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Chew Man Chu
Rating Details »
Category: Asian Fusion [Edit]
Neighborhood: Avenue of the Arts South440 S Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
(215) 735-8107
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- Yes
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- Yes
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
7 reviews for Chew Man Chu
Du Jour's old space in the Symphony House -- which I think is one of the ugliest buildings in the city's skyline, but that's neither here nor there -- has been reworked into a place with way more pizazz. Du jour, while steady with good food, was full of the earlybird crowd. this has a bit more hip to it, though its almost self-conscious in that hip...and maybe that'll die down once the opening months are over.
Food-wise, its like Asian tapas in practice. The entrees are impressive with performance -- the chicken chow mein came in a firend shell that was cracked and "spilled" at the table, while the complimentary dessert doughnuts with powdered sugar and gooey, yummy chocolate on the inside was shaken in a brown bag tableside and poured out for us -- and our server was kind and knowledgable about all of the on-the-table extras like homemade soy sauce and chili oil. So while the presentation was neat and the ambiance was pretty alright, the food wasn't stellar. It was good, the dumplings were quite good, but my Thai basil chicken wasn't anything to write home about...
Ever since I was young, my mother's been yelling at me for inhaling my food. You'd think I grew up in a competitive eating house with a team of rugby players where it's every (wo)man for him/herself. I eat FAST. Which leads me to my next point. I had dinner at Chew Man Chu last night where the food's so good, I needed to heed the restaurant's reminder to, well, chew man chu.
Please prepare yourself for the overwhelming array of dishes I'm about to lay on you.
Our table started with the oxtail dumplings, pork and shrimp pot stickers, and the scallion roti. While I've never been a real fan of oxtail, I found myself devouring one and then fighting my tablemate for hers. Ultimately, I thought of my mom, and then I resisted. Same goes for the pork and shrimp pot stickers. I shared those as well. I'm a huge fan of roti though and I was able to slyly hide this dish from my fellow eaters. One asked, "what's that on your lap?" "Oh nothing," I replied. (It was the scallion roti).
The Crispy Chinese Salad came next and that I was willing to share. It's salad. I'm willing to sacrifice. Nevertheless, it was a great salad.
Next up: Pad See Ew (my favorite hangover food), Angry Lobster, and Black Pepper Sirloin Steak. The PSE was definitely on the spicy side, so if you're not a fan of spice, you should probably mention that to your server before ordering it. I can definitely understand why the lobster was angry. Chef Tyson chopped it up into pieces. I'd be angry too. It was fantastic though and covered with scallions, garlic, ginger, and oyster sauce. Finally, the Black Pepper Sirloin was a perfect balance of pepper and chives. I feared it might come encrusted in pepper (ick), but it wasn't, it came encrusted in awesome.
I'm not done yet. Sorry.
The Wok Fried Rice with Tofu came next and by that point I was tenderly petting my food baby. Satisfied I was. Still, I had to taste it. Really, I did it for you, dear reader. I can assure you, my taste was a good one and even better when I added soy sauce.
Fiiiiinally, our wonderful (wanna eat him with a little spoon) server brought over Chef Tyson's famous homemade donuts. What a lovely touch. Tyson was so impressed with our eating enthusiasm that he finally came over to our table and invited me out for a game of racquetball, ping pong, or golf. I think he's worried I'll get fat. Ok, I'm done now. Thank you for reading.
I actually give this place 3.5 (cummon, Yelp! Fix this already! We are a generation afraid of commitment!)
I went here for lunch today and I'll say that the service was super, the food was very good, and the atmosphere seemed to lend itself a little better for Asian inspiration than it ever did for Du Jour.
However, I'm not giving it a four or a five for a few reasons: a) I don't think it's uncommon to order soup and a lunch meal, but I wasn't alerted that the soup was the size of my head. 2) I ordered the Hot and Sour soup, which CMC clearly took pains to reinvent, but when I want this soup I want both hot and sour flavors. The CMC version is intensely dark, very rich, and quite heavy, with a very strong emphasis on Hoisin flavors, rather than spicy or sour. And D), for soup and an entree (and a delightful Iced Tea), I got out of there for $30 after tip for just myself.
Tasty, but ouchy.
Lastly, much is absolved when you present me with a fresh, handmade donut. I'd probably go again for that little thing alone.
I really want to give CMC five stars because of the exceptional experience I had, but I will refrain... for now.
Point being, my experience was FANTASTIC.
My friend and I had the most wonderful, special little server-dude working in Philly. I am sure of it. He had an excellent wine suggestion, even though it was pretty clear that he knew very little about the stuff (he was ohhhh maybe 19 years old...) And he made us feel special (surely, we are.)
At any rate, the pork buns are deeeelicious and must be like-whoa bad for you. The giant bathtubs of soup are out of this world. And the lemon grass steak made us cry (good tears).
Topping off the quaaaality dining experience was the "surprise" that you get at the end of your meal. I'm not even going to tell you what it is... hopefully no one else has spilled the beans. I will say this however, it's edible and when I bit into said "surprise" I had a small, yet shocking, orgasm.
Chew Man Chu was worth every starving minute that I spent waiting for my friend to meet me last night for dinner!!
Chew Man Chu is a new restaurant, and like Sarah K. I experienced some of its kinks tonight. We were having dinner with friends at their house, but they called and said they were too tired to cook themselves and instead ordered from Chew Man Chu. Since its on our way to their place, we were more than willing to pick it up for them.
The restaurant itself (in the old Dujour spot) looks exactly like what I would expect any upscale Asian fusion restaurant to look like: very modern with a fun vibe, think Buddakan. It was packed when we arrived to get the food a little after 5:30pm, so word is spreading quickly about this new place. Plus, its in a prime location for anyone attending a nearby performance (and is much better suited to the location, unlike Dujour).
We arrived at our friend's apartment and took out all the food, and that's when we realized we hadn't received any rice. AT ALL. Nope, nada, nothing. At that point though we weren't going to do anything about it, and we were fine without any rice. We got a lot of food since there was a bunch of us, so I got to sample a fair portion of their menu and I sort of agree with what Sarah K said - it isn't anything special. Honestly, if you had asked me to compare those dishes with the same ones from any of the takeout chinese places I've tried, I probably would've had a hard time distinguishing between the "gourmet" cuisine and the "greasy." I would hope that a place that claims to be Asian fusion would have, well, a little of that 'fusion' in their dishes.
We ordered the Pan Fried Chicken and Spinach Dumplings (tasty, not too greasy like they usually are), Crispy Chicken Garlic Roll (also good, nothing too special), Burn Your Tongue Dumpling which is ricotta and shrimp (you would have no idea those two ingredients are in it - and the only thing spicy is the sauce with it. Kind of a chewy texture, in the questionable way), Pad See Ew which is flat rice noodle, beef, egg, chinese broccoli, garlic, sweet soy sauce, and bean sprouts (everyone really liked this dish), Singapore Roasted Garlic Mai Fun-Curry which is thai rice noodle, chicken, garlic, yellow onion, bean sprout (ok, again nothing I haven't seen before), Kung Pao Chicken (again, good but the same), Orange Beef (ok, same thing yet again), and the Tofu Curry (which was actually really good - and the tofu doesn't taste like old sponge like at most takeout chinese places).
So, while you can't expect to encounter anything new and interesting on this menu, the food is still good and its probably made with fresher (and hopefully healthier) ingredients than you would get at your typical chinese takeout place. But at the moment, its not worth the price you pay for that kind of food. They need to update the menu or scale back the price a little for me to go back there anytime soon - or at all.
I have to say that I cannot look at this place's lamely punned name without feeling a twinge of embarrassment on its behalf. Does the term "douchechills" apply here? I'm not sure.
OK, now that I got that off my chest...
We arrived for an earlyish dinner and were greeted by a hostess who seemed a little annoyed that we had shown up and needed a table and menus, too. Although the place was almost empty, we were seated cheek to jowl with another group, resulting in two parties with two servers having to yell over one another.
The menu has a small list of drinks and a long list of dishes, and my friends and I had to ask some questions to make heads or tails of it - thankfully, our server was nice and super helpful. The water filling people and table bussing people were omnipresent and maybe too attentive, grabbing at plates that were still half full.
If you ate at Du Jour, you know what the space looks like - just imagine everything painted purple and orange, plus a big, cool-looking, lit up communal table in the middle. I would like to offer a fist bump to whoever's in charge of the soundtrack. Lots of Cure, and was that Love & Rockets I heard above the din? Ah, my day just got a little better.
Have you ever seen a potato leek spring roll before? I hadn't either, and I'll avoid them if I do again, because they tasted mostly like straight grease. The gingery Vietnamese roll was on the opposite end of the deliciousness spectrum, with lots of flavor and a kick-ass sauce that managed to be salty, sweet and spicy all at once. The main dishes were also really up and down in terms of quality - my friend's yellow curry was good. My fried rice (wait, "wok-fried tofu and vegetables") came out of the kitchen underseasoned, but that was quickly remedied with the tasty homemade soy sauce and chili oil on the table. Moo shu tofu was served an awesome hoisin sauce, but the tofu and vegetables themselves had a surprising, odd taste, almost like maple syrup, that nearly made me commit an uncharacteristic act of public spitting. Fresh, chocolate-filled doughnuts, on the house, ended the meal well.
All in all, the inconsistent food, not-quite-smooth-yet service and highish prices make me wonder if this place will last any longer than its predecessor.
Chew Man Chu just opened this week, and it is obviously still smoothing out the kinks. The entire restaurant filled up quickly at 5pm on Saturday, however there were only two waiters, and so service was incredibly slow. Luckily, my friend and I arrived before the majority of the diners filed in, however, there were couples at our table who waited upwards of 20 minutes before ordering their first round of drinks. Understaffing is most likely a temporary problem, and so my rating is definitely not based on service, but rather on the food itself.
The first thing we noticed was that everything on the menu was basically exactly the same as what you would expect to see at any restaurant in Chinatown with price and size being the only exceptions. Most items on the menu were about double what you would expect to pay for decent fare at a restaurant with less frills and about half the size. For instance, the orange beef, which I unfortunately ordered, was $16.50, and was EXACTLY the same in taste and content as the take-out I often get from smaller Chinese restaurants around the city. The beef, however, was incredibly tough and chewy, and so both my friend and I found it to be inedible and inexcusable. We also ordered a semi-bastardized version of pad thai that was unremarkable and laden with bacon of all things. This was still better than the orange beef in that we were actually able to eat it. After we had started eating our entrees, our appetizers came out. My friend chose the crispy crab won ton, which consisted of four very tiny and overly greasy pieces. These were flavorful but simultaneously disgusting. Is that even possible? It is at Chew Man Chu. The saving grace was our second appetizer, the pork and shrimp potstickers. Again, these were not too far off from what you can get at a cheap Chinese take-out place, but they were still quite tasty.
Everything we ordered was underwhelming and overpriced. The only flare this restaurant has is its loud décor, which I felt we were all paying for. While, I doubt I will ever return to this restaurant, I would suggest to anyone who is interested in trying Chew Man Chu to wait a month or longer when at least the problems with service will more than likely be straightened out.