Chinatown Restaurant - Upper East Side
1650 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10128
A friend invited me and my roommate to a restaurant called Chinatown Restaurant to celebrate his birthday--with 12 other friends. Aside from smirking at the simplistic name, we assumed we would be eating Chinese food, maybe squeezed around a Lazy Susan.
We walk in to the crowded restaurant, wood paneled and minimalist like many Japanese restaurants, past the sushi bar and down the hall to a private room. However, I overheard the waitresses bantering in Mandarin. The restaurant has split personality syndrome.
Chinatown Restaurant is a sushi house: an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink sushi house. Dining with a big group felt like the right way to tackle this culinary monster. We ordered platters full of almost every sushi variety, pitchers of beer, and silver kettles of sake. For $33 you can eat and drink all your iron stomach can handle--in two hours.
After the first order the waitress brought the check, half-joking that sometimes patrons would forget to pay after too many sake bombs. I don't know about the rest of the crowd, but I felt it was a prudent yet still mildly offensive gesture. An addendum on the menu stating that all leftover sushi would be charged at a la carte prices provoked a similar prickly feeling. When the waitress practically ordered us to pay as our meal was winding down, I knew this was not the type of establishment whose bottom line is to put the customer first or make the customer feel at home.
Despite the service flaws, it was an enjoyable evening. The sushi was presentable and colorful, made from fresh sticky rice and ripe avocado. Thought the waitress warned that the sushi orders may be delayed slightly, we received our food in a timely fashion. All in all, this was a nice way to celebrate our friend's birthday. We ate, we laughed, we drank.
1650 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10128
A friend invited me and my roommate to a restaurant called Chinatown Restaurant to celebrate his birthday--with 12 other friends. Aside from smirking at the simplistic name, we assumed we would be eating Chinese food, maybe squeezed around a Lazy Susan.
We walk in to the crowded restaurant, wood paneled and minimalist like many Japanese restaurants, past the sushi bar and down the hall to a private room. However, I overheard the waitresses bantering in Mandarin. The restaurant has split personality syndrome.
Chinatown Restaurant is a sushi house: an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink sushi house. Dining with a big group felt like the right way to tackle this culinary monster. We ordered platters full of almost every sushi variety, pitchers of beer, and silver kettles of sake. For $33 you can eat and drink all your iron stomach can handle--in two hours.
After the first order the waitress brought the check, half-joking that sometimes patrons would forget to pay after too many sake bombs. I don't know about the rest of the crowd, but I felt it was a prudent yet still mildly offensive gesture. An addendum on the menu stating that all leftover sushi would be charged at a la carte prices provoked a similar prickly feeling. When the waitress practically ordered us to pay as our meal was winding down, I knew this was not the type of establishment whose bottom line is to put the customer first or make the customer feel at home.
Despite the service flaws, it was an enjoyable evening. The sushi was presentable and colorful, made from fresh sticky rice and ripe avocado. Thought the waitress warned that the sushi orders may be delayed slightly, we received our food in a timely fashion. All in all, this was a nice way to celebrate our friend's birthday. We ate, we laughed, we drank.
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