffs on popular genres. His lone failure, as far as I know, was the ill-fated Barça 18, which not even the services of Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert as consulting chef could save.

The first Ruby Foo’s (now called Ruby Foo’s Uptown) sported a $3.5 million David Rockwell interior (an extravagant sum in 1999), but managed to keep dinner under $30 a head. An approving Ruth Reichl awarded two stars in the Times. It was an instant sensation, and the Times Square branch opened just a year later. The Times reported that the outdoor neon sign alone cost $1.5 million.

The rhythm of the neighborhood is tied to Broadway. Most restaurants, whether good or not, are packed until about 7:30, when they abruptly clear out. Many of them do a brisk after-show business, too. We had no trouble getting a same-day 9:30 p.m. reservation, as it was early enough that most shows hadn’t let out yet. We saw a steady stream of late customers coming in after us. The menu is well suited to “grazing,” making Ruby Foo’s especially attractive for a late-night snack.

Like many restaurants in the pan-Asian genre, the menu at Ruby Foo’s is divided into multiple categories, with both creative and traditional takes on Chinese, Thai, and Japanese cuisine. The menu announces that “the fun is in sharing — your server will guide you.” We didn’t get much guidance, and it was hard to tell how much food to order.

Colossal Spicy Tuna Tempura Maki Roll (left); Thai Chicken Wings with Spicy Tamarind Glaze (right)

There are almost 20 kinds of rolls in two categories: Ruby’s Rolls ($7.00–9.50) and Monster Rolls ($9.00–10.50). The server advised that, despite the names, all rolls are the same size, except for the Colossal Spicy Tuna roll ($10.00), which is slightly larger. So I ordered that. The whole roll seemed to have been deep-fried, and while it wasn’t really that spicy, it was enjoyable nonetheless.

There are about 10 kinds of Dim Sum ($7.00–$10.50). We tried the Thai Chicken Wings ($7), which weren’t a bad deal at all, although they were a bit too spicy for my son, who doesn’t care for spicy food. I would have gladly eaten more of them, except that we had a lot more food to go.

Pad Thai Shrimp & Chicken (left); Dim Sum Sampler (right)

My son’s main course was the Pad Thai ($19.50). The photo doesn’t give a proper sense of depth. It was an enormous bowl, and I doubt anyone would finish it if they also ordered an appetizer. It tasted rather generic to me, but certainly acceptable.

The Dim Sum Sampler ($13) came with two apiece of Shrimp Dumplings, Vegetable Dumplings, Szechuan Pork Dumplings, and Chicken Pot Stickers. The pork dumplings were the best of the bunch, while the chicken and vegetable dumplings were so similar in taste that I couldn’t tell them apart.

My main complaint with the service is that all of the food came at once. It also took a long while to arrive. Some of these dishes surely could have been ready sooner, and delivered to the table in stages, so that our meal could have had some pacing to it.

The décor is a feast for the eyes. Even my 12-year-old son appreciated that the atmosphere was a cut above the typical Chinese restaurant. He was particularly taken with the restroom attendant, although he wondered about the purpose of having someone to turn on the faucet and put the soap on your hands, as if it were at all inconvenient to do this yourself.

We had a mixture of hits and near-misses at Ruby Foo’s, but all the food was at least reasonable, as was the bill. For quite a lot of food, it was just $63 before tax and tip (that included one mixed drink). At that price, I wouldn’t mind giving Ruby Foo’s another shot. And there’s still plenty more of the menu to try.

Ruby Foo’s Times Square (1626 Broadway at 49th Street, Theater District)

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

Oriental Garden

I have an unwriten list of one-of-these-days restaurants. Oriental Garden landed on that list after Frank Bruni awarded two stars in the Times almost eighteen months ago, but I only got around to trying it last weekend.

Say what you want about Bruni, but when it comes to recommending casual restaurants with great food, he’s as good as they come. At Oriental Garden, Bruni got it right. He should review this kind of restaurant every week, and leave fine dining to the folks who actually enjoy it.

At first, Oriental Garden can be a little off-putting. The large water tanks crammed with creatures awaiting their doom aren’t as appetizing as the restaurant thinks. When the staff need to weigh a king crab, the scale sits on the floor in the vestibule. Reservations aren’t taken, and there is practically no waiting space to speak of. Tables are crammed together, and the décor is not much better than any generic Chinese restaurant that you’ve seen.

The menu is confusing, and far too long. Like many Chinese restaurants, Oriental Garden seems to serve every dish you’ve ever heard of, and it’s hard to figure out what the restaurant really does well. Ordering felt like throwing at a dart board.

 
Seafood in bird’s nest (left); Lobster with noodles (right)

The Seafood in Bird’s Nest just sounded good, and so it was: a bounty of sea creatures — shrimp, scallops, conch, cuttlefish — all immaculately prepared without over-seasoning or additional distractions. We chose the Lobster with Noodles merely because we saw it at an adjacent table, and it looked good, and so it was. Two dart throws, and two hits.

We marveled at the food that came out to other tables, including king crab, jumbo prawns, multiple preparations of lobster, and a grilled fluke expertly filleted tableside. We also marveled at the guy sitting by himself who ordered chicken with cashews. What was he doing here?

We waited to be seated for about fifteen minutes at around 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. The wait was not pleasant, but once seated the service was competent and fast. The wine list offers about a dozen reds and a dozen whites, none of them Chinese, but all of them quite reasonably priced.

Oriental Garden (14 Elizabeth Street between Bayard and Canal Streets, Chinatown)

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

Peking Duck House

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Peking Duck House.

Peking Duck House is a restaurant you visit for only one dish. Their own website puts it admirably: “It’s all about the duck!”

I visited the uptown location (236 E 53rd St. between Second & Third Avenues) a couple of months ago, only to find out that my guest didn’t care for duck. He could have saved me a lot of trouble by mentioning that before we went inside—in which case I’d have chosen somewhere else. Mind you, it wasn’t a bad meal as Chinese food goes. But I wanted the duck, and the restaurant doesn’t serve it in portions for one.

Last night I visited the Chinatown branch. My friend said she was longing for Peking Duck, so I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed again. You can order the whole duck for $43, but in my experience it’s too much duck for two diners to polish off. But for $35 a head, you get soup, a plate of appetizers, half of a duck, a second entrée, fried rice, and fresh fruit for dessert. If that sounds like a lot of food—well, it is.

We were happy to have Shrimp Sizzling Rice Soup as an option. The shrimp gave the soup an unexpected crunchiness. Many Chinese restaurants offer just the usual Egg Drop or Hot & Sour soups, either of which is instantly forgotten. But we won’t forget the sizzling shrimp.

An appetizer plate came with a spring roll, a vegetable dumpling, barbecued beef on a skewer, and the highlight: Chopped Chicken and Pinenuts on a bed of fresh lettuce, which you roll up and eat like a taco. This was a new appetizer to me, and I might just go back and get a whole order of it.

As our dinner included only half a Peking Duck, we were deprived of the usual spectacle of tableside carving. Instead, the kitchen brought out two of the housemade pancakes for each of us, already stuffed with duck, scallions, cucumbers, and special sauce. That succulent duck ran rings around the pale imitation of it that I had at Buddakan a few weeks ago.

I’m not a big eater, and I could have gone home full at that point, but a second entrée was coming. We chose the Peking Lobster with ginger and scallions. It was a whole lobster, still in the shell, but cracked and split open for easy access to the meat. I’m afraid we ate very little of it, but not due to any flaw of the dish. (My friend took most of it home.) A generous fresh fruit platter likewise went mostly untouched.

This excellent repast was just $35 a head. Beers were a whopping $3.50 each. I saw wine at some tables, but I was not offered a wine list, even after I asked about it.

While I would happily recommend the food, the service wins no awards. When I arrived, it was a full ten minutes before anyone took a drink order. And don’t expect them to notice if your drink runs out—you have to flag them down. The restaurant is designed to turn tables in a hurry, so once you’ve placed your order, you can expect the courses to come trooping out of the kitchen with military precision. After a 2004 renovation, the décor is slightly better than Chintatown’s Plain Jane standard, but still pretty dull, especially after you get past the first few tables up front. Tables are packed fairly tightly together, although a less-crowded downstairs dining room seems to offer more elbow room.

I didn’t write  a review of my visit to the uptown location, but as I recall the service there was a bit more polished.

Peking Duck House (28 Mott Street between Pell and Mosco Streets, Chinatown)

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

Buddakan

Of the two restaurants that Stephen Starr transplanted from Philadelphia last year, Buddakan seems to have been the more successful. Morimoto, on the other hand, didn’t quite live up to Starr’s promise that it would be “far more interesting than any restaurant New York has seen.” It even achieved the rare distinction of a “Don’t bother” rating from Andrea Strong, who hardly ever visits a restaurant she does not like.

Back to Buddakan: A business associate invited me to dinner there the other night — I suggested it, he was paying, which is always a pleasurable combination. The menu on the website seems to be outdated, or maybe it’s the Philadelphia menu, as the New York portion of the site is still “Under Construction.” After almost a year, when are they planning to finish it?

I can tell you we absolutely loved Deviled Tuna Tartare ($10), Crab and Corn Fritters ($14), Crispy Taro Puff Lollipops with pork and ginger ($12), and shrimp dumplings, most of which came from the Dim Sum section of the menu. Peking duck ($44) is the most expensive entrée, and at that price I missed the show of having the bird carved tableside, as the better Chinese restaurants do. The pancakes were smallish, and in the dark room they were almost indistinguishable from the paper doilies that were used to keep them from sticking together. The duck was fine, if a bit oily. A side order of Chinese Sausage Fried Rice topped with a fried egg ($12) didn’t have much sausage in it.

There are a lot of rooms at Buddakan. The one we were in didn’t have the “wow” power of the rooms usually featured in photos, but it was comfortable and not overly crowded. In the style of modern “small-plate” restaurants, dishes are designed for sharing and brought out when ready. Our table couldn’t quite accommodate all that food as the appetizers started to pile up.

Service was a little bit confused. Two sets of wine glasses were deposited and removed, before a third set arrived to stay. My colleague chose the wine. They always show the bottle to you, but this is the first time I recall a dining partner saying, “That’s not what I asked for.” And indeed it wasn’t. We began the evening at the cocktail bar. There was no option to transfer the tab to our table, nor did the hostess offer to carry our drinks.

Buddakan is a fun place, and there are enough hits on the menu that I’d gladly go back. But it is not the polished restaurant its owner would like to imagine.

Buddakan (75 Ninth Avenue between 15th & 16th Streets, Chelsea)

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