Chef Yao — Restaurant in North Providence

We have been eating at Beat Eastern for decades. It is possible that this new place has a more authentic Chinese food - but if so, we don't really like authentic! We ordered our usual and it all tasted different and not to our liking. It could be a matter of taste and what we are used to. Beef skewers - skimpy and peppery (not teryaki at all) Fried rice - wet, very few pieces of meat (we like it fried and dry) Lo Mein - very pale, tasteless with hardly any vegetable or sprouts (almost like eating spaghetti). Shrimp - tiny, strong smelling. It didn't taste good as a leftover. I love Chinese leftovers cold for breakfast. Crab Ragoon - delicious, crispy, nice sweetness to the filling. Sesame chicken - tasty, sauce is a bit too sirupy sweet and overpowers the few broccoli pieces (I might be the only one that loves this vegetable) Egg roll - awful!! You only get one and the filling is all cabbage. All in all we won't be back unless we have a food emergency. The fried rice & lo mein are our staple and if we don't like them, we are out. It is a matter of taste. Best Eastern might have been old, dingy and dirty but they did make the food we liked. I hope Chef Yao renovated and cleaned it up. I want NP businesses to succeed so I...

So we called Best Eastern last night on Mineral Spring Avenue in N. Providence to order up some Chinese takeout as we’ve done for years. We particularly love their bone-in spare ribs and house fried rice.

Well, they just went out of business. The new place is called Chef Yao. Different owner, different menu, same phone number. So we decided to give them a shot.

If I had to sum up their food in one word, it would be “flavorless.” And overpriced for what you get. The chicken wings were flavorless, and they only give you one egg roll instead of two for an egg roll order. It was nothing special similar to the spring roll we ordered. Run of the mill and skimpy.

If you’re going to add “Generous portions!!” to your website, then you should live up to your claim. There was nothing generous about our order.

When I asked the woman at the register if they sell bone-in spare ribs, she said they have boneless. When I was surprised that they didn’t have spare ribs, she pointed me to the spicy cumin ribs. At $18 for an appetizer, that’s a lot more than the ribs we used to get at Best Eastern, which were meaty, reasonably priced, and insanely good. Sad to say, we won’t...

This restaurant popped up on my radar this week, and given that it has a good selection of Hunan (and Sichuan) dishes, I had to give it a try. And I'm very glad I did. Three of us ordered takeout. Everything was excellent. The Hunan lamb was a scrumptiously complex mix of spicy and smoky with a colorful melange of peppers and some scallions and other veggies thrown in. Chicken dry pot was also flavorful and perfectly cooked, with sichuan peppercorns taking the lead among the spices. Braised fish in chili sauce rounded out the entrees, and was also a hit. Spicy shredded potato was subtler than you'll usually find, with the freshly shredded potato itself playing a co-starring role with the vinegar and other flavors. We'll be regulars at this wonderful new addition to the restaurant scene. Highly recommended, with top-notch Sichuan and the best Hunan dishes I've found in...