Hsin Wong

Used to come here all the time with a close friend, until it closed! Loved the Beef Chow Fun, Sweet and Sour Chicken, duck dishes, etc. etc. We always brought our own wine, and had great service from the friendly and attentive staff.
The atmosphere was also great– it felt very authentic, and not touristy at all compared to the mess that Chinatown can be at times.
While I’ve heard that most of the management have moved to a new location (someone below says it’s located at 60 Bayard now?), I’ll miss the old Hsin Wong for all the happy memories I have had there.

First of all, it’s no longer at # 72 Bayard St. There’s a hand-​written sign in Chinese and English thanking their loyal customers and directing them to their «new» location at # 60 Bayard. We went there to find another restaurant, Yee Li. We were seated quickly by a friendly waiter who said that that was, indeed, Hsin Wong. We were happy to try a new place in our old Chinatown.
We ordered the clams in black bean sauce (on the recommendation of someone on Unilocal), as well as Peking duck, bean curd with black mushrooms and vegetable, vegetable fried rice and whole steamed bass. One member of our party ordered wonton soup. When we ordered the fish, the waiter said, live Chilean bass, yes? Of course. What else? We joked about it coming to the table alive, too.
First came the clams. Nicely cooked. No taste. Then came the duck. Never actually having had Peking duck in all the years we’ve been eating in Chinatown — 55 or so — we, who ate it, liked it. Not bad at all. Then the fish came out. Nice. Not particularly special, nothing to exclaim about, but nice. After that came the soup and then the rice and, lastly, the tofu dish which was 8 pads of tofu, about 6 big, black mushrooms, 4 or so long pieces of Chinese broccoli, all covered in a brown, bland sauce. The rice had hardly any taste, though it wasn’t excessively greasy, as fried rice can be. The wontons were good, but the soup stock was tasteless. Get the picture? Very much *not exciting* food.
Then came the bill. It was all written in Chinese, but we remembered from the menu how much each item was. But nothing on the menu was $ 35! Hmmm. It was the bass! We said we wanted *live* fish, not frozen, said the waiter. You pay by the pound. WHAT? When did you tell us that? Where does it say that on the menu? We argued with the manager and got $ 5 off the bill, but we won’t go back. We don’t need to spend close to $ 40/​person for bland Chinese food, thank you. If this, truly, is the same restaurant as Hsin Wong, then they must have gone down, down, down since the move. But I highly doubt that it is.

I wanted the restaurant that JP B, renroy, Linh, and many of the other reviewers rave about. What I got was greasy soy sauce chicken and foul tasting roast duck!
The food was awful. It was my birthday and I wanted to try a new place (Big Wong has raised their prices and the quality of their food has gone down). I read such positive reviews of Hsin Wong I thought I would try it. The Soy Sauce Chicken was overly greasy and the Roast Duck had a strange waxy taste (as if it had been hanging longer than it should have and was on the brink of spoiling). The order was inedible. I threw it out.
What went wrong?

Over the years this old school favorite has never failed to satisfy. This has been a favorite of my family (and extended family) for well over a decade. If you’re in the mood for a straightforward Cantonese banquet brought to your table before you can drink one third of a Tsing Tao this place is for you. That goes double if you dig eating like a king for the cost of a pauper’s night out. On top of that you get good service from a waitstaff that actually seems to care about the quality of your dining experience — not always the norm in Chinatown!
I’ve had more memorable meals here than I could count. And I will keep coming back. This unassuming, often crowded joint may just be my favorite restaurant in Chinatown. Come with a group who appreciate good food, order cleverly and pick up the check. You can afford it, and you’ll leave both satisfied and looking ever so clever in the eyes of your dining companions.
Last night:
Step-son’s 21^st birthday — he called this place for his birthday feast. Clever lad. Our party of eleven was seated immediately. We had beers. We started with half a duck and a large order of crispy skin roast pig. (You can’t go wrong with any of the meats hanging in the window here). Before we’d finished our starters the rest of our orders began arriving at the table: 2 clams in black bean sauce (as good as you’ll ever have), 3 salt and pepper triple delight, 2 beef chow fun, an order of baby bok choy in garlic and and order of sauteed water spinach. That and a large bowl of rice was enough to satisfy a party of eleven — the median age of which was about 23!
If I had to come up with a criticism I’d say the food is a little on the rich side, but not overwhelmingly so for restaurant food. And the bill for blowing eleven people away was just over $ 210 before tip. That was with beers. No reservation. You can’t beat that in Manhattan. Don’t even try to argue; you can’t.
Hsin Wong holds strong at five stars in my world, as it has done for over a decade. Get a group of people you love together and bring them here. Take over a large round table and brace for awesomeness. Don’t worry about the bill; you can afford this.

Pork and stripped chickens for days. Can’t wait to go again I hope to find and try this place again.
The messed up part about chinatown NYC
Restaurants is they all kind of look the same so you can’t just walk in and say this is it because you say a dragon on the door cuz one the same street there might be a good 20 more places with dragons on the door.
So get the address.
One time I walked into a place and asked for wontons and the said «we are a funeral home»

This place will be PACKED during the lunch hour. Expect to sit next to strangers and share a table. I went there the other night for dinner. It was a much more relaxing experience. I shy away from this place during lunch time because I simply hate sitting next to strangers in a rushed atmosphere.
That night I ordered a plate with roast duck, chicken breast and fried egg on top of rice. It was delicious. I sat there quietly savoring every bite and took my time. They also give you some sort of vegetable of the day with your meal. It was cabbage that day. The only complaint is that they give it to you at room temperature. The rice dish also comes with a bowl of soup. The bill came out to only $ 6. Delicious comfort food for me.

One of my go-​to places ever since Big Wong changed their management and became a tourist attraction. I usually order take-​out, but nonetheless it’s still tasty and up to par when you sit and dine.
I personally think they make the best roast meats here, their duck and chicken has less fat than the other places (fat as in that layer between the skin and the meat). Whenever you order noodle soup or rice, there are actually vegetables! Who cares if it’s only 2 strands of greens, it’s better than nothing. Hsin Wong and the place on the corner of Bayard are the only two places that gives veggies, even Big Wong doesn’t do that — boo!

Came in around 10ish am when the restaurant just opened and seated right away. We wanted to try the Peking Duck but the nice waiter told us that it was too early as the Peking Duck wasn’t ready yet. Apparently it would be ready at 10.30 so we decided to order some other stuff till we can get some Peking Duck.
My sister ordered some pork combination over rice. It was really good. It had roast pork slices, white meat chicken slices with their specialty sauce, and a sunny side-​up egg. I tried some of it and it felt like a home-​made food cooked by your mother. I ordered some congee with salted pork and thousand-​year egg and it was pretty good, since I am a fan of thousand-​year egg. We also ordered a platter of roast pig and roast duck.
The difference between the roast pig and the roast pork was that the roast pig was the part of the pork that had the crispy skin on it. So it’s a must try. Like in some authentic Chinese restaurant, you can even order some roasted pig skin and I might try to order this some time in the near future. The roast duck was great. The skin had the fatty goodness that just melt in my mouth. I said that the roast duck is something that you must order here.
Finally we get our serving of Peking Duck. Half Peking Duck come with the 4 pies which we ate with the duck. The waiter would kindly put the duck and other freshly cut vegetables, that were there to eat with the duck, on the pies for you to eat. The Peking Duck was also great. I can tell that Hsin Wong’s specialty is their ducks, it’s a must order if you come to this restaurant.
Other Unilocalers seemed to have tried their regular chinese menu, I might try it some time in the near future.
The waiter was really nice and tried to communicate properly with you unlike some other waiters at a lot of Chinese restaurant. They weren’t rude and would serve you with a smile (big tip from me!).

DUCK!!!
Our party of seven immediately follow attaining intellect from Saturday Chinese classes had dinner at Hsin Wong where eying the duck and roast pork bleeding immense flavor is enticing. Half of Peking duck for with crispy pig, eggplant with salted fish, corn soup, Dau6 Miu4 Pea Shoots/​Pea Sprouts vegetables warms the heart. Rather than ducking when a flaky stolid lash the unfathomably vulgar at me, I always deflect. Albeit, the ducks displayed in their windows are not ones to deflect but to take great pleasure for flavor. Efficient and attentive service as we dine for a traditional Chinese dinner served family style where empty entrée platters were quickly removed. Dinning area is not the typical large banquet halls comparable in size, but quaint without the squeezing an adult size elephant into a sedan car for elbow-​to-​elbow tight placement. As an avid writer of Unilocal reviews, poetry and journal with emphasis on cohesive sentence structure as well as proper spelling of whole words and English grammar with attention to detail Hsin Wong’s dinner menu in their soup section note corn as «CORM.»
Hsin Wong is somewhat on the pricey side for our party of seven bill totaling $ 80.00 (which includes gratuity and sales tax). Cantonese cuisine of near authenticity is as close to Guangdong Province brought to the Big Apple without a U.S. Passport. N.B. There is only one facility yet surely to avoid due to the extreme unfathomably nastiness that lies there!

very good Peking duck! We got the half Peking duck for $ 15 dollars. They sliced it up thinly and put it in the buns with scallions and ginger for you. The skin was crispy and the meat was juicy, soft and seasoned very well.
The rest of the duck was served on another dish with sliced carrots, cucumbers and gingers.
We also had the Sanbao rice (roast pork, soy roasted chicken, and roasted duck with fried egg) for $ 4 dollars! and the portion was huge! You can’t beat that! The roast pork was seasoned so well and you can tell that it was very fresh.
The salmon in black bean sauce was just ok though. It was very thinly sliced, lightly breaded and made with lots of onions and scallions. But the fish was too thin and too dried. And the pig hands over rice was not good either.
Surprisingly, the service was very good for Chinatown. The waitress actually chatted up with us, which never happens.
I would definitely come back here again.

Made an impromptu stop at Hsin Wong (as another restaurant we had wanted to go to in the Chinatown area had closed early for cleaning). My friend and I were scrambling around trying to find another decent place to eat… it was a Wednesday night at 9:15PM in Chinatown. We walked past Hsin Wong, and it passed our eyeball test. Thanks to Unilocal Blackberry App… we found good reviews for Hsin Wong just to confirm before entering.
After reviewing the menu, we ordered the following:
1) Two Lobsters with Ginger & Scallion —
2) Classic Cantonese Stir-​fried Rice Noodles with Beef —
Both were delish. If I remember correctly, the 2 lobsters were either $ 25 or $ 30. Super cheap! Worth a trip if you’re in the Chinatown area.

Three stars is just for the Chinese donut. Bought it at the end of the day. Maybe it would have been fresher earlier in the day? It was greasier than I would have liked and what crispness it had was lost. Ah well, it was just $ 0.75.
Roasted meats in the window looked good though. If I had more time I’d go back for those.

A list of things you can get in NY for under $ 5:
–a copy of the NY Times (Mon-​Sat editions only… you can probably get the Classifieds of the Sunday edition for that price)
–a ride on the subway
–a «cut» in line at Shake Shack (nothing on the menu included)
–a pint of congee at Hsin Wong…
…yes, a PINT of congee. and that’s not even spending the full $ 5.
I came here once on a Friday before a long weekend and the guy at the counter gave me a dollar off my congee. He said it was a holiday special and I walked out with a pint of congee that I literally paid for with the change in my wallet… FTW INDEED!

Hsin Wong has all the classic dishes and the basic dining set-​up of many restaurants in Chinatown. The thing that stands out to me is the friendly service. When I went the waitresses were in a joking and chatty mood. Most Chinatown staffs are efficient and polite, but I wouldn’t describe them as outgoing and talkative. This staff has good humor in addition to quick service and good food.
I got the roast pork noodle soup which is a great value at less than $ 5.00. I was served my order in under a minute which is pretty remarkable. Overall the soup is average to above-​average, but unlike many other soups I’ve tried, they included some nice crunchy greens. Definitely a solid dish and worth returning for.

Hsin Wong’s price and quality is pretty much no better than all the other lunch spots in Chinatown. Why the four stars? Because this place actually opens for dinner with the exact same menu!
Just about every other cheap Chinese place switches to a fancy «Dinner menu» after 4PM or so, where all the dishes get gratuitous titles like «Chef’s Special Happy Sauce Chicken» for $ 16.99 which is the same as «General Tso’s Chicken and rice» for $ 5.95 on the lunch menu (I’m not kidding, check out Yee Li for example).
Hsin Wong, on the other hand, has the same menu all day long, so you can get the $ 5.95 rice plate all day long! NYC Noodle town might be the only place with the same policy.
Here’s an insider’s tip. Hsin Wong will give you a free sweet red bean soup dessert if you ask for it, instead of the orange wedges… and if you bring along a Cantonese speaker, she might be able to get you both! Thank goodness for the Cantonese speaking girlfriends…

What a weirdo Chinese restaurant…
Usual décor. Usual Cantonese flavours. I had my usual haw fun. Very good. It meets the standard. Usual speed of service.
Now, the Unusual!
This is what I would consider HANDICAP OK! The entrance has two doors that are adequately spaced so that a small wheel chair can roll through or a walkered individual can enter with their company that can actually somehow make it over to open the second door. ALSO, the bathroom is on the same level as the dining room. In Chinatown, sometimes you need to climb a set of narrow steep stairs or walk down a creepy ally like hallway to get to a bathroom. The bathroom is large and clean at that! WEIRDO!
Wait, it gets weirder! There are quite a few regular customers which happens in any restaurant, but in Chinatown, most customers are used to abrupt greetings and curt service. The staff here says, «HI! How are you? It is good to see you again.» «Would you like the usual?» «Is your wife coming soon?» Keep in mind that these are TOI SAN people. Yes, these are MY people so I can legally say that Toi san people can be pretty rude. What is this weirdo American courtesy and social sensibilities? Shouldn’t they be shouting out orders and tossing the food in front of people?

I’ve been buying takeout from this place since high school, back before it’s current incarnation as «Hsin Wong.» The food is great, and you know, sometimes you just want to go to a place where they know your name. ;)
If you’re too precious to eat at a genuine Chinatown-​type restaurant, then this isn’t for you. However, if you don’t have unrealistic expectations, then this place is pretty solid. I love getting the roasted meats over rice, but their congee is good too (from what I hear). Their entrees are great too, and not expensive.

It was a little unfair to make this my first stop in Chinatown, but I’d been up and down random side streets and it was just too damned hot for me to keep going. That and the fact that the Chinamen were having a party for a new restaurant, impeding any further movement for me.
I saw Hsin Wong from behind some scaffolding and after perusing the menu and seeing «Beef Tendon, Tripe, Brisket and Wonton Noodle Soup» I was sold. After all, my main objective this particular morning was to grab a bowl of dumpling noodle soup.
It was comforting to see that the restaurant was packed. I was directed to a small table towards the back, which gave me a decent vantage point for the goings on. Service was decent, though when they realized I wasn’t one of them, it became harder for me to convey my wants.
I ordered a side of duck to go with my noodles and was dismayed when they dumped a whole load of soy sauce on the duck before putting it in the microwave. THE MICROWAVE! There were 10 ducks sitting on hooks and they give me some cold duck THAT’S DRENCHED IN SOY SAUCE.
The noodles weren’t that great. The beef was tasty, but the noodles didn’t have that extra oomph and the wontons were bland and fell apart. Tack on the fact that I only ate a small portion of my side of duck (I only ate the pieces that weren’t soaked in soy sauce), and you had sub-​par eating experience.

One day while wandering around Chinatown in search of a really authentic Chinese restaurant, a friend and I discovered Hsin Wong. Since then, I’ve consistently recommended it to friends and visitors to New York City searching for the same thing.
Be warned however — The wait staff there is on to the fact that more-​and-​more non-​Chinese people are discovering this place and will point out higher priced «specials» on one menu to you, when in reality, everything truly authentic is on the other menu (one menu is printed on yellowish paper and one is printed on white so look at both to get the best idea of what is good here). I highly recommend the chicken with peppers in black pepper sauce, the congee with roast pork (this is something of an experience as you get a huge bowl of this tasty porridge still boiling), and the roast duck soup.
There’s nothing like a hot bowl of congee at Hsin Wong on a cold day in Chinatown! The prices here are very, very reasonable, and the atmosphere is truly authentic cafeteria-​ish dining with a room usually filled with more Chinese people than not (that’s why I think it’s really authentic).
The tea is still complimentary, you’ll see lots of Chinese people running in and out grabbing the food to go from the bustling open kitchen in the front of the restaurant, and the service is super fast.
It’s kind of out-​of-​the-​way in Chinatown, and sometimes you have to wait for a seat, or are placed at a larger table with other parties (in my opinion, this makes it even more fun), but it’s really worthwhile if you’re in the area and looking for something truly unique.

This is the default place to come to for excellent Chinese food. Believe me as my mother grew up in Chinatown and I lived there for a few years back in the day.
Throw away the menu and have someone read you the specials that are on the wall. I recommend anything with seafood in it and any type of bbq/​roast meats (as you can see from the window display). My favorite dish is this white fish «gui yue» (grouper) that is seasonal that come out on a sizzling plate with onions and peppers in black bean sauce. I also like any braised fish (cod). I’m drooling as I’m typing this.
As I leave I always get an order of lean roast pork to go. You can see regular customers coming in and out buying chops as you eat so you know it’s good and authentic.
The only issue I have with this place is this one waiter. I know Chinese people speak their mind but one time I was eating some fried pork chops and the waiter commented that I shouldn’t be eating that because I had some pimples on my face… great way to lure customers in