Taiwanese Gourmet — Restaurant in New York

I'm always searching for delicious Taiwanese food throughout NYC, so I was so excited to finally have the chance to stop by Taiwanese Gourmet recently. It's been bookmarked for quite a while, but it's a bit out of the way in Elmhurst where I don't find myself that often!

Our party of 2 came by around 7pm on a weekday -- we were able to get seated immediately, and while the place was really busy the whole time we were there, I think there were always a couple of empty tables available.

We ordered a bunch of dishes to share:

蒼蠅頭 "fly heads" which is just stir-fried ground pork with chive flowers and black beans was not bad. I thought the ground pork had a great savoury flavour to it, but the chive flowers tasted a bit undercooked. I felt it was a bit heavy/oily, too.

清炒高麗菜 sautéed cabbage was a little disappointing. Taiwanese cabbage is probably one of my favourite vegetables, and I was disappointed at how bland this dish was. The leaves were a bit too chewy for my taste, and I felt like it was significantly under-seasoned (salt/soy sauce/sesame oil would have gone a long way here).

溼煎虱目魚 braised milk fish was delicious! It's not that common to find milkfish in the US (especially of this quality) even as a classic Taiwanese dish, so I was really pleasantly surprised at how yummy this was. The portion size was SO big, and the flesh was just soo fragrant -- tender, juicy, practically melted in your mouth with an amazing savouriness. Definitely would strong recommend this dish.

番茄牛蓋飯 beef and tomato over rice was really tasty too. The tomato was cooked to a perfect softness, and the mature flavour paired really well with the slightly more umami bites of beef and scrambled egg in the thick sauce (some mix of black pepper and oyster sauce flavours). It was not too heavy at all when eaten with the rice; I felt like I could have just eaten this itself as my meal :)

Service was very quick, and all of the staff were very lovely with taking our order and offering suggestions and whatnot. Note that they are a cash only place, so do come prepared!

While there were some spots for improvement, I think this was still a very yummy (and promising) meal overall, and I'm excited to come back to try some of their other dishes (on their quite...

This place is a solid 4 because of the food. Service for us was excellent but I could so how it could be sub par. It was two of us and we chose to sit in the bottom floor. I didn't know this restaurant had so many tables. I definitely prefer the bottom floor but you do hear the subway. Other than that, it's quiet, clean air, and you get a table for 6 all to yourselves =P (We'll, that's what we had). It was quiet and very pleasant.

We ordered Beef Stew Noodle Soup, Pork chop over rice, Sauteed Chinese Crest, and Chicken and Ginseng Soup. The food sounds better in chinese but anyways. All these dishes reminded me a of California. However, I think these dishes that we had were better than the ones in CA. The flavors were all there but felt much cleaner and the sauteed chinese crest was not as oily and they used tons of garlic which was awesome. They did not skimp out on ingredients. The beef stew noodle soup was not salty at all and they give you lots of meat!! I will say that the meat could be a little more tender, but I wasn't complaining because it really was like comfort food. The water was nice and chilled and the waitress even filled out water and tea at least twice. Probably more service than what I'll get at majority of chinese restaurants. The pork chop over rice was not overly fried and not salty at all. It was on the drier side but I was able to forgive that because of everything else. I do also wish they had more vegetables with the dish but I could see how the sour flavor from the vegetables could over power the dish. The ginseng soup used a lot of ingredients. They even used this little red bean/seed like ingredient which my family uses to sweeten up the soup. I know that ingredient isn't exactly cheap and I was surprised that they had it in the soup.

One cool thing is that they give you free salted peanuts and this chili radish dish. Loved it. Definitely made it a more "Taiwanese" restaurant.

I would definitely recommend this place and come here...

Today I visited Taiwanese Gourmet for the first and last time. When I asked for the check as I was finishing eating, I noticed that it said cash only, which I didn’t realize before arriving. I asked my waiter if they have an ATM, to which he said there was one next door. I continued to finish my food and a whole group (3-4) of the wait staff approached me and asked if everything is okay with the price, and I told them that everything was fine, I just didn’t know that their establishment was cash only so I needed to get cash. I found this to be awkward, but I apologized and pushed past it once they stepped away.

I finished my food and took my card out to get the cash, and asked my waiter if he could watch my purse while I go next door to the ATM, to which he was okay with. As I’m walking out the front door, another waitress proceeds to grab and pull my arm and say something to the effect of “where are you going? Your bill.” I told her that I’m going to the ATM and that I already spoke to my waiter and left my bag, and she doesn’t need to put her hands on me.

I came back two minutes after and paid my bill, and expressed to my waiter how distasteful and off putting this situation was. I’ve never had someone put their hands on me for going to get cash before (especially when I left my belongings with them), and I really don’t like being treated like a criminal when I’m just trying to get lunch and have a relaxed day for myself. I was nothing but polite to all of them and caused no problems during my meal, and it’s very upsetting that they would treat someone like that and initiate an altercation so easily. Unfortunately, a common occurrence of dining while Black.

The food tasted good, but good enough for me to return for...