Alpha Fusion 2

Last week, I ordered Alpha Fusion and was sadly disappointed. It wasn’t all bad; delivery was quick and I didn’t have to wait long for my apps: Duck Spring Rolls, Chicken Satay and Coconut Shrimp. However, the bad seemed to outweigh the good.
The chicken and shrimp were too dry, and I didn’t want to go back for second bites. In addition, for the listed prices (ranging from $ 5 – 7.50), portion sizes were seriously small. In New York, you get used to small plates. But two spring rolls in an entire order? Four shrimp? Shame on you, Alpha Fusion.
I will say, my duck spring rolls were pretty tasty and came with a nice plum (I think) dipping sauce. But I ordered them for a group of people and ended up eating them all myself. I would never order from this restaurant again.

You know what you do not want to do? Call a plump and hangry Negress an hour after she placed an order on your online system and THEN tell her her food is NOT coming because the kitchen closed and you fail to put time info anywhere on the ordering page!!!
…and THEN all you have to say is «Sorry, we weren’t checking our computer.»
A pox on you!
A pox upon all of your houses!
MAY YOU SIT BEFORE A MIGHTY REPAST OF PLEASING MEATS SERVED IN EXQUISITE SAUCES AND DEVOUR YOUR FILL YET NEVER FIND SATISFACTION!
Fail, Alpha Fusion.
Fail indeed.

I thought Alpha was the new Nooch, Room Service or Spice in Chelsea, but they are gone too soon. I don’t even think they were here a year. I ate there on 8.22.12 and two week later there was a sign on the door that they would be renovating and opening in mid September, shortly after that I see another sign that this new restaurant is hiring. Point blank Alpha could not survive. So sad.
I enjoyed my Crispy Duck W/​Pineapple Fried Rice and Thai Iced tea, I was looking forward to more occasions at Alpha but I guess that will have to be at another location.

The boring: A bunch of genres of Asian food, including sushi. All Asian staff, including the bartender mixing lychee martinis and the like.
So many things went right here. First, there was a kind of nice, trendyish room behind the casual sushi bar space in the front so our large bachelorette group had space to sit together and felt appropriate in our LBDs. Second, happy hour prices applied back there, and they extended the time a little to fit in our second round.
The less boring:
And third, when a bachelor party showed up (between the two groups we took up at least a third of the room), when enterprising member of each of the parties put together a dare for our respective persons of honor to give each other a lap dance, the staff was wildly supportive, which I hadn’t really expected from our unfailingly polite Asian hosts.
They let us climb into the DJ booth to put on «Pour Some Sugar On It» as we dragged a chair into the middle of the dining room, and joined us and the rest of the diners in gathering around and cheering. We caught a photo of a delighted waiter filming the hilarity on his phone. They LOVED it!
So, yeah, this place gets an A+ in my book, even though I was too inebriated to take stock of how good the food was or wasn’t. (but I think was!)

OK. So, I was completely turned off from the beginning when my friend and I came here for dinner, using a voucher that I purchased. I made reservations the evening before, like the voucher suggested. When we walked in, we noticed it was pretty busy. The bar was nearly full of customers, the small tables were filled with couples demonstration an abundance of PDA and there was a rather large group of very ‘hip’ people seated at the largest table they had, in the front. Immediately, we noticed that there was no host at the host table. I guess I should have known based on the sign on the door that read, «Part-​Time Host/​Hostess Wanted For Tuesdays/​Thursdays». I would have completely understood the absence of the host, had it not been for the fact that it was WEDNESDAY! Eventually, we got tired of waiting and decided to seat ourselves.
We found an empty table in the front bar area and before I sat, I walked over to the bartender (the only employee I could see) and asked him to please have a server come to our table. He said that someone would be over shortly. We waited over 14 minutes (I posted proof) for the server to come to our table. I am assuming that the bartender realized that we were waiting a little too long so he brought us some menus around the 12 minute wait mark and said the server should be coming soon. Now, they do have additional seating in the rear of the establishment and when I inquired about the other dining area, the bartender informed me that they were having a demonstration event so that portion of the restaurant was closed off to the public. This is something that should have been told to me when I made my reservations the day before and then I would have chosen a different restaurant from my collection of vouchers :)
A couple of minutes later, our server finally reached our table and gave us the pre fixe from which we would order our dinner. He was the only one serving the entire front of the restaurant and he obviously could not multitask.
Included in the deal for each of us was an appetizer, entrée and dessert. We also received a bottle of wine with the meal. My friend ordered the Spicy Tuna Tacos on Pringles but they were soggy. I had the Salmon Carpaccio and that was a bit bland. For our entrees, my friend got the General Tso’s Chicken and that tasted pretty decent. I had the Sexy Jimmy Roll which was anything but. I hate imitation crab and it was topped with the stuff. If I had known that it had imitation crab, I would not have ordered it. I always research the menus of the places at which I plan to eat and I already knew that I wanted the Sexy Jimmy Roll because of what the listed ingredients were and it said NOTHING about imitation crab. The menu in the the restaurant didn’t even have the description listed. So, before I could eat it, I had to scrape off fake crab and it didn’t help with the taste (I don’t know why I can eat California Rolls with no prob but can not eat imitation crab by itself).
My dessert was good, a Black/​White Chocolate Mousse that you can tell they buy is large quantities from a wholesale supplier. However, my friend’s Strawberry Cheesecake was still frozen :(
Never going back. Never gonna happen. I little regretful that we didn’t just go to the Spice Restaurant in the area.

Came here because I bought a living social deal ($ 25 dollars for $ 50 dollars worth of food). Ordered the miso black cod fish and some other fish (I forget the name), but they pretty much tasted the EXACT SAME. Sauce was the same, the way it was cooked was the same, even the texture of the fish was the same.
Service was verrrry slow. One of us had to get up to find a waiter to get the check, but they still didn’t bring the check and we had to ask for it again.

Despite the horrid reviews below, I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. We didn’t order sushi because well, what’s the point of ordering overpriced sushi at a place like this where you know it’s gonna be bad?
We shared a lot of food. Glad we came with a livingsocial deal. Food was nothing fancy or spectacular, but it was better than I expected. The black cod (appetizer) tasted exactly the same as the sea bass (entrée), which was weird. The lamb was okay; I prefer medium rare but they didn’t ask, and it came out well done. Probably not worth the price, but it’s still a decent place to eat at.
Service was great! But slow. They need to hire more waiters. Dine at the back area so you don’t go deaf. Unless you’re on a boring date, of course, then you can just ignore him/​her in the loud bar area.

We came to Alpha Fusion only because I had a $ 50 groupon. Wayy before I came to New York, I ooed and awed at any line that contained the word sushi. So seeing that the restaurant was in Manhattan, not far away from where I was living, I eagerly purchased it.
I actually forgot that I owned this coupon, until Groupon sent me an email. So my last weekend in New York, I went. I wasn’t expecting much, but it greatly underperformed. We started by ordering the Vietnamese shrimp salad, which had too much sauce that tasted like it came from a bottle I can buy at Walmart. Afterwards, we simply rattled off on the sushi rolls: two spicy tuna, one futo maki, a dragon roll, two salmon, and one spider roll. The rolls… were quite awful… and just on the edge of edible. The fish was not fresh, and the rice was seasoned as if a bunch of vinegar was dumped into it, and not mixed smoothly. Plus, the rice was quite dense, not at all like the soft, airy sushi rice. I can get better and cheaper sushi at Whole Foods.
The service was awful. Even though the restaurant was nearly empty, it took 10 minutes for a waitress to even come to our table after we were seated. Also, when we were done, lots of waiters passed, but no one bothered to give us our check. And when we finally got our check, no one picked it up for another 15 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that they tacked on a 20% Groupon Service Charge?
The only thing really good was probably the presentation of the sushi. And that is why this place earns my one star.

Regular sushi as usual… not too expensive. :) The only reason we came here because my friend bought a $ 50 groupon! so we ordered huge amount of sushi and a mango salad!!!
The mango salad is. A… not too bad… but nothing surprise. as for the sushi. we ordered quite a bit of it as I do not really remember what we ordered. The spicy tuna roll tasted pretty weird. As for the spicy salmon. I feel that the fish they use aren’t fresh! It gave me a really weird feeling after I took a bite… the rice is not well wrap with the seaweed. I guess I might be able to roll it by myself too with the sushi they presented to us!
I gave 2 stars because some of the sushi are not too bad but regular as usual. and also the price is reasonable. The soft shell crab is normal… nothing surprise. I had tasted many other better sushi! In fact, if I have to be harsh. I don’t think I love the sushi at all!!!
We waited for a long time just for our check!!! which I really hate it!!! Well. I don’t think I will ever come here if we do not have the groupon!!!

Went here for an early dinner last night. We split the Thai lettuce wraps (kind of on the bland side). Their side salad was huge, which was good. The miso soup tasted decent, about the same as miso anywhere else.
I ordered the Alpha Sushi Dinner, which is supposed to have the chef’s special selection of sushi and spicy salmon roll. The chef must’ve been in a lazy disposition, because my plate came out with salmon, tuna and yellowtail — nothing too special about that.
In general, the atmosphere of the place was pretty laid back … almost too laid back, actually. People were sitting at the bar, hanging out, and only after they got up and picked up trays did I realize they actually worked there (but it has to be said that our waiter was very nice). Wasn’t a huge fan overall, unfortunately.