Help! Why isn't there a single good chinese delivery restaurant in the East Village?

[filmbomb]

Am I wrong? Please lead me to the glory if I am.

I've ordered from everywhere (at least I think) and believe it or not it seems the best we can do is to have Suzie's on Bleeker Street bring us our grub all the way to Ave. B (yes, they will!)

And they are marginal at best.

Plump dumpling is "ok" but not the answer. They mess up the orders all the time and the ingredients are suspect. Grand Sichuan is vastly overrated imho.

Please help.

Thank you.

[2slices]

NONSENSE!

Yummy House is a very good American chinese. When I used to live near Suzie's I'd switch between the 2. No clear winner, maybe Suzie's but only by a small margin.

*EDIT - didnt see mentions above. Anyway, 2nd yummy house.

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[monamiestephanie]

I agree re: a lack of good Chinese in the East Village, but definitely disagree re: Suzie's. Their food may not be traditional Chinese, but delivery is fast, service is good and the food is hot and delicious! For Chinese-American staples, I go with them. For traditional fare in lower Manhattan, there's nothing better than Chinatown.

[EV_Eats]

Ok, that's it. I'm going to order from Yummy House tonight & see what all the fuss is about!
____
http://www.eveats.com

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[filmbomb]

Report?

[2slices]

after this post I got the craving and ordered the other night. It was good as usual. I changed it up a bit, Orange beef and moo shu chicken. The GF got the 8 treasure desert which is a sweet sticky rice with red bean. Yum all around.

[visciole]

I think it's a conspiracy to punish the EV for having so many good restaurants.

[mindy]

the cottage..irving place around 16th i think...consistently good

[filmbomb]

Mindy, we tried Cottage tonight. Sorry to say but it was pretty awful. Dumplings were bland, portions were small, and the quality was not very good. My search continues...

Still need to try Yummy House I guess...

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[iFat]

My favorite Chinese food delivery in the area is The Cottage on Irving. They always delivered to me when i was in Stuy town on Ave B and they still deliver to me on 13th and A. Not sure how much further they go, but it's 100% a step up from Yummy and Tina. Overall, I agree w/the current sad state of Chinese in the EV. Ever since Rosie & Ting shut its door 3-4 years ago, it's been a mess.

www.immaculateinfatuation.com

[filmbomb]

Rosie and Ting was our go to place!

Thanks for the Cottage rec. BTW, if you go WAY back (like 20 years) there was a fantastic chinese in the Cottage space called Cuisine of Szechuan. My parents used to schlep us into the city from Park Slope to eat there. Too bad it changed.

[coco99]

My parents used to schlep me there too, although we lived on 23rd and 2nd so it wasn't really a schlep. The had the most amazing sesame noodles and perfectly glorious broccoli, who knew broccoli could taste so good?Still some of the best Chinese I've ever had! One day it seemed they closed up shop and disappeared...

[filmbomb]

My dad still says it was the only place that did dried Szechwan beef right.

[Simon]

While i'm happy you enjoyed some nice meals there, i lived on 4th Ave and 12th St for seven years when i owned an apt there...Rosie & Ting, which i tried two times (the 2nd time ONLY because of the geographical bias), was far and away the worst Asian food i've ever had in NYC (and i've lived here for 20 years and traveled and lived in China, Thailand, etc)...

It was so awful that my gf and i celebrated by dancing around madly when it finally closed...

i'd totally forgetten about it, like a bad dream, until this post...i hope the former chef is now doing something like collating copies or cement-mixing, and pray that he/she isn't cooking for anyone, ever again....

[Ricky]

Just found out congee bowery delivers to the east village. I found a stack of menus at my lobby.

[D...DF]

You're not wrong. Sammy's will deliver to the EV and it's pretty decent.

[gloriousfood]

Thank your lucky star that you don't live on the UWS! To give you an idea of how bad the situation is up here, I would kill for a place like Suzie's on Bleecker.

[coasts]

so true. it's so bad that Ollie's has become the standard of what's good.

[ag1]

Have you tried congee village (there are two- one on Allen and one on Bowery)... it is very very chinese though

[_emilie_]

Yeah I like Congee, but they won't deliver to the whole village either.

[lfkohn]

We order from Yummy House at least once a week and are NEVER disappointed.

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[filmbomb]

c11 and lfkohn...

I will give the Yummy a shot and report back. Thanks....

Any favorite dishes they do particularly well?

[filmbomb]

YUMMY HOUSE!

Thanks for the rec. Definitely the best in the area (probably just above Suzie's).

Clean, good quality. My only criticism would be that the slice the meat into almost spaghetti sized strips. Very thin. An obvious attempt to reduce their food costs, but the reduced amount of meat is pretty frustrating.

Beef with Stringbeans is really Stringbeans, Stringbeans with Beef.

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[nativeNYer]

i would endorse yummy house as far as the food is concerned. since i live uptown, i can't comment on their delivery. was a regular approximately 8 yrs ago when i was in the EV on a more regular basis. tried it again just recently and was slightly disappointed (food did not taste as good) but i would try it again. i think i only tried the dumplings and possibly sesame noodles the last time.

[c11]

Yummy House
www.yummyhouse.com
76 3rd Avenue
New York, NY 10003

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[susan robin]

We are not all the way east (Astor Place) but feel the same way. We have now resorted to ordering from Chinatown Brasserie on occasion (not cheap, but consistently quite good) and Spice (not really what we want when we want Chinese takeout, but will do). When we lived in Soho, we ordered from Suzie's but we finally gave up, it was so mediocre we decided it wasn't worth eating the food.

-----
Chinatown Brasserie
380 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012

[El Tigre]

have you tried tina on 13th & 3rd? they seemt o deliver EVERYWHERE...
definitely not great but i used to order from them quite a bit and never had anything that made me feel sick... what a sad endorsement...

[_emilie_]

Yeah Tina and Yummy House are what we resort to as well -- only in desperate times. Really not very good. We usually opt for Thai or (until recently) Burmese instead.

I guess at least it does make me less lazy. If I want good Chinese I have to actually leave the house and go get it.

-----
Yummy House
76 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10003

[filmbomb]

I swore they closed YEARS ago and just forwarded their number to a Murray Hill Chinese that fills their orders. No?

[_emilie_]

I think that's true. I wanna say the last time I ordered, it actually came from Red House (on 14th), which was around the corner from where it used to be, but the food tasted EXACTLY the same, so no big. Probably the same folks.

-----
Red House
203 E 14th St, New York, NY 10003

[Chandavkl]

Well a possible answer to your question that won't help you in your quest is that East Village is a little too close to Chinatown. I've noticed both in New York and other cities that whenever there is a concentration of good Chinese food, that is often accompanied by an outer geographic ring where there is no good Chinese food at all. Not sure what the dynamics are--perhaps it's that for serious eaters Chinatown is close enough, leaving the territory to less discriminating diners. Whatever the reason, it is a recurring phenomenon.

[filmbomb]

Yes but in a city as dense in NYC? You would think one ingenious person/family/organization would see the opportunity here.

[Simon]

Chandavkl, i think you are onto something there...if Chowhound had a Phd thesis program, this is exactly what would be a good topic...(note: i am not joking, The Demographics of Authentic Food Availibility is a topic near&dear to me)...

note to the OP: i am right now eating some St.Marks Gr.Sichuan and it's pretty great...

[kathryn]

I think Grand Sichuan St Marks is good but I only ever order Sichuan dishes there (smoked tea duck, dan dan noodles, wontons in red oil, gui zhou spicy chicken, cumin beef with mantao) or selected other items like cucumbers in scallion sauce or the pork soup dumplings.

Sounds like the OP wants Americanized Chinese food a la orange beef and broccoli, cashew chicken, beef broccoli, sweet and sour pork?

[Simon]

if the OP wants Sweet&Sour Pork, etc, i'm sure any place is as good as the next?...he can order from somewhere like Cafetasia (which is vaguely Thai but can prob do the Ch-Am dishes ok?)...

At GS/St.M, i order the same as you do, but i'd guess the Ch-Amer dishes are at least as good/bad as they are any other place in Manhattan?...

-----
Cafetasia
38 E 8th St, New York, NY 10003

[EV_Eats]

Dude, I feel your pain. My Chinese delivery experiences have ranged from 'passable' to 'oh God, I feel sorry for the toilet'. I really don't understand why the EV is such a Black Hole for delivery. Honestly, I really don't mind Grand Sichuan on St. Marks. They can be a bit fickle about delivering to Avenue C. Anyone else have any better luck?
____
http://www.eveats.com

[_emilie_]

Totally agree about the Chinese in the EV -- embarrassingly bad -- except Grand Sichuan. I got them to deliver to me once (I'm on 4th btw C and D), and only once, years ago, but they have refused every other time I've tried.

Would love to know about an alternative if there is one.