大喜川菜馆 DAXI Sichuan cuisine — Restaurant in New York

My family (both sides born and raised in Sichuan’s two biggest cities) loves DAXI. It’s their favorite Sichuan restaurant in the entire USA. It’s not only beautiful, but their menu offers the complicated, unusual and very niche dishes that few other Sichuan restaurants outside big cities can offer, which is the winning factor. Unfortunately if you go to most sichuan restaurants outside China you can only expect the popular items everyone knows. This is not what eating in Sichuan is actually like. Here we get fish maw, silkie chicken stirfry, fatty beef slices in tofu stew, pig trotters in fresh chilies, frog dishes, all these spectacular banquet-style dishes meant to impress the eye and tastebud. At DAXI we are happy to try the inventive new dishes and flavors handled by master Sichuan chefs knowledgeable of all the flavors, traditions and skills required to cook this level of food. This is not your average Chinese hometown restaurant.

Therefore, it is expensive. Just as you expect to pay more for the highest quality French and Italian food, you better pay your respect and expect to pay more for the highest quality Sichuan food (and still, it is not as expensive as Western food).

The tea and service is also amazing, a fragrant high quality jasmine. Waiters appear to whisk away dishes and refill your kettle (even to pour for you) without you ever summoning them. And the food comes out very quickly, in stunning arrangements and tableware! Take someone you want to impress here, it is a treat and very befitting special occasions.

This time we went for a late lunch on a holiday when it was fairly empty. Other times it has always...

We booked a table for 5 over the phone on a Wednesday for dinner. It was not busy but the reception gave us a table of four because one of our friends was coming late. When our friend arrived, instead of adding a side table, the waiter gave us a chair from the table next to us and asked our friend to sit on the side of the table where there was no legroom. After eating uncomfortably for a while, the table next to us had friends coming and was unable to pass through. (we were sitted on one of the table where you have one side of couch and two chairs on the other side of the table ) our friend had to get up and move to the side to let her pass through when she was still eating. The costumer from the table next to us said some disgraceful words to our table in Chinese before leaving just because our friend was arranged to sit at the uncomfortable position.

Yes, it was just that one customer being uncultivated. But, neither of us deserve such dinning experience if the waiters were attentive to the customers and making sure everything was taken care of.

Also, the desserts came in 40 minutes later after we finished the main dishes. I had to emphasis again. The restaurant was NOT busy at all. Half of the tables were unoccupied. There were about 5-6 waiters and waitress walking around. None of us know what happend until we asked another waiter about it. And the desserts came almost right away except for a fried rice cake which we waited another 15 minutes for it. (and it was over fried)

Overall, the food was okay. But the dinning experience was terrible. The waiters need to be properly trained, not just knowing how to...

I swear This is probably the first time I ever had to give a restaurant a horrible review. I would give this place 0-star if it was optional. The food was ok but the service is horrible!!! The server didn’t tell me what was out of stock after “dropping” off the menu. It took 30 minute for one entree to come. The server doesn’t even remember about my food after I order it 25 minutes ago. The dish was $30(that’s considered upscale restaurant, for that price?)I had to remind him about my food. I was going to walk out and he told me it’s ready. The guy never came to even check on me once, neither did he even clean up the table in between dining. I told the guy to bring me an extra rice and he didn’t even bring it over, I had to “ask” again for him to bring it over. When I’m trying to get help to get my bill, there’s three sever chit chatting on the other side without even noticing me. I had to “walk to the front” to pay. I wasn’t even going to leave $1 tip, but I thought they might realize why the tip is so low and improve. The cashier had the courage to tell me it’s minimum 15% tips required! When I ask to speak with the manager, she quickly dodge this matter by telling me “no it’s fine, it’s not necessary “ to avoid the next scene. Don’t ever come here! This is the worse restaurant dine, take this restaurant off your checklist guys! Don’t even make a rain check ever on this place and...