in search of the right restaurant

thursday night, went to grand sichan with the girls- vk, q2, jpan, and theng. a potential restaurant for jpan's wedding rehearsal dinner. we ordered ma po dofu or "house tofu", a typically spicy dish, double cooked pork, garlic stir fried dou miao a green vegetable, and chicken with chili peppers. while the food was good, jpan was worried about the space and ambience. jpan and i decided to meet up friday after work to continue our quest.

after dinner, i did some research to find the city's best chinese restaurants. . . sadly, i have only been to a handful of chinese restaurants in nyc. . . something i hope to do more of this fall. instead, i had to rely on my standbys, citysearch and nymetro, which i did with some wariness as the goal was to find an authentic chinese restaurant (since half of the guests would be flying in from taiwan) and most reviewers are non-chinese.

nonetheless, i came up with the following contendors: shun lee palace, wu liang ye, tse yang, our place shanghai tea garden, and oriental garden. except for the last, all of the restaurants are in midtown.

because of the steady downpour on friday, we decided to minimize our search radius and focus on shun lee palace, wu liang ye, and our place shanghai tea garden. after walking around for twenty minutes dodging pedestrians wielding umbrellas like they were weapons, we gave up looking for wu liang and trekked 11 blocks to e. 55th street. after peeking inside shun lee palace and our place shanghai tea garden, jpan decided that we should try the latter.

she ordered shanghai syled fried rice cake with chicken, broccoli and mushrooms, and beef in a spicy/sweet sauce. the ambience and decor were beautiful. unfortunately, the portions were tiny, the food was unremarkable, and the prices were too high. . .

after dinner, we parted ways and jpan decided she would check out chinatown restaurants. third times a charm, she went to jin fong and was pleased with the food, atmosphere, and got a great deal.