Ron "Rontini" Y.'s Profile
DateNew York, NY 10016
(212) 213-2810
Café China
Category:
Chinese
Neighborhood: Midtown East
Listed in: Favorite Restaurants in NYC
2 Previous Reviews:
-
11/4/2011
Today I went here for dinner and there were 3 of us. We got seated at the booths - I don't like that part of the dining area. I like the tables at the front seated for two...
We ordered:
* Mouth Watering Chicken - spicy poached chicken with roasted chili-sesame sauce
* Chungking Spicy Chicken
* Chungking Braised Fish: braised fish with Napa cabbage and roasted chili oil (in red soup)
I loved everything that we had tonight. The meat of the mouth watering chicken could have been a little more tender though. I feel that it was poached at a temperature too high. Also, my American friend didn't like the bone-in chicken pieces; I guess she wasn't used to that. She also didn't like the chicken skin on the poached chicken. That's how it is - I liked it, I love eating the skin. She loved the Spicy Chicken though. My Korean friend thought the food tonight was very spicy, which I thought was surprising because I think Korean food is spicier than Chinese food.
All the waiters tonight were Chinese so I got to speak Chinese with them! Yay. Service was top notch.
Next time when I go, I'm going to ask them to make the food more spicy and numbing. More "ma" and more "la". -
10/29/2011
Café China is officially my favorite Chinese restaurant in NYC. I finally found a great place, thanks to NY Mag and Yelp. I came here with a friend yesterday for lunch and we ate for two hours!!
We ordered:
* Ma Po Tofu (lunch special, so it was $9, not $11, included with rice and soup)
* Sautéed String Bean
* Chungking Braised Fish: braised fish with Napa cabbage and roasted chili oil (in red soup)
The string beans were perfect. If I didn't order the other dishes, I would have liked the string beans to be spicier but it was good to have a dish that was not spicy amidst everything else. I have been searching New York's Sichuan restaurants for water boiled fish and I found it at this restaurant! It was served the authentic way, except in fine-dining style. Also, the entire fish was in there (head, tail, fins). I was happy for that. Even though the description says with napa cabbage, I couldn't find anything. There were some bean sprouts but not many. But I can't be that choosy here in the US. They won't even make it like the restaurants in China because I don't think most people here can handle Chengdu Sichuan food.
The disappointment was the tofu. They used powdered spices that looked prepackaged. Because it was identical to the powdered spices that I had at Famous Sichuan in Chinatown. The tofu was not numbing nor spicy at all. This dish is supposed to be very numbing, more than being spicy. I'm not going to get this here again because I can do it better at home.
I definitely give it an A+ for authenticity for a restaurant outside of China. The other patrons were non-Chinese, I was expecting to see more Chinese people there. The waitstaff were American. The waiters were very attentive at refilling everyone's waters. Good. The atmosphere was nice and very Shanghai Tang.
I'm coming back for sure, soon!
New York, NY 10065
(212) 486-2103
City Wine Gallery
Category:
Beer, Wine & Spirits
Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Even though it's a small place, they have a wide selection of wines and their prices are acceptable.
Ricky's the typical kind of guy who cuts your hair if you were in China/Hong Kong. He does it exactly the way that I like it and he's very skilled with the scissors. I always practiced my Chinese with him. He's really nice, he understands what you're looking for, and he takes his time doing his job properly. Also, I usually don't like it when people talk to me during the haircut but Ricky was cool and we had a lot of things to talk about.
After getting a haircut, I would always get my Asian groceries at the Chinese supermarket next door.
New York, NY 10013
(212) 587-3305
Hip Kee Beauty Salon
Category:
Hair Salons
Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Civic Center
There are two women who cut hair there; one is them has more experience and she does it well every time, and then the other is still learning or something like that so she has messed up on my haircut once.
I come here because it's super cheap, it's at a convenient location (my school is just a few blocks away, so if I wanted to shower after getting a haircut, I can immediately do so and not be itchy going home because the $3 rinse is not very thorough), and since they're Chinese, they understand how Asian hair should get cut.
I don't like how they use the clipper and the scissors. Before coming to NY, all my haircuts were done on the scissors.
New York, NY 10011
(212) 741-0052
Adorama
Categories:
Photography Stores & Services,
Electronics
Neighborhood: Flatiron
UGH. So I went to Staples because I didn't want to go all the way downtown to Fulton to J&R. UGH to Friday the 13th. Show owner comment »
New York, NY 10012
(212) 966-0290
Spring Street Natural Restaurant
Category:
American (New)
Neighborhood: Nolita
The service here is so random though. We got REALLY GOOD service yesterday night.
3 Previous Reviews:
-
12/27/2011
My friends and I are never coming back here. They always kick us out at random times during the week and it wasn't even near closing time tonight.
WE ALWAYS COME HERE AFTER class on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. This place is near/behind our school and it's near the 6. I know on Saturday nights, they close later but on Tuesday and Thursday nights, the website says 11:30pm. It was not 11:30pm tonight and they were already pushing us to go. I'm sorry, we come in here to get ONE drink and then we leave. That's what we've been doing for the past two months.
The waiter tonight had an attitude problem because he had the nerve to come back to our table and complain about his tip. First of all, there was almost no service involved. We only come in to drink. We were four people, three of us were regulars, and we always order the same thing. Tonight, since it was four of us, it made more sense to order a bottle of pinot grigio. All the waiter did was open the bottle and poured the wine. He deserved the tip that we gave him. Everyone that I know and everywhere that I've been and witnessed, people give $1 tip per drink.
Spring Street Natural, you just lost three regular-wine drinkers! -
12/16/2011
I had the seafood risotto as my appetizer and the risotto itself was not good. The rice was still crunchy, basically raw. The stock used to make the risotto was oozing and it was under-seasoned. The shrimp was succulent though, and the mussels were tasty too. If I wasn't so hungry, I wouldn't have eaten it.
-
12/14/2011
Love coming here after class with my chef friends for a bottle of pinot grigio.
Then for my entrée, I had an authentic dish that I can't find on the menu. On the menu, it said that they won't change the spiciness for the local American taste, so, immediately, I thought that the dish was going to be great! It was ok... there were 5 shrimp in the ground chicken and lots of bamboo shoots. It had a nice flavor but it wasn't as spicy as I thought it would have been. Nevertheless, I liked everything at Room Service.
I want to visit the Hell's Kitchen location. Why does that one have higher stars than the one in Chelsea?
And yesterday, the line was really long (as usual) and the people in front of me kept on having a conversation with the cashier and all I could think of was "Shut up and leave the counter!!!!" The cashier then went on to cackle like a lunatic.
I don't get it. There were 5 people standing behind the counter, one was doing the cashier, one was making the drinks, and the other 3 were just idling around, chatting long conversations with customers while making other people wait and wait and wait.
Unprofessional and rude.
1 Previous Review:
-
10/30/2011
There was only one time when this Starbucks really deserved 5 stars. All the other times, it's the one-star. Why?
1. This one is tiny, which is surprising because 10 million people come here.
2. Location: Soho - shopping tourist central
3. If you don't want coffee and want to use the restroom, the line for that is always really long.
4. If you want coffee, that line is just as long. Sometimes, the tourists will just stand there, so you have to ask them "are you in line?" They don't respond sometimes so now, I just assume that their lack of a response is "no" and I'll just push in front of them.
5. The staff will forget your drink... all the time.
6. The staff will make your drink wrong... all the time. I DON'T WANT WHIPPED CREAM!!!!!!
7. This place is really dirty too and dark...
Every time before school, I'll walk in, line up for a 10-minutes, line doesn't move or get any shorter, I give up and am ready to vent, I leave.
New York, NY 10013
(212) 964-2229
South China Garden
Category:
Chinese
Neighborhood: Chinatown
The bad: I didn't like how my food came out. I'm more of a westernized Chinese person but I am attached to my Chinese roots and growing up, I ate Chinese food everyday at home. I ordered mapo tofu - no other dish looked appetizing on their lunch menu. Maybe it's because I ordered a Sichuan dish from a Cantonese restaurant, but it was not good. There were weird ingredients inside the tofu, such as mushrooms and peas. Hello?! Peas are so American; do I look ethnically-Caucasian to you? And it wasn't spicy at all NOR NUMBING!!!! And I SPECIFICALLY asked them to make it SPICIER and MORE NUMBING.
I also had the Pork Congee with Thousand Year Egg and that was overcooked. The rice in the congee was so overcooked that it gelatinized the congee so it felt like eating goo.
Note: the restroom is wet and disgusting.
2 Lists
|
"organic food rocking + home cooking + food snobbing"
- 19 Friends
- 89 Reviews
- 16 Review Updates
- 5 Firsts
- 7 Quick Tips
- 1 Fan
- 35 Local Photos
- 2 Lists
-
Rating Distribution
Loading...
- View more graphs »
Review votes:
381 Useful, 300 Funny, and 320 Cool
ROOSEVELT ISL, NY
Yelping SinceDecember 2009
Things I LoveLady Gaga, shopping, cooking, vampires, Whole Foods, Glee, sun tanning
Find Me InAmerican Apparel Robert Kennedy Seersucker Shorts
My HometownBeijing, Toronto, Hong Kong, Plano, Austin, New York City
My Blog Or Website When I'm Not Yelping...I'm drinking chardonnay, pinot gris, and sauvignon blanc
Why You Should Read My ReviewsI cook, I travel, I'm not distracted by the decor/ambiance of places
My Second Favorite Website My First ConcertLady Gaga
My Favorite MovieThe Devil Wears Prada, About A Boy, Finding Nemo, The Sound of Music,
My Last Meal On EarthFreshly caught shrimp from HK then boiled
Don't Tell Anyone Else But...I could definitely be a spy if the world of Alias existed
Most Recent DiscoveryPotato starch!!
Current CrushPaul Wesley
At 7pm on a weekday night, this restaurant was still relatively empty.
There were 4 of us and we devoured:
* Sautéed String Bean
* Chungking Braised Fish: braised fish with Napa cabbage and roasted chili oil (in red soup)
* Tea Smoked Duck
* Kung Pao Chicken
* Pot of tea - $8 - expensive for tieguanyin
I loved the duck!!! It was so flavorful and the meat was tender and juicy. The skin, however, was not crispy and most of them had a layer of fat under the soggy skin. The chicken was delicious too except it wasn't spicy at all and it was a little sweet, but the sweetness was good. My friends really enjoyed this place too.
The bad things that happened tonight: we didn't even finish the string beans on the plate and the American waiter took it away but we asked for it back! lol And also, we waited around 30 minutes to get our bill, we asked for it 5 times!!!