Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant copied Amazing 66 menu

[john959]

I picked up a menu at the recently opened Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant at 42 Bowery and was surprised to find that it was substantially copied from the Amazing 66 menu, complete with misspellings (e.g., Dungeous Crab). They even kept the same order of dishes and headings.

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Sing Kee
42 Bowery, New York, NY 10013

[SomeRandomIdiot]

Incidentally, the dungeness crab over sticky rice dish is a huge ripoff here. It's 18 a lb for the crab and the time I had it, almost all of the crabs in the tank were 2.5 lbs +. They give a miniscule amount of rice and it was good overall but not great. It certainly didn't justify the large price tag.

Their rendition of stir fried lobster with cheese was excellent. It had good wok air and was very "dry" in the way that you want it to be, with the cheese sauce adhering to and flavoring every piece.

[deepfry7]

When Danny Ng closed his Pell St. restaurant, the chefs who lost their jobs opened up Amazing 66. Then he decided to come out of retirement and opened up his restaurant again, but on Bowery.

Now one of the chefs from Amazing 66 left to open Sing Kee. Hence, the same/similar menu.

I guess it's analogous to all the Grimaldi's/Patsy's similarities. It's from the same "family".

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Amazing 66
66 Mott St, New York, NY 10013

Danny Ng's Place
52 Bowery, New York, NY 10013

Sing Kee
42 Bowery, New York, NY 10013

[SomeRandomIdiot]

I thought that he had some percentage of ownership at some point in all of them.

[deepfry7]

That's definitely quite possible. It would make sense.

[SomeRandomIdiot]

How is it a copy? The chef (Danny Ng) that brought those dishes to amazing 66 and to Danny Ng, in the old Silver Palace downstairs space, from his old place on Pell Street is now at Sing Kee. It's his menu and I think it's his to bring to each new spot that he's a part of.

[AubWah]

You mean Danny Ng is a chef working in chinatown in the kitchen of sing kee?

[Chandavkl]

Could be. The similarities are so great that I doubt it's a ripoff. Both have $5.75 lunch specials and both have a Sichuan section on the menu, not particularly common in Cantonese restaurants. A few variations in prices, but many prices are also identical (i.e., equally expensive).

[Chandavkl]

Actually, the Danny Ng and Sing Kee menus are also nearly identical.

[fooder]

I think a large number of Chinese restaurants in the US do not actually care what's on their menu. It becomes more a matter of the menu-printing company that determines what's on the menu. In most cases it's assumed their cooks will be able to make some version of a listed dish. (Or they can always say they ran out if they couldn't)

I believe this phenomenon is especially true of Chinese takeout-oriented places.

[Chandavkl]

I think this is more about Fujianese operated take out restaurants using common suppliers and even formulaic approaches. However it's surprising to see this in Chinatown absent some kind of actual affiliation.

[small h]

I call that the "splendiferous array" syndrome, after some peculiar wording for a vegetable dish that appears on menus from Manhattan to DC to Memphis, and even in Pearland, TX. Here's a little discussion about it from a year ago:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7511...

[AubWah]

Imposters!

[small h]

Stone them! Eh, I don't know what I'm talking about, but someone should take action. Or not, 'cause I think it's actually kind of funny. Just as we joke about all the 6th St. Indian places sharing a kitchen, we should also joke about all the cheap Chinese places sharing a menu.