First, we were unimpressed with the food. Some things were so salty that my friend commented, “my tongue is burning.” Other things became the butt of jokes as some dared others to eat it, for instance the “toothpaste-like pea pods”. Joking aside, it was just mediocre food, but I can see that the prices are low, particularly their $25 three-course price-fixed dinner. The portions are also generous so I could pass it on as right amount for the price.

The worst parts are not the food. Midway through our meal a baby roach crawled up the wall, about 6″ from my friend’s head. Later when dessert spoons were set, most of them were absolutely disgusting with visible gook all over them. It’s a miracle only 3 out of the 8 of us had stomach-aches afterwards, with one person leaving the activities early that evening.

I also want to point out how upset I am about how they treated my brother’s girlfriend, who is vegetarian. Seeing that they don’t have vegetarian entrees on their menu, I called in advance to ask if they would be able to make her a real main course. They assured me they could and would, even saying their chef could do something great. When we were there, they only made available to her side dishes. There was no choice–there were three possibilities so she just had a plate of each: cous cous with raisins, purple cabbage, and ratatouille.

If you’re not equipped to serve vegetarians, that is fine with me; I have no problem with that if the restaurant tells me. I can go another time without vegetarian friends. Pretending to care about customers when you don’t, being a disgustingly dirty restaurant, and having sad food, makes me deeply upset and concerned about the people eating there.

There is one dish they’re known for, a bun they named Snow White. It’s similar to Chinese Sweet Topped Buns, but the crust is paler, not golden, and the inside is filled with some sort of rice pudding custard. I like that it’s mildly sweet with very fresh give to the bread. It is pretty good, but far from convinces me to return to this restaurant.

After this review, I don’t know why you would go, but if you do, note that they include gratuity on your bill already. Cash only.

Lon spent some time asking our waiter about recommendations and he said the seafood is great. Not! Lon asked if everything in the Mixed Grill was grilled and he said yes. Look at this. I can assure you nothing on this plate ever touched a grill. Everything was covered in so much lemon and oregano to mask the poor quality of scraps and ends used. When a manager/owner (not sure) asked Lon how his meal was, Lon did tell him he was unhappy and that none of it was grilled. He tried to argue a bit about it being grilled and then offered to make him something else. Lon declined because he already started feeling sick. Lon’s dish also came with a side pasta where he chose Linguine and meat sauce. It was on par with pizzeria stuff.

The waiter recommended a Seafood Linguine with a Spicy Red Sauce. I said I’ll take it. While the portion is generous, the frozen lobster tails were pretty gross. I actually spit some out. The sauce was very salty but not spicy (as described). I will give them that the pasta was al dente.

In the end, they took Lon’s dish off the bill which was really nice, but appropriate. Seriously, I am concerned about how little people care about the quality of the food they eat. I just read an article about that actually, and that most Americans weren’t even able to identify when food was rancid. Lon went through most of this meal muttering how this restaurant should be ashamed of itself but quite frankly, I think the people who eat there should be ashamed of themselves. The place exists because people eat there. Come on NY!

The Edamame Salad arrived first, a simple and well seasoned mix of soy beans, red onion, and jicama. We found ourselves just eating the soybeans though because it’s hard to pick it up all together with chopsticks.

Lon ordered a Banana cocktail made with banana rum. It’s a beautiful drink garnished with fresh banana and partially rimmed with Vietnamese spices. It’s wonderfully balanced, tasting fresh and natural. Banana is a risky flavor that could take a turn for the worst and taste like nail polish, but this one shined, winning best of the evening.

The Sesame Cracker is served with three accompaniments.We enjoyed the Malanga, very smooth and soft. The Pickled Eggplant did not taste like eggplant at all, but it was a fruity and refreshing salsa. The curry stuff was a little too soupy and we’re not sure what the soft stuff floating in it was.

The sesame cracker, textured like shrimp chips, had no flavor on it’s own. It was just a delivery mechanism for the accompaniments. Overall the idea was exciting at first but we lost interest very quickly.

The Shrimp Paste Noodle Soup is the kind of dish I could easily love, but here the noodles were too soft and the dried bamboo shoot pieces too bitter. I brought that to Chris’ attention who said it wasn’t meant to be that bitter, but the chef did want some bitter in there. The Shrimp Paste reminds me of a Chinese Fish Paste soup called Ro Gung.

The Salt and Pepper Soft Shell Crab didn’t quite have that salt and pepper taste. They were meaty for little crabs but also incredibly oily.

The Pan Roasted Quail was over-cooked and the sauce was like salty teriyaki sauce, no better than bottled stuff.

Lon really enjoyed the Durian Ice Cream though. It did actually taste like durian but it’s something you have to like and I’m not so into it.

The Yucca Waffle is rather hard and crunchy, one side being a bit too burnt. It’s topped with a very strong Jasmine Tea Ice Cream. I can’t believe I’m saying so but it was too strong.

The prices here are pretty low, but if you want Vietnamese food, you can get way cheaper. Overall, we didn’t like the food at all but maybe I’d come by for a drink.

When I arrived at Dunkin’ Donuts 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017 I was disappointed in their selection. I asked, “is this all you have?” Yup, by 4pm, they are out of Boston Kreme and Bavarian Cream, as well as Apple N’ Spice or Apple Crumb. It looked kind of sad and pathetic, but I picked up the four that I thought would be available at Tim Horton’s, the jelly, plain glazed, marble frosted, and the chocolate glazed cake doughnut, bought an iced coffee for my friend for keeping me company and we were on our way.

Tim Horton’s 47 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 opened this week, not far away. We saw a short line of about 6 or 7 people when we arrived. Five minutes later, I chatted with the lady in front of us about how the line had not moved and there’s three people behind the counter. I noticed that the doughnuts on display looked a bit more enticing, but still, a rather sparse variety. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do much of a side-by-side comparison, because they had Boston Kreme and Apple Fritter, but no jelly or marble frosted (or similar). They didn’t even have plain glazed, so I bought the sour cream glazed.

As the line moved at a crawl, more people came in behind us, so the TH staff attempted to re-organize the line, managing to confuse the heck out of everyone by making the front of the line closer to the door and the back of the line closer to the register. Each new person that came in went to the front of the line thinking it’s the back. When it finally got to my turn, the story managed to go from bad to worse.

It is really hard to do justice to the severity of how bad the customer experience was. Two women try to talk to me at the same time, one trying to take the order while the other tries to ring me up. One women seems to try to run the show, snapping at her co-worker, and snaps at me constantly to rush my answers. Literally, as I list the doughnuts, she keeps snapping, “what you want? and…and…” As she grows impatient with me, she is exhibiting such attitude in her voice and rolling her eyes at me, but ironically, she does not understand a thing I am saying, continuously getting the order wrong, to the point where the co-worker starts rolling her eyes and my friend starts to try and help explain differently. Eventually, the co-worker is yelling at her because she cannot understand the simple things I am saying, “one blueberry fritter, one sour cream glazed…” I still went home with the wrong Timbits. I ask for a bag to carry it all in. No bags.

Again, I’m not sure you can understand how terrible this experience was. You had to be there! I am sort of shocked since I was told by Canadian friends that Tim Horton’s was known for the quality of customer service. Lon and I also noted particularly good service over-all when we were in Vancouver. Perhaps, it can’t be replicated here.

Getting to the products, I already know I don’t like DD coffee. I did years ago but my last 4 attempts failed miserably. I find it very acidic now. Yesterday, I tried a TH iced coffee and it looked like murky water. My friend looked at it and said, “it looks watery.” I took a sip, confirmed that it was and awful tasting, and threw it out.

Lon and I sat down for the doughnut tasting. The Chocolate Cake Glazed Doughnut was the only one I managed to get from both places. Both of them were bad, neither tasted like chocolate, but Lon thought the DD one was edible while the TH one had a weird taste to it.

For Dunkin’ Donuts, the Plain Glaze and Marble Frosted were both dry. The doughnut part of the jelly doughnut was better, a bit fluffier, but pretty skimpy on the jelly. Ehh.

For Tim Horton’s, The Apple Fritter is not identifiably apple. It’s more like cinnamon coffee cake, a very dense one, not at all like a doughnut. The Blueberry Fritter doesn’t taste much like blueberry either. It’s dry and dense and tastes like bread with glaze. The Sour Cream Glazed was tolerable to Lon, but too sweet for me. The Blueberry Cake doughnut ended up being the best one. It was moist and tasted like blueberry, although it was an artificial taste.

You’ll notice in the pic above that the Boston Kreme doughnut is stuck to wax paper. Once you removed it, most of the chocolate came off. Then we cut it open and saw that there was no cream at all. There was a hole but they forgot to fill it. Pathetic!

There was also a plain cake Timbit that Lon thought was edible, but overall, we were severely disappointed.

This was a very week challenge of Tim Horton’s vs. Dunkin Donuts. Home team won by a narrow margin, but really they both loose because we’ll never buy doughnuts or coffee from either one again. They both suck!

It was Father’s Day in Flushing, the land of no reservations (or seldom), where all our favorite places were spilling over with long waits, and we were relegated to try Mulan, where it was only about half full. I had high hopes that it would be surprisingly good though, because I’m pretty sure if a good high-end restaurant opened up in Flushing, it still wouldn’t do that well. The general population there is used to a certain value of portion per price. Plus, the cheap restaurants are already insanely good so why pay more for the decor that few in my parents generation care about.

My first taste was not a good one, the tea might as well be just hot water. As we browsed the menu, my hopes started to slide, as I saw the mish-mosh of JiangZhe, Cantonese, and Fusion dishes. They actually note on the menu which dish was intended to be which.

Sausage Puff, a fusion dish, was just a well plated version of something you could buy in the frozen section of Costco. Some puff pastry wrapped around mediocre sausage, topped with black and white sesame seeds, sliced into four bite-sized pieces, is appalling at $6.

The Soft Shell Crab was a bit damp and pretty flavorless, but I did like the simple mango and cucmber slaw underneath. It was refreshing with a tinge of ginger.

The Pepper Steak had a simple black peppercorn flavor. Each piece was medium-rare, a nice touch for me, but the dish was confusing because of the sizes. The pieces were too big to eat in one bite, but small enough that I felt very awkward cutting each one into three pieces.

The Braised Tofu with Crabmeat Sauce was bland, a complete waste of crabmeat that you could see but could not taste.

We ordered the Bacon and Raisin Fried Rice, but then found no bacon or raisins. We suspect they gave us the wrong dish. We remembered something like a Wild Rice Fried Rice, which this looked like, but when we asked the waiter, he went to the kitchen and checked, and came back insisting this was the Bacon and Raisin Fried Rice. I was willing to let go of the bacon because it had Chinese sausage that perhaps they just translated poorly and called bacon, but we showed him that there were no raisins, but he insisted there was no mistake. What we got was actually quite good, probably my favorite of the dishes (kinda sad huh?) but just not what we had ordered.

Long Chien Chilean Sea Bass was a beautiful dish, but some parts of the fish was over-cooked, while the peas were under-cooked. The fried tea leaves on top were very interesting and tasty, so we will give credit for that.

When the Wu-bsi Ribs arrived, they looked very red, so I asked the waitress if there was any artificial food coloring. At first, she didn’t really understand, but then claimed no, no certainly not. I didn’t trust her answer though, so I asked another waiter, who said, yes indeed, there is food coloring in there. So, I sadly watched as my family ate the ribs, but everyone told me I wasn’t missing much. Despite looking so saucy, there was no flavor besides pure sugar, and two large pieces were left on the plate even though we left this dinner hungry.

The Malaysian Conch had a great flavor, very reminiscent of Sa Cha Sauce, which I adore. The eggplant pieces that soaked up the most flavor were particularly good, but the conch was so-so, the slicing being a little too thick which made them more challenging to chew.

The bill came out to $153.89 (about $179 with tip), which is steep in Flushing, and we weren’t quite full. The bill says, “WE SUGGEST 20% GRATUITY” which almost made me laugh out loud. Try as they did seem to, they didn’t do anything at all impressive. The dishes were served family style which requires less work and they weren’t even served in the right progression. They were not able to describe dishes or answer questions well, and frankly, when a customer shows you that there are no raisins in a dish that called for raisins, you don’t just insist that this is the dish. Other than putting a bit more emphasis on plating, Mulan is a completely failed attempt at being upscale. When you’re in Flushing, you have way better choices. Do not waste time and calories on this one.

Cupcake Stop has got the marketing concept down. It’s a cute truck. They have cupcakes for $2 and minis for $1. Different flavors are served daily, and you can follow their locations on their website or on twitter.

We love the concept but we weren’t thrilled with the three minis we got. The Oreo tasted no better than the supermarket kind. The Red Velvet had a basic cream cheese frosting with a non-distinct cake. (Remember, we discussed how Red Velvet is not just red colored plain cake?) The Triple Chocolate did taste chocolat-ey, but it was also incredibly sweet. Actually, all three were.

Oh well, perhaps a rival cupcake truck will appear soon.

Lon related it to eating something like frozen halvah and it did have that sort of mouthfeel. The moral of the story is, don’t mess with ice cream. It’s got to have dairy in it.

While we ate the average rolls, we looked over the menu (thank you for large print) where nothing sounded interesting. There was no T-bone, no aged steaks, no rib-eye, hanger, or porter house….only Filet Mignon and Sirloin Steak were named by cut. The rest was stuff like Sliced Steak (2 of those), Beef Scallopini, and Medallions of Beef. Where’s the Steak House menu? What’s going on?

The food list was short but they have one of the longest wine and liquor lists I’ve seen. We chose a bottle of Rioja (Marques de Murietta Castillo Ygay2000 Gran Reserva) which everyone liked. It’s a sweet and light red, good for our light weight group.

The salads were giant, but all the pieces were way bigger than bite size and having your customers eat your salad with a fork and knife is not a good sign.

Lon ordered a crab and scallop appetizer, just simply broiled with butter, but it was really really good. This was the winner of the night. The seafood was fresh and cooked perfectly tender so that it melted in your mouth with the butter. MMM….

We were a party of seven: 3 people ended up with Sirloin. Here’s Lon’s, cooked correctly (he requested rare), well seasoned, but just not very good meat. It was quite tendonous, which was exacerbated by the dull steak knives.

I really didn’t think anything looked interesting so I opted for the Extra Thick Veal Chop. It tasted like extra tendonous pork. The knives were really driving me nuts. I was having such a hard time cutting and my fingers started hurting because I was gripping so hard, so I just gave up and only ate about 1/3 of it.

I ate some of Lon’s steak and one of my mom’s Lamb Chops, thick and juicy, meat quality just above average. They were cooked as asked and seasoned well.

We shared the sides of asparagus (just blanched), spinach (also blanched), and Hash Brown Potatoes (more accurately home fries). The vegetables were very plain but cooked correctly. The potatoes were nicely crisped, although kind of ugly.

Dessert was better than expected. Lon loved the pecan pie and we all enjoyed the coffee. A big pot is placed on the table so you can refill yourself.

Overall, the food kind of sucks, service is average (but slow on water refills), plates are from your grandmother’s attic (yea, even she doesn’t use them anymore), and it’s dang expensive!

Blue Lobster is highly rated across most of the sites I found and has many solid reviews. For instance it’s rated the #2 place on this Top 10 list and Discovery Mexico wrote a glowing review. Not to mention the number of user reviews on various sites praising it. I wonder if they went to the same place as us? The reality is, that most probably don’t know good lobster from bad. After having some of the best lobster in the world, we definitely have seen the full lobster spectrum.

When we arrived at Blue Lobster, there was a decent crowd, filling the two levels of seating and a lively mariachi street band playing inside. The hostess was polite and seated us at our choice of a romantic, two-seater on the street level. They brought over the painted menu and topped it on a chair in front of us. It reminded me of my lunch at Superfine. We asked a few questions and to see the lobster tails, which seemed to be the primary method of eating the lobster (other methods include in various pasta dishes, etc.). There were three sizes, big, bigger, and huge. Jessica opted for the smallest size, which was probably from a 2.5 pound lobster, and I opted for the largest, which was probably from a 4 pound lobster. The prices were reasonable for such beautiful tails from spiny lobsters (where most of the meat is in the tail). We both followed the recommendation for broiling the tail. Jessica asked for the butter and garlic sauce and I selected the white wine cream sauce.

We started our meal with some warm, but otherwise plain bread. Then they delivered the Clam Chowder I ordered. Jessica and I agreed that the clams were plentiful and super tender. We enjoyed them, but felt like they were swimming in a butter sauce more than a soup. It was well flavored, but super rich.

While awaiting our lobster, we warded of waves and waves of street merchants and musicians. Fortunately, it turned out the mariachi band playing when we arrived were street musicians who wandered off. They were good but incredibly loud. After they left we enjoyed our conversation at a normal volume.

Our entrees arrived, and geez, they were big. And then we started eating. Uh oh. Ugh. The lobster was over-cooked. And that was only a part of the problem. The tails were not as fresh as they should’ve been. They were completely mediocre… at best. Neither of us finished the lobster meat, and in fact, I felt a bit nauseated from the low quality food. We both agreed it tasted like cruise food.

Jessica did enjoy the side veggies (mixed broccoli, carrot, zucchini), because they were just lightly steamed, and her baked potato. I felt the veggies were boring and my side of Spaghetti Alfredo was super tiny and average.

The price came to about US $115, which would’ve been just fine, if the food was good, but it wasn’t. When you’re in the neighborhood, make sure to absolutely skip this joint. It is a tourist trap and not good eating.