Little Alley — Restaurant in New York

📍Little Alley @New York, NY

🖤好食 (quality)：😋😋😋😋😋 🤍環境 (environment): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🤎服務 (service): 💗💗💗💗💗

I have got a great place for you to enjoy some traditional Shanghainese cuisine in NYC! ✨Not only their food is yummy, their interior design is also so aesthetic, it’s perfect for friends to enjoy some comfort food after work! 🤩All of the food they offer reminds me of home, like their marinated cucumber and Shanghai stir fried thick noodles! 🥰This time, I got….

✨Sweet & Sour Ribs ✨ This was cooked perfect, the sweet and sour taste were balanced! 🥸It is a perfect appetizer to snack on before the real meal! The ribs were also cooked perfectly, yummy!!!

🍜Shanghai stir fried thick noodles 🍜 As I am writing this, I am craving for it now! It has shrimp, shredded pork, mushrooms, romaine stem and thick noodles! 👀The proportion between noodles and the proteins were balanced and the dish was stir fried with a sauce! ☺️It was not so savoury and yummy! 💞

🥟Pork Soup Dumplings 🥟 Oh my I am in love with their pork soup dumplings! The skin was fairly thin which is great! 🤓As I took my first bite, the soup was overflowing onto my spoon! But because the skin was so thin, some of them broke as we were trying to pick them up and the soup leaked! 🤪It was extremely yummy when it was dipped with soy sauce! 🤓

🥟Potstickers🥟 Their potstickers were also a yummy snack! It was crispy at the bottom of the dumplings and soft on the inside of the dumpling! 🥹

🤍Rice Ball in Rice Wine🤍 This was my first time trying this and the taste was unforgettable for me! 😎There were sticky rice flour inside that was chewy and with the rice wine and egg drops, they blend so well together! 🫠It was not so sweet and there were a lot of rice wine! We finished the rice balls before we finish the rice wine (I wanted more rice ball!!!!) ☺️

Their service was great and very responsive! I also love the vibes there! Thank you for the amazing hospitality and...

I'd rate this place lower because of the two issues we had if it weren't for the attentive staff that was very understanding and immediately handled the issues for us-- no arguing or anything. And truly, the other dishes we had were standout. Just don't make the same mistakes we did. 🙏

Overall, the food and service was very attentive, but don't bother with the preserved vegetables with pork belly. I don't think it sells well and I can see why. It was only like 7 thin slices of pork on a bulging mound of preserved vegetables. Unfortunately, those vegetables also tasted off. We notified the staff at the time and they immediately said they'd take it off our bill. Luckily, two of our party didn't eat much of the vegetables, but our third had eaten a couple mouthfuls by the time we reflected on how it tasted old. The next day their stomach was unsettled the whole day.

Pea shoots also weren't as great as we were expecting. I'm not sure if it's because they had to remake ours because we made a mistake the first time when ordering it, but it wasn't as flavourful as we expected and didn't seem to have as much seafood as the photo. (Our mistake: we thought the stir-fried option would include all the seafood and egg in it just no broth, but that wasn't the case, it was just more vegetables--staff was understanding and changed it for us).

Outside of those two dishes! The food was great. Highlights were the salted egg fish fillet and fish blossom. The former was probably my favourite; super light and fluffy coating, fish was soft and succulent, and the egg flavour was rich. The latter's flavour was on par to what I've had in China, and I liked how it came with some shrimp. First time having crispy eel, and that was really good. Pig...

Little Alley is seriously good authentic chinese food. Was craving the fish blossom, which is usually called squirrel fish or pine nut fish on other shanghainese restaurants, and decided to “splurge” for New Year’s Eve. Was at first skeptical and worried it wouldn’t be good as take out, since personally I’ve only had it as dine-in everywhere in the world I’ve eaten it… but little alley delivered!!!! The key really is the container and careful packaging. I was worried it’d soften up in the short walk home from the restaurant so I preheated my oven in anticipation so that I can just pop it in for ten minutes to crisp it up. It was delicious- like Shanghai/hangzhou level delicious. Ordered the cumin lamb because I was feeling nostalgic for the time I spent living in Beijing, and while the dish was stunningly ugly at first glance- I definitely paused for a moment and wondered if I had made a bad decision paying $26 for this, but it smells amazing and tastes just the way I wanted it to- cumin is flavorful but not overpowering- they threw in lots of peppers, but it wasn’t too spicy- I’d say it was a medium spicy - so it doesn’t completely numb you and you can actually taste the lamb. this place is not cheap. At $32 for the fish blossom and $26 for the cumin lamb (they both come w a small pint of rice either white or brown w no additional cost), it’s approximately $8-10 more than what Shanghainese restaurants in Chinatown are charging for the same dishes. You get what you pay for tho, the higher price also corresponds to higher quality food. Can’t wait til this omicron wave blows over so I can go dine on-site with...