Our Place Tea Garden

I’ve been coming to this place for years, I also order the occasional pick-​up. Everything is always good. Good Chinese food. I have literally never tried anything I didn’t like. Super reliable, old school, nice dinner atmosphere.

The staff were very nice, The sweet and sour chicken was very good but their interpretation of chow mien was without noodles and a heavy sauce. I didn’t think I was crazy so I Googled chow mien and it translates as fried noodles? They accepted my refusal of their «chow mien» and offered to bring a noodle dish but I didn’t want to split my meal up as they already served the sweet and sour chicken and rice. A bit pricier than I was expecting. I probably wont go back but the meal wasn’t bad by any means.

Lychee House Modern Chinese… i liked it… good food … very good prices. comfortable inside.

Previously several visit to OPSTG have had my personal rave notices. On a visit yesterday„ I discovered:
1. the restaurant’s name had changed to Lychee House Modern Chinese
2. the manager claimed nothing had changed – the same cooks and
menu
3. No. 2 was a lie. The menu had change and the food (same dished previously ordered) had changed to the down side. Quite a disappointment.
These comments are to alert past fans of the previous restaurant to expect a change

A good Chinese restaurant in the upper east side? Now theirs an Oxymoron, but this is THE BEST Chinese restaurant in all 4 boroughs!~
I went there for a meeting and was blown away! Prices are good, and when you ask for a coke they give you one in a glass bottle, the real stuff, and like the soda, the food was the same. It is cooked the way Chinese food is supposed to be, not greasy, not unhealthy, not expensive.
If you go there, get the dumplings… yum! Not a bad thing on the menu.
To put it this way, my mother hates Chinese food, and this place changed her around!

Lychee House has all of the virtures of Our Place witbout any of the old vices. The dim sum is a nice addition.

Great Chinese food in a more upscale looking place. The staff was very hospitable and accommodating. They had lots of large round tables, which was perfect for meeting up with friends. The food was great — would definitely go back.

Unilocal you let me down. my husband chose this place based on Unilocal reviews. I guess you should check ethnicity of the reviewers before you know who to trust?
anyway, the food here was unremarkable and for the $ 60 we spent on lunch, there are much better options out there.
very very small bathroom. gross/​odd looking kiddie seat
definitely appeals to non-​asians… you know its not authentic when your chinese restaurant comes set with forks. (usually you gotta ask for forks…)

I came here after an exhausting week of working six (6) consecutive days including Mother’s Day with a friend who highly respect women, which felt good. He answered my plead to whoever was available for dinner on Mother’s Day weekend (though I have no children) but working in retail on holidays adds stress which I needed to get out.
This restaurant is completely catered to the American palate. It is not traditional Chinese of family style where the tables are circle. For authentic Chinese style, I’d highly recommend Manhattan’s Chinatown or Flushing, Queens. Disgruntled wait staff to serve patrons with an unfriendly vibe as it’s just a job which patrons receive a negative vibe or the cold shoulder.
Also dba Shanghai Tea Garden. This restaurant was featured in The New York Times in January 2000 where patrons can get a meal of $ 25.00 and under without digging a hole in one’s wallet. While customers were consuming their meals, the staff was vacuuming the carpet which is totally unappetizing. It was almost like taking out the garbage while one is enjoying their meal as it’s unappealing, thus the one star among the lack of etiquette and warmth inviting feeling.

Came here for lunch today. Unimpressed.
Went with the dry sauteed string beans. The string beans were too long, and oddly, not «dry» enough. I never realized it but it’s the «dry» aspect that makes the dish tasty. This one was sort of drippy.
Service was okay. Typical unfriendly staff which, ironically, is fine for me at a Chinese place.

Had lunch there yesterday with two colleagues, both men with serious appetites and an appreciation for Chinese food. Started with spicy tangy shrimp, a cold soy sauce braised duck and vegetable duck – each with a clean bright taste. Followed with a shrimp dish with egg-​white sauce and a shanghainese shredded beef with yellow leaks and pressed bean curd and Tung-​po Pork – a fatty pork belly in red sauce that the word succulent only begins to describe. One dish complemented the other. Staff helpful – opened the leaves of the table so we could eat family style. In a word, excellent.

If i could give it a 3.5 i would. I’m not sure if I’d say 4 stars because I keep repeating my order of lunch special #7 garlic chicken, which is tasty (which is why I keep ordering it), and sometimes their soup and steam dumplings, that aren’t so special.
My office likes to order from here so I join.

I am sick of everywhere near work except for our place shanghai tea garden (what a NAME!!!). spicy? check. superfast delivery? check. able to find our place of business (IT’S A GIANT FUCKING GLASS CUBE!!! D’uh!!! Shouldn’t be so hard, blockheads!!!)? check.
mmm on the dumplings. entrees are okay (usually get spicy garlic pork or general tso’s chicken), the don’t rank with the best chinatown restaurants in taste but they do in price and are the best non-​foofy option in this part of town.
to be fair, i’ve never actually been to the restaurant, this is purely based on delivery.

Went here for lunch today with 3 others. They have some 8.95 and 10.95 lunch specials but we ordered off the regular menu. They portioned and served each dish in our respective individual plates. This is my midtown pick for best Chinese food, although I haven’t been but heard Mr K’s is up there as well. I didn’t think a place like this existed in the immediate area. Service was good — water was refilled promptly. Waiters in tuxes = good service!
— Fried Dumplings (6) — Still hot off the pan, lots of meat, seared on the bottom.
— Peking pork chops — no bones! tasted the pork, very lean and tasty
— Spicy chinese broccoli — broccoli was properly peeled, crunchy, not too spicy.
— Crispy shrimp with mayo — perfectly crisp, tasted the sea in this one!
Bill came out to 16/​head w/​everything.
Décor: Upscale, no wooden chopsticks!

I just had lunch. A lunch that I’ve been eating, at my desk, for the last hour. A rather hearty lunch that I’m now ashamed of. Currently, sitting here, wondering whether I should eat both chocolate fortune cookies they sent…
My coworkers have told me over and over and over that the vegetable dumplings from this place are really good. hmm… I don’t think so. I even got them pan-​fried, instead of steamed. Good, egh, maybe. Really good, definitely not. Unless you are smothering them in some tasty dipping sauce, which to me does not a tasty dumpling make. You do get quite a few (6) for $ 6 though.
The lunch specials, too, are pretty large and the shredded pork with garlic sauce was fantastic! It came with white rice and 2 little pork dumplings! If I had any idea that the special came with dumplings when I ordered I would have refrained from ordering the veg ones altogether…
Having just finished all of the less than stellar dumplings, one of the pork dumplings (no matter how small), some of the rice, and 95% of the shredded pork I officially feel nasty.
Decent food, large portions, delivery: pros
Lacking self-​restraint: con
Feeling like I got my monies worth: pro
Feeling nastified as I finish out my work day: con
FYI — «Our Place» is actually the name of their other restaurant on 3^rd Ave and 82^nd St. this one is just «Shanghai Tea Garden», but whatever.

Thanks to Unilocal for steering me towards this place! I was staying in mid-​town for a few nights and yearned to try a soup dumpling… but not so intensely that I was willing to get on the subway. Lo and behold, a search for «soup dumpling» on Unilocal NYC yielded this little find… steps away from my hotel.
Clearly, I ordered some soup dumplings. I also tried some kind of chicken that proclaimed itself to be spicy and/​or peppery… Hokay. Not so much. Tasty? Yes. Spicy? Only if you are one of the mythical «super-​tasters» I keep reading about. That aside, the soup dumplings were fantastic! Would that someone in DC would open a soup-​dumpling offering establishment such as this, I could burn all my other Chinese takeout menus.

As far as upscale Chinese dining goes, this place was absolutely fantastic. While the dining room is small, and unpretentious, its elegant and subtle atmosphere focus your attention directly on the food brought to the table.
This is not an ethnic Chinese restaurant in the sense of a hole-​in-​the-​wall Chinatown joint, where you dine with the natives. This is more a dressed-​up-​waiters, white tablecloth affair, although they happily served me wearing jeans (I even called ahead to check if that was okay).
Décor and clientele aside, the food is what stands out here, and in an unexpectedly delicious way. The food is all cooked in the Shanghai style, and aside from using better ingredients and claiming a better chef, the style is as traditional as the next place’s. We started off with the chicken dumplings and an onion pancake, as well as some soups (hot and sour, meatball noodle), and ordered four entrees: a bean curd dish, something with eggplant, a szchechuan beef, and chicken fried rice. The appetizers were great, especially the dumplings. When the main dishes came out, they put the food down on a tray stand next to the table and individually plated each item into quarters for all four of us. This was very fancy treatment if I ever saw it, but it meant that we wouldn’t have to divide up the food ourselves and spill it all over their nice tablecloths.
The entrees were amazing. I loved every bite. The eggplant was cooked so well I actually found myself liking eggplant, which is a hard veggie to come to terms with. The tofu also brought new life to a rather bland ingredient. The spicy beef plate was really hot and tasty, and mixed together with the fried rice made it doubly good. I love fried rice and this batch was excellent.
The price seemed reasonable for what we ordered, and the service was speedy and efficient. We left stuffed and smiling. I wish I could have said something funnier about this place, but it just wasn’t funny how good it was. I guess one funny thing that happened was that the couple at the table next to ours brought a warm bottle of strawberry or raspberry lambic and requested that it be put on ice in a bucket at the table like a bottle of champagne or white wine. It was truly bizarre and I think the waiter felt a little insulted. I mean seriously people, who brings a warm bottle of raspberry lambic to a Chinese restaurant? Filthy buggers!

Very good Chinese (Shanghainese) food.
We started with the soup dumplings which were very good. The hot and sour soup was decent. We had the Chrysanthemum Beef (beef w broccoli on steroids), which was excellent and an order of chinese broccoli. Everything was great.
A little pricey for chinese food but worth it.

I went here with friends last week because it’s the most central location to our 3 offices. I thought it was pretty good, but the service was kind of spotty. And my friend’s knife was dirty. So was the waiter who replaced it.
But, again, the food was good. Started out with scallion pancakes, which were not the best I’ve had, but up there. I really liked my Szechuan hot and spicy peppery type chicken, mainly because it came with a nice helping of garlic spinach on the side. My friends also liked their dishes — especially the ham and egg fried rice. Dessert wasn’t bad although their selection is a little small. Really, though, who can turn down lychees?
Wouldn’t say it’s the best, but it’s certainly a good choice for midtown east.

Our Place Shanghai Tea Garden is one of the best Chinese (Shanghainese) restaurants I’ve stumbled upon in recent memory. It’s almost 12 years old (as of this post).
My company (C & A) was great as well as the dishes we ordered:
— pepper and salt squid was tasty
— shrimp in a red Szechuan sauce was spicy and tangy
— shrimp balls were large, tender, and delicious!
I would order the shrimp dishes again in a heartbeat. The squid was good but I’d like to try other dishes…
Our server (Steven) was friendly as was the owner (Bill?). I joked with the Bill on the way out, letting him know I was visiting from out of town and throughly enjoyed the lunch. He told me they’d deliver AIr Express for me. Ahh, if only that was true… *sigh*