Xu's Public House

Summary

This seems to be a new upscaled Chinese restaurant that we accidentally stumbled into. The decor is very modern and has a slight pretentious feel to it. I learned that the restaurant likes to advertise it hand makes basically all the dough.

They gave this waffle like starter. It is similar to those red bean cakes but without the red bean.

The dumpling sampler had 4 dumplings. This was a special, so I’ll try my best to remember (top left clockwise): some soup dumpling, some squid ink dumpling with gold flakes, another soup dumpling variant, and shu mai with (crab?) eggs. All the soup dumplings were OK. The skin was thick, but I think with this stuff I still prefer Din Tai Fung or even some places in Flushing. The squid ink dumpling had good flavors, but nothing really tastewise was miles beyond what you can get at some other Chinese restaurants. The shu mai definitely tasted a little more “upscale” but not that much more mind blowing.

The orange chicken was an interesting spin. The starch around the chicken was very light. The orange sauce was lightly flavored and no where near as sweet as say Panda Express. As you are about to bite into a piece of chicken, you will taste a little sweetness, and that’s it. The chicken itself is seasoned lightly, and thankfully the sauce is not completely overpowering. At the end, I thought this resembled a “healthy” orange chicken.

The crab soup with tiger prawn had a pretty good broth. The broth if I recall had some crab meat in it, but it was also light with a lot of crab flavor in it. It had just enough starch where it was bordering on light and jelly. They gave just 1 tiger prawn which was fairly big and plump.

The live crab meat with scallions noodle was just OK. They do pick out the crab for you, but it was sparse. The noodles taste homemade, and have a decent bounce to it. Flavor wise, some might feel this is bland. The one thing this reminded me of was Japanese soba in terms of both the noodle texture and the taste. One thing to note is that there were little pieces of crab shell in this, so be careful when eating this. I am pretty sure this was not intentional, but it seems that this lacked the delicate attention it needed.

As said before, this is a relatively new restaurant, so I will try not to judge it too harsh. I thought the food was OK, but the price was expensive for what you get. I think it didn’t hit the elevation mark at all in flavor although the appearances were nice. I do appreciate that you don’t feel completely stuffed unlike normal Chinese food.

I think service was very much a miss as they were not very attentive in general. Since we sat close to the menus, I simply reached over to grab the menu, first for the special menu and lastly for the dessert. There were several times waiters would walk by, but none really checked on us even when I am staring at them in the eye. The check was the same as well. They did well with filling the water though. There was 1 Asian gentleman who was nice in explaining some of the dishes and was attentive at times, but I feel he needs to do a better job training his staff.

Final Verdict

I think this restaurant is decent, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work long term. There’s been this movement in Manhattan of introducing upscale Chinese dining, and I think there needs to be more attention to the dishes other than marketing everything as “hand made”. I would give it a few more months to see how this restaurant does before trying to visit.

Yelp Jabs

The noodle dish was my favorite. The noodles are fresh and chewy, and topped with fresh ingredients that enhances the flavor of each other. The noodle is probably one of the best I had in NYC.

That is a bold statement to make. I definitely disagree with this, and I’ve been to quite a few including here in NYC and in LA.

Mainly, the star is the food. The best dishes are not traditional Chinese food. They are elevated, with subtle and savory flavors, and mixtures of textures that are delightful.

Just adding expensive ingredients is not enough to elevate the dishes. You need to prepare and execute as well. I felt at times during the dinner that the execution was missing. Presentation looked nice, but the food in general did not really deliver a “wow” factor that you would look for in upscale.

In the four years I’ve been in New York, this is the best Chinese food I’ve had in the city.

In the four years this Yelper has been in New York, they likely visited a total of 1 Chinese food restaurant. This one.