Pinch Chinese — Restaurant in New York

Notice of bias: I came in right around the opening time as a walk in without any reservations. This experience also might have been heavily influenced by an unlucky collectively bad day from 2/3rds of the front of house staff we interacted with (which is understandable, who can stop bad days….?)

TLDR: go but only if you are desperate to eat and only care about the food and not the “experience” aspect of going out and eating at a nice restaurant with wife / date or even family and friends.

I have heard of this place a lot, unfortunately as good as the food is, the experience is a little bittersweet in place of terrible. We walked in to wait 2-3 minutes while the host was bent over checking her phone while we were right behind her politely saying excuse me. We asked her if they are open and if we can go and sit down to eat. To which she turned around and stared at us as if she was under the influence (yay cuomo for legalization 🥂), she then told us “uhhh it’s past 5:00 and we open at 5:00 so uhhh I guess we are open” , my wife responded “ahh great thank you so much can we sit for 3?” And this person(maybe it’s just a bad day…?) responded “uhh you can walk in”.

Okay great so already off to a bad start,( at this point I was a bit hesitant about even walking in but you can’t really control a bad day so who am I to judge…)we walk in to then be greeted by another host(maitre’D? But we were just told to walk in re: table for 3?) that followed protocol(yay re:covid) and told us she can sit us but we HAVE to be out within the hour because she needs the table. So we said of course no problem. We go to sit down and order quickly because obviously if we have no reservations it’s only common sense to reciprocate and enjoy our meal and head out quickly…. We ordered our food and our server told us “this is a very light meal, I recommend ordering more because the order wasn’t a lot of food (2 orders of dumpling and a pork belly appetizer = $60). He then seemed a little upset that we were ordering so little (because less money means less % of a tip allocation?) and kept repeating to us to order more food. Which was a bit frustrating because we wanted to order a lot but how can we if we just agreed to leave very quickly….We didn’t want to order a dish that takes an hour to prepare (on their menu it literally says you have to order 1HR ahead) and wanted to be mindful to their turnover. The entire ambiance we felt was that we were unwanted by all interactions (but the food, each bite was excellently delicious) so we were just rushing to order and leave to be mindful but in all honesty we felt the need to escape the restaurant more than anything.

Maybe it was just a bad day but the experience was real and it honestly felt like regulars there were treated with more hospitality so I urge caution to future walk ins and first timers to avoid any similar experience. Honestly the food was delicious and I would recommend it for really good dumplings but it’s terrible that such good food (incredible output from BOH) is complimented with such terrible service. The 2 stars is ONLY for the incredibly...

Food was on average for the most part but service was mixed and not up to standards especially at its price. Most servers were nice and professional but there was this one guy taking our order with an altitude. Even worse at the end he tried to take away our credit cards even before we received our check. And when I reminded him that, he shrugged and responded “it would be the same we’ll take your cards anyway”. Well excuse me that was literally the first time I’ve ever seen anyone trying to take away credit card without showing the check first. And of course I insisted seeing the check - at least I needed to know how much I would be paying. Even funnier when the check was delivered and after the same guy took away the cards with that check (good this time he asked if he could take the card), someone else came back with our cards so we actually paid at our table. Hey like what’s all the point? Just to confuse your customers and showing your altitude? Well the server who did our check was nice but you know this one guy could ruin the whole dining experience and hurt the restaurant reputation. As for the food, I’ll give them credit for the skin and only the skin of the pork soup dumpling but other than that everything else was mediocre. The fillings did not have the richness flavor that it should. We barely took a bite for the crispy pork belly but it could be just us not liking the orange sauce. Crispy lamb was fine but nothing impressive. I only took the picture of the Dan Dan Noodle because I found it interesting they had an poached egg and bacon instead of minced pork over the noodles. The noodle itself, well either the chef forgot to put in soy sauce or they expected yourself putting the soy sauce, which, would still not be up to my expectations. Totally a disappointment at the restaurant’s price, ratings and all the advertisement. Not...

A modern and upscale-ish Chinese restaurant located in Soho. Their servers were pushy, unfriendly and unhelpful. One of the servers kept standing next to our table and glanced at us, which I felt really uncomfortable. We felt pressured to place orders, and when we asked for photos of the dishes, he threw us an “OK” bluntly. He only acted nicely when he tried to persuade us to order the dessert lol. All the servings were ridiculously measly and very overpriced.

＊ Pork Soup Dumpling ($15) If you are looking for the smallest Xiao Long Bao, here you go. We had high hopes on this as we heard it was comparable to Din Tai Fung’s. However each piece was literally “bite sized”, so it didn’t give the explosion of juicy pork soup. The dumpling skin was thin but also quite dry, probably bc it didn’t encase enough pork broth.

＊ Beef Pan Fried Dumpling ($15) We ordered the only pan fried dumpling on the menu. It would be better if they could provide steamed/pan fried option for all their dumplings. It was not an authentic Chinese flavor as the beef was marinated with curry, but unexpectedly quite delectable with its golden bottom and juicy meat fillings.

＊ Crispy Pork Dumpling ($19) The surprise hit of our meal. We were awed to enjoy the pork belly with jasmine tea crisp, adorning the perfectly crisped cracklings.

＊ Seafood Fried Rice ($23) Far below average. The rice was mushy, clumpy and lacked the XO sauce flavor. It gave a better bang for your buck comparing to other dishes as there were a generous amount of octopus, bay scallops and shrimps.

＊ Five Spiced Donut ($16) Overpriced. My friend ordered it without looking at the price and we were shocked to know they charged us $16 for this dessert. Served warm and topped with vanilla ice cream, the donut was solid and carried a strong aroma of five spices. We enjoyed it but it wasn’t worth the...