DJ Kitchen — Restaurant in Philadelphia

1 Star take out experience 5 Stars for food

We ordered through doordash on Lunar Year day and boy that was a mistake. Restaurant underestimated the amount of business they were getting so was overwhelmed. We placed an order at 5pm for 7pm delivery didn’t get our food till 9pm. Called restaurant to see if we should just cancel our order but they insisted that we wait. felt so bad for our doordash Guy for waiting since 7 that we tipped him extra when he arrived.

Thank God food didn’t disappoint! It’s our first time ordering from them :) I’m too pregnant to cook lunar year dinner for the family so we opted for takeout.

Dishes we ordered :

Singapore Rice Noodle 星洲炒米粉 rice noodles were perfectly cooked with a slight bite to it. It wasn’t oily nor too dry. Slight curry flavor with a bit of heat yet not overpowering

Double Cook Style 回锅系列 (Entree 主菜) • ordered with Pork and was perfect. You can taste the slight char and just love how they sliced it thinly. Good balance of pork fat and meat as well

We ordered Beef & Tripe with Chili Oil 夫妻肺片 (Starters ) but they packed wrong dish for us, we got pig ears instead . It was thinly sliced and my mom enjoyed it.

Hot Sauce Style 水煮系列 (Entree 主菜) • ordered with Fish Fillets and the fish pieces were pretty big which we loved. Don’t have to dig around for the fish at all! There’s a good amount of heat with this dish as it should be :) perfect with rice

Hong Kong Style 避风塘系列 (Entree 主菜) • we ordered with Chicken Wings and highly recommend it if you like garlic :) the fried garlic bits was so perfect with the wings that I Sprinkle it over my rice as well. Just the right amount of spice so you still get to enjoy the marinated wings flavor

Red Bean Bun (3) 红豆包 got this for my 3 yo and he devoured 2 so quickly we had to hide the 3rd one to avoid a hyper toddler before bedtime😂

Brown Sugar Pearl with Milk 黑糖珍珠撞奶 - requested no ice cause I was avoiding ice cold drinks but they missed that note. Tasted ok…nothing special but it took care of my...

This is my FAVORITE Philadelphia Asian restaurant - outside of the more higher-end, more expensive restaurants like Buddakan and Sampan - and in my Top 7 of favorite Philly restaurants altogether. I've been coming here for at least 5-6 years and they never miss! It is a hidden gem in the city. The food is spectacular, which is really surprising given how many items they have on it. Usually with restaurants, the more items you offer, the more the quality of food goes down. My personal favorite is the dry pot style fish or tofu with extra lotus root, the stir fried string beans, and a fruit tea. Also recommended items would be the black bean style chicken or the sweet and sour chicken.

I bring my out-of-towner guests here and it immediately becomes their go-to restaurant. Every time they're in town, they demand to go to this restaurant.

To be fair, here are the following downsides:

1. When it's cold outside, it's cold inside. The heating is that great. However, the seating area and restroom is very neat, clean, and well decorated.
2. The food runs very oily and sometimes a little salty. However, since i know this, I request that they make my food less oily and/or salty and they accommodate to perfection.
3. I personally didn't like the vegetable dumplings but my friend did so what can you say? I also don't love their fried cheese wonton (crab rangoon used to be a favorite dish of mine when I ate dairy and meat) but I think it's just a style preference. It's not bad at all, just not my favorite version.

However, even with all of those things, the food is so good and they are very accommodating to tailoring to your specific dietary request, this place is a...

Food was quite good, though they were not so spicy for a Szechuan restaurant, even the one that was named "Szechuan" chicken... Perhaps I needed to specify the level of spiciness.

Beef Chow Fun was also quite good but can use a bit more burned taste. String bean was a bit bland, but it was okay.

I would have rated this place 4+ but ran into a cleanliness incident. My water cup was not cleaned properly after prior use and had white residues (2 locations near the bottom). Unfortunately, I only recognized it toward the end of the meal, with 80% of the ice water consumed, revealing the residues.

This ruined this meal for me, feeling contaminated. The initial response to this was unsatisfactory by the attendee, where they tried to defend by (1) "it wasn't there" and then (2) "the other cups are clean." Does that mean I placed the stain? There weren't any white liquid/powder on my table. The other cups being clean is irrelevant. It is my cup that had the residues, the anomaly. Later on, they tried to mend the situation by offering bottled water, which I wasn't seeking. My appetite was ruined already.

The proper first response should have been, "I am sorry, this happened."

As for the atmosphere, they first seated us near what appeared to the serving station in the rear. However, it was near their restroom and had a direct view of it, the door of which was wide open for who knows why. We requested to move to the front of the restaurant. A sectional divider should be placed in front of that restroom...

Overall, the food was good, but the attendees, perhaps the owners, need to think more from the customer's perspectives from various...