Bria D.
Yelp
This place was a clusterduck. I ate here last night and I'm still wondering what that experience was.
First off, the music was trash. It automatically ruined the ambience with the too-loud oontz-oontz music. My dinner partner and were dismayed just hearing that music.
To start, our Nebbiolo was nearly transparent, bloody terrible, and totally NOT a nebbiolo Our appetisers were 50/50, which is a failing grade. The truffle soup dumplings we had were okay although not standout, but the other dumplings we ordered - which I will need to research the menu for because I genuinely cannot remember what it was - were absolutely downright terrible. It should be scrapped. I have a pretty good palate for nuanced flavors, but these dumplings were so underwhelming that they tasted like a bite of nothing. It's enough that humans have to pay for water anywhere. Why should we also pay to eat air?
The saving grace was that the duck was actually good. It was tender without the excessive amount of fat, but the skin was not cwispy, so I was sad. The sauce was lacking depth and dimension, but it was passable. Everything else (veggies, wraps) were okay too.
The issue is that the restaurant claims to be upscale on the website, but it is nothing of the sort. This is a place you go to if you really need to see a whole duck - or cheesecake - get set on fire and they put sparklers in your birthday cake. I was wearing clothes that I wore to a museum earlier and I felt horrendously overdressed for the restaurant. It's so gaudy that it could only appeal to tourists. For the price is paid here, I'd rather eat in Chinatown and get better food and better experience as I tend to do when I'm there. The service here from the servers is great, but that doesn't distract from the fact that the non-duck food is not amazing. If you come here, get the duck and the duck alone.
Sidenote: this has nothing to do with my review of the food, but I just wanna give you an idea of how not-upscale this place is. I went to the restroom and had to go to the front desk to get the code. I'd asked two other people how I can get into the bathroom to no avail. When I finally got in, both stalls were occupied, and but there were so many noises coming out of the handicap stall. Only one pair of shoes was visible, but the way my jaw dropped when three whole women walked out through a hazy smoke couldn't have gone unnoticed. That was the most disgusting thing I'd seen in a while. Like, why would you want to vape in the presence of poop fumes?? As that one Scottish woman once said, "Digusteng"!