DanDan Rittenhouse — Restaurant in Philadelphia

Great concept, poorly executed.

Let me first start with deposits: The ambiance is pretty cool with upbeat music. This would make for a good second date place. The staff are kind and fast, but not knowledgeable about the cuisine. It's in a great location close to a lot of things to do afterwards.

The challenge is in the food and let me be very specific:

(1) Poor quality white rice, more commonly found in your shopping center Chinese takeout place. I've included a picture where you can see that it's dry and slightly burnt.

(2) Both of my dishes were super salty and had too much sugar in it. Authentic Sichuan food does not have sugar in it! There were so much sugar that I could bite into the grains of sugar. One of the staff members, maybe he was the manager, admitted they added sugar but was dismissive that it was too much. Even if you're making dessert you shouldn't be able to bite into a grain of sugar.

(3) The guy that brought out my bowl of white rice had his thumb in my rice. I lived in China for 5 years and saw that lack of attention to hygienic details but didn't expect to see it at a nice restaurant in the center of Philadelphia. He didn't mean to do it.

(4) The coloring of the to-go box started to bleed into the counter. I've never seen that before. That's a really poor quality to go box. I didn't have a hot dish in there. It was the cold beef and tripe appetizer. I've included a picture so you can see yourself.

Overall, not terrible but disappointing. This was the saltiest (and sweetest) Sichuan food I have ever had. This place had so much promise. They had designed the right menu and even included the right ingredients, but it just was poorly executed. The good news is that this could be fixed with retraining of the kitchen staff. I hope management will take note.

Please note that in my assessment I am grading on a full 5-star scale and do so with an implicit price-value curve. I am aware that many others on social media may grade on a 3-point (4 being an average score) or 2-point scale (4 being a poor score), but the fact remains that Google gives us a 5-point scale. To me, 4 stars is great, 3 stars is average and 5 stars should be rare - reserved for true excellence or...

Our first visit for a party of three. The modern decor was nice, but foot was definitely more on the traditional side than any modern take or fusion, which is what we were looking for. We ordered several appetizers, and three main dishes.

Service was very good, very attentive. They came around several times to see how everything was. We thought being on 2nd floor that we would get lost, but it was very good.

The items we had and thoughts:

Beef tendon - sliced thin, medium spicy but would be very spicy if you're not a spice person. We felt it was a tad on the salty side.

Wonton with chili oil - you get eight wontons per order, in chili oil that you can mix around. The wonton were okay, not great, but the oil was very good. This was also fairly salty for our taste.

Taiwanese pork belly hamburger - pork super tender, tasty, with good amount of pickled green. Probably the best appetizer we had that day. Only ding was the bun was not hot and soft. Has some hard edge areas.

Scallion Pancakes- good amount of scallions, and the dipping sauce was nice and not overly salty. Also a good side to have.

Salt and white pepper crispy chicken - nice crispy fried chicken pieces, but overly salty and not enough white pepper. Basil was nice touch and portion was fairly large. Not the favorite of the day.

Taiwanese minced pork over rice - probably the most Taiwanese authentic in taste and size. Meat was tender, good saltiness figuring it was with rice. It came in a small bowl, very much like Taiwanese serving size.

Beef noodle soup - the beef was tender and flavorful, I would say perhaps one of best beef noodles beef I've had here in U.S. however, the flavor of the beef didn't translate into the soup. The soup tasted very mild, which surprised me given that most of the other items we got were mostly on the salty side. Nice amount of bok choy, but needed more pickled green. It was lacking the pickled flavor.

Overly a 4 star for the enjoyable food, service, and decor. A few adjustments I feel to the taste would make it a 5-star place for us. Would definitely visit again next time in...

First off, I got charged a cancellation fee when I was in fact there, and early. The restaurant was packed with people picking up orders for take out, Uber eats, etc. When we were finally led upstairs, I asked if we could be seated in a corner, and the hostess lied and said the table was reserved. I asked the couple who sat there 20 minutes later and they in fact had not reserved that space. To make matters worse, everyone around us who were seated after us, including that couple, were served their food before us. When I asked the waitress why, she claimed they were “going out of order in the kitchen”. I asked to speak to the manager who refused to speak with me at first and instead sent two glasses of wine to the table, as if drinking wine on an empty stomach would placate us. We were hungry and waited an hour to be served rice and chicken. When I insisted on speaking to the manager, she finally came and would not let me talk. Instead, she said the wine would be on the house. I recognized her as a bartender there, as I am a regular patron (I will not be any longer). She said she was promoted, and insisted that the best she could do was not charge us for the wine she insisted we have. How nice?! I was going to leave it alone until I got an email from Resy saying I was charged a cancellation fee. This is ridiculous. I spoke to someone who claimed he would get back to me avoid the issue but that also has not happened. I will never dine here again, and will be leaving this review on all platforms. I believe the issue at Dan Dan was racially charged. Yet, we still left a 30% tip in addition to our bill. This was unacceptable. As an organization you need...