DONGBEI 东北(Upper West Side) — Local services in New York

I love Northeastern cuisine, especially sweet and sour pork. This time, I heard that a Northeastern restaurant was going to open near Columbia University, so I went there immediately. I was very disappointed. There were only two or three seats in the store, and the smell of oil smoke was very strong. After sitting for a while, I had a very obvious smell of oil smoke on my body. The clerk was not very familiar with the operating system, and the dishes were ordered incorrectly. The group said there was an opening event, but the clerk didn't mention it at all when we arrived at the store. After we ordered and asked him, he said that we had to write a good review on Xiaohongshu before we could send it. The dishes were served very slowly. We waited for more than 20 minutes. The kitchen might have been busy making other takeout orders. Our dishes were completely unavailable, and none of them were served. After urging, we waited for another five or six minutes, and finally the dishes were served. We had to go to the counter to get them ourselves. If the dishes were delicious, we wouldn't care about anything else, and it wouldn't matter if it took a little longer, but these three dishes were really unpalatable. The tomato and egg noodles had no tomato flavor, and the noodles were actually made of rice noodles, and the eggs were scrambled and very salty. The braised pork rice, the rice was half-cooked, soaked in the broth and mushy, and the meat was very salty, it tasted like it was overnight and not fresh. The greens were not hot, they were ice cold. (But I was already laughing at this time and didn't want to argue with the boss anymore) Pork in a pot, the sauce tasted okay, but the batter was not done well, it was very hard, the meat inside was a small piece, and it smelled very fishy.

The key is that I often heard the sound of the kitchen heating things with a microwave. It's not that you can't eat heated overnight dishes, but at least you hope that the dishes can taste better, and don't serve them cold. In short, I feel it's not worth it. I braved the cold wind and walked 20 minutes to the restaurant to eat. I gave a lot of tips when I ordered. In the end, I felt that the boss was not prepared at all...

I ordered the beef broth hot pot at max spice. The broth was adequately rich and creamy. The touch of vinegar was excellent for slurping down broth at the end. The peanut sauce on top of everything brought a sweet balance. Much appreciated.

Quite a surprise came to me as I saw the many vegetable options given in my bowl. TBH I do not expect to be served seaweed knots, black fungus, or tofu skin in this part of upper Manhattan. I moved from Manhattan's Chinatown to Harlem so I no longer have more traditional Chinese food at arms length. This brought me great joy.

The benches are comfortable and the people are nice. Their music choice is good too. I don't do much online posting or reviews, but I'd like to be able to return here for a while.

They take great care to give you many options to customize your order to your preference. I hope more...

Small but very clean and nice spot. You can sit down and eat if you like or takeout. Both ladies behind the counter were very nice and would explain any dish I had asked about. Even gave a sample of some noodles that they were handing out for free. I got the braised pork belly bowl with white rice, cabbage, Szechuan chili sauce and soup dumplings. Both dishes were delicious, so much flavor....