Lychee House

I have ordered here before via online and had an okay experience, but tonight was the opposite. After having a long day I came home and just wanted an easy, tasty meal so I hopped online with one of my friends to order my favorite, Lo Mein with Chicken and an Egg Roll. My friend ordered Sesame Chicken and Dumplings and we both entered our credit card information and sent our requests out around 9:35. Around 9:50 we got a call that said our food was at the front desk of our building. After going downstairs we were surprised to find that only my friends meal had arrived and so we went back upstairs and waited for another call. After another 10 minutes of waiting, I decided to call the restaurant to find out what was going on with my seemingly easy meal. The woman who answered my phone call was immediately rude to me and told me that she did not understand what I was saying after I had explained the situation. I then asked her to look up my order and see what was going on and she told me that she had never even gotten it. I told her that I had already paid online, to which she rudely replied with the suggestion that I had the wrong number. After bickering with her for a few minutes and being told that they close at 10:00pm, she hung up on me. I then looked back on their website and it said they were open until 10:30. After seeing this and becoming even more upset, I called back and the same woman picked up, told me that they got my order but the cooks closed the kitchen and left anyways and there was nothing they could do for me. And then she hung up on me AGAIN.
I will never eat or spend money here again. They are extremely rude.

Really fast delivery and a generous portions. I ordered the pan seared pork dumplings and the country chicken. The chicken was all white meat very tasty. I will definitely order from here again

We had lunch here today. General Tso chicken and dumplings were big hits. Service was very good. All the food was delicious (althpigh the fried noodle dish we had wasnt pur favorite) and we really enjoyed the experience. We will definitely be back and are looking forward to it.

I come here for lunch every so often for a few reasons: it’s close to work, decent Chinese food that isn’t take out and my VP absolutely loves this place! I think the food is a bit overpriced, but then again it’s located in Midtown East so I shouldn’t be too surprised! This place is always packed and the managers are very friendly!

We had lunch on a weekday and it was about 75% filled with customers. The service was good and attentive. General Tso’s Chicken was flavorful. I enjoyed the nicer ambience as well.

I had dinner with 8 other people this week.
Pros:
Food is good
Service is nice
Ambiance is pleasant
Cons:
Expensive
Main dishes came on too quick
Conclusion:
Will go again if I don’t have to pay for it.

Really close between a 3 and 4 star for me, but the food was just «okay». I really love that they serve Dim Sum all day, everyday, so definitely go try to tobiko, pork, and shrimp dumplings.
I had the Singapore Chow Mai Fun, and the flavors were pretty good, but the dish itself was a little dry. It needed a bit more liquid. The mix of meats was good, but not really necessary for flavor – I would have preferred just chicken or just pork, and paid for it accordingly.
The Lychee House cocktail was very good, but not really worth the $ 11 for the couple of swallows they gave me. That’s pretty typical east side, though, and to be fair, it was a tasty few sips. Overall, good food, but not really worth the $ 60 for two of us.

Great for my large group of family and friends. Quiet, nice atmosphere and accommodating waitstaff. Food was great: standard «Americanized» Chinese food. Nothing too fancy or extraordinary but exactly what we wanted. As a vegetarian, the dim sum vegetable dumplings and vegetable Pad Thai are good options.

Since this restaurant is near my place of work, I have been coming here for over a decade. It is now named «Lychee House», but it was formerly known as «Our place, Shanghai Tea Garden» and the owners, as well as their good food, remain the same.
–If you are here for a quick lunch, then this place is ideal for you as they get you in and out in a hurry. However, it is not the ideal dining spot if you are here for a family or couples meal because you are paying above average prices for Chinese food, in what is supposed to be a more upscale dining room experience, therefore you would not appreciate being rushed through your meal, as is usually the case at this place.
–Their menu is very extensive and all of the dishes I have tried have been very good (Scallion pancakes-​appetizer, Slippery Chicken w/​spinach, Dry sautéed crispy beef, Fried *brown* rice with vegetables, Sesame chicken, Chicken in garlic sauce, Spicy Szechuan bean curd). All are beautifully presented and flavorful.
–They also offer the typical *Lunch Special* menu, with prices ranging from $ 8.25 — $ 13.75, but I find the portions are too small for what you are paying, with the larger part of the serving being the rice and dumplings. Instead, you will get more value for your money if you order from their regular menu version of the lunch specials listed, because those prices range from $ 12.25 — $ 14.50, but the portions are considerably larger, with the rice as a side, so that you have some leftovers.
–As for their service, their servers can be a little standoffish and at times make you feel hurried through your meal. This can be a turn-​off. However, like I mentioned before, if you are here for a quick business lunch, then this might work in your favor.

I was sooo thrilled to learn that there was a 小南国 in New York. Finally, a reliable chain of Shanghainese restaurants in the US. The Lychee House English name threw me off, but still I maintained some high hopes. Alas, the hostess confirmed that it is not affiliated with the Shanghai Min chain and I will have to continue searching for good Shanghainese food stateside, with the same blind hope that others buy lotto tickets.
PS, I love it when white people assess the authenticity of Chinese food like authentic equals good. Let me tell you a secret, there is some authentically terrible shit in China.

Very surprised that we found this shanghainese food in midtown area. Though the place was not spacial at all, there were pictures of China emperor and empress hanging on the wall, hit me right in my heart…
We ordered traditional soup dumplings, duck with lychee and broccoli with beans and mushrooms. I especially enjoyed the light flavors. The restaurant owner was extremely kind and welcomed us in and out. Given this was a meal with my close friends back in Beijing, this place did offer a home-​like feeling.
Well received!

Only had the won ton soup but it was quite good with a bonus shrimp added
Authentic homemade crispy noodles with hot mustard sauce
Waiter seemed disappointed in my order of just soup
Currently a B for hygiene
They should step it up and fix this as I imagine the rest of the food is pretty good
$ 4.50 for wonton soup is why they lost a star from me and the B didn’t help either

My co-​workers love this place. They order all kinds of things and never complain. Delivery is fast, too. They have good lunch specials, too!
Having visited Malaysia, I’m a little disappointed that the food doesn’t taste close to those flavors. I’ll keep ordering, just because I’m desperate to find Malaysian food!

We came for the Peking Duck and were not disappointed; in fact we are really happy we went. The lighting inside was slightly bright, but the service was crisp, smooth, and attentive. We had the aforementioned duck along with the sautéed green beans, and all was delicious: the duck was moist without being greasy, the skin was perfectly crisp, and those green beans were delightfully tender.

After a mix up with our reservation because the maitre d’ failed to check open table reservations, we were finally seated. The a/​c was on at the end of December so we had to ask for it to be turned off. It finally warmed up enough to take our jackets off. The food we ordered was without the spices we have come to love from other restaurants so overall the meals were bland. Our son asked for his sauce to have veggies on the side, it arrived with veggies mixed in. We had to request sauces twice. At the end of the meal no tea arrived with our fortune cookies. An overall mediocre experience. We will not return.

Lychee House is one of my favourite Chinese restaurants. The food is as good or better than the vastly overrated Shun Lee at roughly half to two thirds the price. I compare the two restaurants because they’re on the same block. The ambiance is better at Shun Lee, but… I don’t eat ambiance. The shredded Szechuan beef is excellent with just a hint of spice. The duck dishes are excellent too. My favourite is the boneless duck with vegetables. One duck dish (House special?) is vile because it uses a disgusting sweet sauce meant to appeal to soulless, culture-​free zombies who think that Ruby Foo is great Chinese cuisine.
The dim sum is OK in a pinch if you don’t want to go all the way to Chinatown, but it’s not as good as that of dim sum only places like Golden Unicorn. My favourite dim sum dish is the Hong Kong style spring roll, which is deep fried and topped with a sweet wasabi mayo. The shrimp and pork shu Mai taste odd to me because the skins are thick compared to the dim sum found in Chinatown.
The good: the duck dishes, except the sweet one. The shredded Szechuan beef is excellent. Prices are reasonable.
The bad: the dim sum is not as good as that found in Chinatown.
Overall: excellent savoury Chinese food at fair prices.

The only reason why I dined here was because the restaurant I initally had dinner plans at was closed. Everything about this place screams «I’M TRYING TOO HARD» from the food, to the service, to the ambiance.
You’d think, upon entering, that this is going to be an upscale Chinese dinner experience, yet it is the exact opposite. The food is one-​step below your standard Chinese take-​out, but twice the price of it. The inside is tacky, and the service is overbearing.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS. This place is a tourist trap. Let them come here and think they’re getting a NY Chinese food experience.

Due to the convenient location close to my office, I often have lunch here when I feel hungry for some New York Chinese food. My favorite dish is a General Ching’s chicken, which is an unfried version of the American-​Chinese General Tsao’s chicken. The egg drop soup here also tastes good, and does not appear to have the artificial yellow coloring. My fortune cookie once read «you laugh now; wait till you get home». The menacing tone of this fortune cookie haunted me for the next several weeks [ok, no, it didn’t; it just sounded like a wife I never knew I had].
I will not dwell any further on the merits of this place because, as we all know, brevity is the soul of wit. Suffice it to say that I agree with fellow Unilocalers Eva W., Cindy Y. and ZenFoodster E. that the food and service are on point for a Chinese restaurant in East Midtown.

Good given the area. This place surprised me. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside is decent and kind of cozy. The service isn’t great, but then again Chinese service never is.
We started off with some kind of fried roll which wasn’t that good, but I really liked my three flavor wonton soup. Those two were on the special menu.
For mains, we went with the Peking duck. I was super happy they used the thin pancakes rather than the doughy crap other places use. I was kind of annoyed the server went ahead and wrapped everything, because I like to make my wraps to my own taste, but the lazy bf was glad he didn’t have to do the work. The duck skin was nice and crispy, though the meat was a bit dry.
We’ll probably be back to try the walnut shrimp.

Surprisingly really good food!
I wasn’t expecting much from this place, especially at this location. Something about it just didn’t really catch my taste buds, but I was hungry and prices were decent, so I stopped in. So glad I did.
Everything we ordered was great. They put their own little twists on the typical chinese dishes and they’re great. Not only is the food great, but so are the staff. They are super friendly, super patient and will give you all the recommendations you need to order the right amount for dinner. Food comes out super fast and they don’t rush you out at all.
I would definitely come back here again!