House of the Red Pearl

The Best Food at The Tin Building Over Three Visits | Eater NY

"We entered the House of the Red Pearl through a curtained door at the back of the Asian grocery into a rather grand, cocktail-lounge-y room with booths, circular tables and many hanging lamps; the staff wear stiff Mao-style jackets and the place is explicitly meant to evoke a James Bond/Dr. No world, a theme that made us slightly uneasy. The menu is modern and faultlessly prepared: soy-marinated cucumber salad, shrimp-and-pork Sichuan wontons, an egg-drop soup heaped with greens, a somewhat too-oniony moist Chongqing chicken, excellent steamed pea shoots in butter with crunchy shallots and caramelized garlic, and a wok-fried cumin lamb that may be the best NYC version of this adapted Uyghur dish—overall the most ambitious restaurant in the Tin Building and, for me, maybe the best, though we left $135 poorer." - Robert Sietsema