Lily’s

Just had veg. lomein, boneless ribs, chicken wings and Cantonese wonton soup… everything was horrible. …completely flat … with an after taste of stale cooking oil… YUK

On time and solid. Delivery guy was a little anti social but it was freezing out and I was only wearing boxers when I answered the door so he gets a pass

If you want (at least) 3-​day old rice drowned in a mysterious brown slime, topped with canned vegetables, then come to Lily’s! The food here is beyond despicable. I ordered what was advertised as «fresh mushroom and zucchini lunch special.» The vegetables were canned and served in a brown gravy. The rice was very hard as if it had been simmering for days. AVOID.

Super fast! And this is the first take out shrimp and broccoli where the black crap has been removed. :) would definitely order again and recommend for cheap decent Chinese takeout

I order food from Lily’s Chinese take out every now and then. Originally discovered this restaurant through Seamless because they are open late.
The plus is that they deliver before closing which is great because I tend to get sometime before midnight. As for the food, the portion is small but I LOVE THE PLASTIC TUPPERWARE ! Makes it easier to warm up the food and carry it to work with no spill.
I HAVE NOT ORDERED FROM HERE SINCE THEN

Would not recommend. I ordered the ma po tofu, for delivery. Delivery took forever (at least there’s no fee!). The tofu was sweet! Won’t be ordering from here again…

Food is like typical western Chinese food. The plus side about them is that they’re open late but their delivery time is extremely slow.
A perk about them is that their scallion pancakes are pretty good and this is one of the few places that delivers them.

For several years I’ve ordered only vegetable dishes, all of which have been extremely good — very fresh, flavorful, crispy & light. My typical order consists of Scallion Pancakes and Moo Shu vegetables. In fact their Scallion Pancakes are some of the best I’ve ever had in NYC. The Vegetable Dumplings are always good too.
I’ve noticed an abundance of bad reviews for meat menu items, and today I ordered Shrimp with Chili Sauce, in addition to the very excellent scallion pancakes and vegetable dumplings. «How can Shrimp with Chili Sauce be screwed up?» I asked myself.
The Shrimp in Chili Sauce was awful; inedible. The Scallion Pancakes and Dumplings were fantastic, as usual. But the shrimp? Just awful. Neon orange, weirdly-​translucent, corn starchy sauce with a very non-​nuanced flavor. Just awful.
Now I ask myself «Does Lily’s have a good chef/​evil chef sort of thing going on in that kitchen?» The contrast in quality between the excellent vegetable dishes vis-​a-​vis the horrid shrimp dish was striking. If that shrimp dish is any indication, the bad reviews are deserved.
The Scallion Pancakes, Vegetable Dumplings and Vegetable Moo Shu are consistently excellent though.

I’m somewhat new to living in the FIDI area and this has been one of the two chinese food restaurants I have ordered from. Delivery has always been very quick. Food was ok, a little pricier than the first chinese restaurant I picked and quantity was less, but I liked the rice here better. Nothing fantastic, but decent. I’ve ordered several times, I am of course in their system. However the other night I tried something different — moo shoo pork — and it was definitely a big disappointment. I continued consuming it however and was sick all of the next day. I called a few days later and told them the incident and their response was «show me the doctor’s report». Now, I“m not sure what I expected, and usually all it takes is one order of questionable meat and I don’t return to a chinese restaurant, but I thought this place would’ve been at least apologetic! I will say that when I placed the order it was close to 11 pm, perhaps the meat was lying out for hours before hand. I’ll be looking for a new restaurant. I would not recommend this establishment.

Ok, I don’t get why this place has such a bad rep! I’ve been going to school in downtown NY for 3 months and I’ve gotten Lily’s many times — the delivery is quick and reliable, the price is perfect, and the food has always been good. NOT GREAT, good. But what do you expect ordering from a cheap chinatown delivery? I’m very picky with Chinese food in general, and I know I have had MUCH better than this, but I’ve certainly had much much worse. Lily’s hits the spot every time i order it. I typically get the boneless spare rib dinner combo with fried rice (i love their fried rice– i know its crappy quality but i dont know why, i just love it) The spare ribs are good, but yes I’ve had MUCH better. LOVE their egg rolls, and i have a crab rangoon addiction so i keep getting them– but they’re not the greatest. IF youre into crab rangoon: they’re filled perfectly, ratio of filling to dough is great but I;m not a big fan of the dough, its not flaky and tender enough — but thats okay. Love Lil’s
PS ive never actually SEEN this restaurant, and that’s on purpose. I don’t even want to know.

serving size to cost ratio is like paying full price for one of those mini snickers bars you get on halloween. The Rent must be to dam high.

I really hate giving any restaurant a one star rating… having said that, this was probably the worst «Chinese food» I’ve ever had. The warning signs were there. For instance, Any hole in the wall restaurant that advertises «Chinese and Japanese» should be a sign to steer clear. The place also sports a «B» rating, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s unclean.
The food was flavorless, gummy, and soaked in oil. Whoever cooks here or planned out the recipes needs to overhaul their food items. Does the chef not have a tongue?

Network of Fake Restaurants Uncovered on Seamless
Monday, February 24, 2014, by Marguerite Preston
With a handful of phone calls, some Google mapping, and a little persistence, Tribeca Citizen has uncovered the seamy web of fake restaurants currently operating on Seamless and GrubHub. After a reader noticed that a new Chinese restaurant called Joe’s Noodles listed an apartment building as its address, the blogger traced one of the restaurant’s phone numbers to a different place called AAA Asian Food. That restaurant had its own fake address, plus a sister restaurant, Asian Diet Food, with the same number and a different fake address. Eventually, with a little more digging, it all boils down Lily’s Japanese & Chinese Restaurant, a real restaurant that is apparently fielding the delivery orders placed to all of those places.
Tribeca Citizen got in touch with GrubHub/​Seamless (now one company), and the director of PR responded: «As I write this email, our team is taking steps to correct the situation. GrubHub Seamless takes measures to ensure that every restaurant is correctly represented on our services and invites diners to report inaccuracies to our customer care team.» As of now, the restaurants are all still on both sites, and also, bizarrely, offering reservations.

I did not like the looks of this place because it looks a little run down. «B» health rating. I have not ordered food from here for several months. Snowing and cold in NYC and hot soup fit the bill for lunch. Chow Fun soup noodles with chicken.
Short and simple, the soup was not good. It was bland and not appetizing. They initially forgot to put in the chicken and the cook had to run down the street after me.
Places like this are really starting to piss me off. You can’t get decent Chinese food anymore. Mind you, this place is located at the cusp of Chinatown. How can you mess up soup? I should have gone to the C-​Town down the street and bought a can of Chunky Soup and roll.
This place is on my banned list, I will not return. You ruined my lunch on this cold and snowy NYC day.

I love ghetto Chinese food. I’m not trying to be healthy when I order it but this was BAD ghetto Chinese food. The pork steamed dumplings for example? No flavor whatsoever. And they were extremely doughy and thick and the consistency was really slimey. Have rice and noodles in the fridge… Going to try them but I didn’t finish the dumplings. This place used to be so good! I don’t know what happened!

This place is a total disappointment. I’ve lived in the area for 22 years, and I had been going here since I was kid. It was always a normal crap Chinese-​American restaurant, but the standards have definitely degraded beyond belief.
The food comes out on a plastic lunch tray on styrofoam plates. When I said «nevermind» after I found out they charged for hot tea, the server laughed at me. My shrimp fried rice was bland and HAD A HAIR IN IT. I uploaded a pic of it. My friend said the beef in his beef fried rice was weird chewy and made him feel like he was eating cat. His wonton soup was bland, and he didn’t finish it.
We were the only people sitting in this small restaurant (fits about six tables), and it took over twenty mins for us to get the attention of the server so we could gtfo of there.

4-​star based on lunch delivery
I work on broadway and grand. Lily’s is my go-​to place when I’m too lazy to step out of the office and want a budget-​friendly meal. Usually, this is when it’s too cold out or too rainy, so I have only ordered the noodle soups, so this is what my review is based off of.
The noodle soups are great and around $ 6-​$ 7, which is a great deal considering it comes in a large tub and is served piping hot. The delivery time is excellent. Always within 30 minutes, for me that is.
I suggest getting the noodle soup with wontons or mixed vegetables. Don’t «splurge» that extra dollar for the seafood because it’s just veggies with imitation crab. The wontons are excellent, though, and really hits the spot on cold, rainy office days.

Worst lunch meal I have ever had. Since it was Chinese New year celebration, my sister and I didn’t go to popular restaurants to eat, but we settled for Lily’s. When we walked in, everyone seemed so busy, and we were pretty much neglected. We even had to ask them if we can sit down. They were more into fulfilling their online orders than tend to the people who were actually there.
My sister ordered a chicken and broccoli over brown rice and I order 2 rolls (tuna and salmon) with miso soup. 10 mins later, they came over and was like Sorry we ran out of rice, do you mind waiting another 10 minutes for the sushi rice to cook. Fine, we will wait. 15 mins later, the chicken and broccoli over brown rice came. It was not that great. Everything was super bland…5 mins later, my sushi came. This was the worst sushi I have ever ate. The sushi was breaking apart on the plate without me even touching it. The rice was literally hard AND cold. Either it was day old rice or they didn’t finish cooking it thoroughly. The tuna and salmon were literally the same color and didn’t taste any different. It didn’t taste like tuna nor did it taste like salmon. I had to literally douse the sushi in soysauce to mask the taste. The miso soup was even worse. It was like watered down miso. Overall this meal cost us 16 $ and it was the worse lunch I ever ate.

Not a huge fan of the sushi here, sorry.
Lilly’s is your typical-​take-​out Chinese restaurant with a sushi stand on the side. Although I’ve never tried the Chinese food here, I can only speak for the sushi.
The sushi isn’t so great. Rolls are pretty much melted and hands were dipped in vinegar too much before making the rolls, so as you can imagine, my sushi rolls were sourish, not great. Great customer service though, I’ll give you that.

Our worst Seamless Web order in recent memory. Our 30 – 45 minute delivery window fell to the wayside, and after an hour we called to see just where our food was at. Eventually after 75 minutes, it arrived unceremoniously and without a word from the delivery person. Unfortunately, the food was not worth the wait.
I ordered the Subgum Wonton, one of the house specials. It involved a mix of jumbo shrimp, beef, chicken, roast pork, «Chinese vegetables», and eight fried wontons. The vegetables amounted to a heaping mound of broccoli, some onions, and a few coins of bamboo shoots. The amount of each protein present in the meal was inversely proportional to its price, so chicken was plentiful and shrimp was seldom seen. The sauce was uninteresting and gloopy. The wontons were fried, chewy, oily, and generally terrible. I made my way through two of them before abandoning the effort. Overall, the food is edible save for the wontons, but better Chinese food can be had just about anywhere in the city. Pass.