Taste Of North China

As soon as my party and I sat in the place we noticed everyone ordering two peculiar dishes:
— Country Style Pork Chop. Very tasty, big, and you have to eat them with your hands with gloves. The restaurant will provide you with the gloves. It seems the best part is by sucking the bone for the flavor and eating the meat that is close to the bone.
— Lamb w Cumin in Hot & Chili. I’ve had these in a restaurant in Flushing. They are definitely tasty.
Too bad we didn’t order them because were were on a hurry. But, next time we will order them to truly enjoy them!
We ordered Mapo Tofu, Lamb kebab, Salt & Pepper Pork Chop, and Sliced Beef XinJiang Style. They were all good dishes.
The decoration of the place can be very simple and misleading… Thou shall not judge a book by its cover! Tho some chairs and tables need to be moved around because we were seated in a corner and close by a pillar with barely enough room to enjoy the meal, and in addition the table was a little bit slanted. Other than that, the food is very enjoyable at this place!
Definitely worth coming back to this place for the dishes that we missed out: Country Style Pork Chop and Lamb w Cumin in Hot & Chili…

The portions are bigger if you dine in. Ordered the beef xinjiang style, salt and pepper pork chops, which are very good
Mapo tofu and lamb kebabs are not bad. The Lamb kebabs are better and cheaper in the flushing street carts. The table I got is a little slanted so things roll off the table easily.

I’ve been here a few times only because one of my coworkers loves this place. This place has your typical mediocre Chinese food– very non-​authentic unless you speak to the manager and get friendly. My 3-​star rating is based primarily on the food. The setup of the restaurant is very, very strange. It looks as if they’re perpetually under construction!
Service is great. Waiters and managers are really friendly, and I’ve often ordered something not on the menu, that they suggested. Good for groups as there’s plenty of space.

Grossly overpriced and staff that has no clue what is on their menu. This was hands down the 2^nd worst meal I’ve had.
The crispy fried pork in orange sauce ($ 14) was gummy, glutinous and inedible. The Pork Fried Rice ($ 9) was just nasty and the small container of white rice was old and crunchy.
Ever since the name change the quality has taken a nose dive.
CANNOT recommend.

We ordered lunch takeout from the restaurant one day. Both my wife and I got seriously ill in the afternoon and started to vomit. I was not able to eat anything for 2 days because anything I ate just ended up upsetting my stomach. We reported the incident to the Depart of Health and Human Services and they sent an inspector to the restaurant the very next day. They informed us that the inspector uncovered 2 violations: first, there was a large amount of questionable meat that the restaurant had to dispose as per inspector’s instruction; second, the kitchen staff was not wearing sanitary gloves. We do not have any proof that points our food poisoning experience to the restaurant, but just a FYI in case you wish to dine here.

After 4 visits to this establishment it’s time to let you, dear diners, and North Sea management know, that it takes some measure of interpersonal skills to ALL patrons to survive in the food service industry. Imagine my horror when I sat down and my chopsticks were removed and replaced with cheap forks. I even had to request an authentic soup spoon to replace the silver monstrosity I was given for my soup dumplings.
But, the last visit was the real doozie. First of all, my significant other, a real aficionado of Chinese food from all provinces, and I were given the PAPER TAKE OUT menu rather than the nicely bound version.
Then, once again, SILVERWARE was placed. When we complained, out came the cheap takeout chopsticks. We noticed that the other patrons were enjoying their food with lovely shellacked chopsticks. We had to complain again! Despite the fact that only 3 tables were occupied the service was painfully slow. Our inexperienced server was lost in space and his coworkers did NOTHING to assist him or us.
Why, you may ask, do I continue to return? An excellent question; thanks for asking!
The food has been delicious; the dumplings fresh and tasty. This time, however, our main dish was cooked in an orange sauce so thick with cornstarch that it could have doubled as hair gel.
Our comments to the manager were met with dismissive shrugged shoulders and a less than sincere «Sorry».
Jersey City is a wonderful place to live and eat with great cultural diversity. Every diner should be treated with respect, regardless of their ethnic background.
I guess that takeout is the way to go here so you don’t have to deal with their prejudicial, judgmental attitude and service.

Restaurants in Jersey City area, you have a serious competitor here!
Try the skewers, dumplings and pork bones.

Chinese food, some construction around the edge. Looked in — no one eating there. Or so we thought — they didn’t bother seating anyone at the front (everyone was seated inside). When we walked in, the sound of people and food filled the air.
The back looks like it was a converted bank, a large steel door and space opening into another dining room. The walls rather interestingly painted and looks like half the restaurant isn’t even set up, yet. They had a grand opening earlier this year.
Service… basically you have to flag people down if you want anything. The table was lopsided and things at the edge were dangerously unstable. Watch it if you have kids. Tea was far too strong, steeped probably a while before we actually even came into the restaurant.
The dishes we tried:
東北大拉皮Green Bean Sheet Jelly w. Assorted Vegetable: Cold dish, not enough spice or vinegar, but it was a crunchy kind of refreshing salad almost in sesame and peanut sauce. Carrots, cucumbers, black tree mushrooms, and some tofu/​egg sheets.
榨菜肉絲麵Pork & Salted Cabbage Noodle Soup: Enough for 4 – 5 people to share, and not too crazy on the salted side, the pork was a good balance.
羊肉串Lamb Kebab (3): Lacked the flavor of being cooked over the charcoal grill, and not nearly the best mix of cumin and spice. Dry lamb, too, too lean.
Overall, well attended by (literally all) Chinese people, and some of the other dishes looked good — will have to come back to try some more dishes to fully get a better review in.

This restaurant has served chinese food forever. It’s always been pretty decent chinese food too. But what is lacks is personality in these 3 areas — service, décor, and music.
Let me tell you why I think this:
1) One time I was here for the Lobster special, I think it was 2 Lobsters, served any way for like $ 30 bucks or something like that (don’t quote me!) Everything was cool, until we realized that Whitney Houston’s «I wanna dance with somebody» was on repeat. The ENTIRE TIME we were there.
2) Another time I was here we decided to try the soup dumplings. The server did not give us any spoons. So then we asked for some spoons. He came back and brought us 3 silver spoons. I. DON’T. UNDERSTAND. Am I not in a chinese restaurant that serves xia long bao?
3) They just need to do something about the décor in here. It’s one thing to be minimalistic, it’s quite another to just not think about it at all and open a restaurant that wants repeat customers.
3 stars for food. 2 stars for everything else. I don’t think I’ll be returning here.

This place is great. Ordered online, and my food was here in 20 minutes, hot and delicious.
I got the pork and chive dumplings and the shredded beef and chili noodle soup. Both dishes were fantastic. The noodles soup was hella spicy, so be careful if you’re not into that kind of thing.
I don’t know why this place is at 3 stars right now. Maybe some people don’t actually like Chinese food.
I will be ordering again.

Order delivery from here twice. Both times, they got the order wrong. We called to ask about it the second time and was told that they don’t make the item we ordered (spicy wontons) so they just sent us something else instead. Why is it on the menu then? And why didn’t they try to call and see what we wanted in place of the wontons instead of just giving us something us? (Clearly, I’m serious about my spicy wontons). Also, I ordered hot and sour soup and it was definitely the worst I’ve ever had. It was bland, there were barely any vegetables in it and, it had way too much corn starch to thicken it. Gross.
Lastly, it took almost double the delivery time estimate so our noodles were so mushy by the time we got it. I was so excited based on the good reviews here but was just disappointed both times.

Service was awful and food was bland and greasy. We were the first table of the day and they haven’t cleaned off the dirty tables from the night prior. I ordered the hot soy milk thinking it was the fresh kind. Um no… we watched the waiter pull out a carton of Vitasoy FROM THE REFRIGERATOR, pour a glass of soy milk, and placed it in the MICROWAVE!
I much prefer going to Shanghai Best, just a block from this place for Chinese food.

Great new addition to the neighborhood!
Dine in — great food at good price, deserving of 5 stars. A good mix of northern and southern Chinese cuisine. Was happy to see they served Country style pork chop, a more common dish in Northern China.
Delivery — prompt service, they once delivered in 20 minutes, couldn’t be happier.
P. s. Shu mai they serve here is authentic Shanghainese style, which is supposed to be filled with sticky rice, and this is the version I personally like. I personally don’t like the Cantonese style filled with pork/​shrimp.

Just came back from dinner here on a Sunday night. I was SO impressed with the food here I had to come right back home to post.
First off, let’s get one thing out of the way– there’s not a whole lot of ambience here, so don’t expect much from the place. There’s the cool looking bank safe but that’s about it. But if you’re looking for great northern Chinese food…
The amazing food is the star here. We definitely ordered too much but it was all so great we had a hard time stopping ourselves. We ordered Ox and Tripe in chili
Oil (great!), pork soup dumplings, pork and chive steamed dumplings, green bean sheet jelly with veg (!), and salt and pepper pork chops (!!!). We had left overs and the bill came to $ 67.
Our nice waiter suggested the kidneys next time. We will be back soon to try them! I highly suggest you try this place out!

My friend from Shanghai vouches that this place is very authentic. He also informed me that the owner of this place is actually the previous owner of Shanghai Best. Apparently he’s friend’s with a person whose uncle owns the restaurant. But anyways, I left all the ordering to him.
1^st Time:
Chive and pork dumplings (豬肉韭菜水餃) — The dumplings are the bomb here. The pork and chive filling was tasty with the soft skin. Either I was really hungry or skin on these dumplings were unusually good. It looks like they hand make the skin themselves. These dumpling are of the boiled variety.
Green Bean Sheet Jelly w/​Assorted Vegetables (東北大拉皮) — Another good order by my friend. This dish consists of mung bean noodles swimming in some peanut-​y sauce, topped with vegetables. The noodles were so QQ. Definitely ordering this next time.
Sliced Beef, XinJiang style (新疆爆肥牛) — I forget if we ordered the 麻辣肥牛 or 新疆, but I think it was the latter. The dish consisted of sliced beef swimming in really spicy and hot oil. Taste was good, but not a fan simply because I dislike my food swimming in oil. Not a big fan of SIchuan food because of that.
2^nd Time:
Preserved Vegetable and Pork Dumplings (酸菜水餃) — This was better than the chive and pork dumplings because of the crunchiness from the preserved vegetable (which is the pickled mustard greens you find on Taiwanese beef noodle soup or gua bao).
Lamb Skewers (羊肉串) — Recommended by my roommate from China, and they were so good. Just slightly more expensive than the skewers you find in Flushing and slightly smaller, but just as delicious. They seem to be marinated with cumin or tumeric, and they give you a small pile of cumin and I think cayenne to dip in. Definitely get these skewers.
Sauteed Chinese Water Spinach w/​Garlic (空心菜) — I thought they gave more stems than leaves, but I’m glad they serve this here, but not sure where else to find it in JC.
Noodle w/​Scallion Sauce (蔥油拌麵) — This is a popular Shanghainese noodle dish with charred scallions. Their rendition is more oily and less sweet. This wasn’t as good as the one I had in Shanghai Asian Manor in Chinatown.
3^rd Time:
Soup Dumplings (小籠包) — Tasted great. The skin was thin. Not too picky about soup dumplings. I even like the frozen ones, so not too picky about soup dumplings.
Sauteed Triple Vegetable (地三鮮) — This consists of fried potatoes, fried eggplant, and peppers. The potatoes were nice and crispy. Not the healthiest of vegetables dishes, but really tasty. Give this one a try as opposed to regular eggplant with garlic sauce.
Stir-​fried Pork, Hunan Style (湖南小炒) — The pork is thinly sliced and the dish is not really spicy at all. Good flavor. Not too salty so I was able to eat it without rice. Best thing is it’s not swimming in oil.
The restaurant is so large, that getting a table won’t be a problem. It isn’t the most pretty restaurant, but the food would definitely taste better at the table and fresh. The first time, our waiter was somewhat absent minded and also forgot the rice and our check, but the food comes out really fast.

I wrote a tip about their delivery.
In our 2^nd attempt, we got food delivered in 10min!!! & delivery guy were very nice also the lady who took out order, too.
Food was pipping hot and delicious & dumpling got crunch! Yummmmy!!!
We order shredded pork with bean paste, shrimp fried rice and pan fried pork and shrimp dumplings.
We really love their dumplings!!! They all taste great and we were happy to have good food delivered :)

Very authentic type of Northern Chinese food, and price level was decent. For a big plate of ribs, lamp/​fish tofu kebab, chicken and mushroom soup, it was less than 40 dollars. They have many other choices that we would also like to try out… probably next time! Delivery speed was a bit slow though.

Taste of North China is a welcome addition to the downtown JC restaurant scene — especially given the growing population of Chinese students and young professionals/​families.
Pros:
1) It’s not Lao Dong Bei or Fu Run in Flushing, but on this side of the Hudson, it’s the closest you’ll get to finding authentic Northeast Chinese dishes on a menu. Try the guo bao rou (fried pork in orange sauce) and the dried tofu with hot pepper.
2) Relative to the immediate competitors/​substitutes in the area (looking at you Shanghai Best, Grand Sichuan, and Confucius), portions are more generous.
Cons:
1) Taking a page out of the Shanghai Best playbook, prices are on the higher side. Premium for authenticity,
2) As previous Unilocaler noted, the ambience is lacking. It looks like there was little to no effort put into redecorating this place — just throw some blue table cloths and white sheets over the old furniture. Even the POS system and receipts still reads «Grand Bank Café» — lol. Maybe this will improve over time.
3) In addition, when we went today, due to a group party, we were seated in the old bar area from the Grand Banks Café, and there were a lot of fruit flies …

I had such high hopes, but was utterly unimpressed. The food was fine, not great, but I would be willing to order from here again if others wanted to.
Lets start with the food, the most important part. We were in the area and decided to order take-​out to bring home. The menu looks impressive. All of the descriptions seemed like very authentic Northern China cuisine.
Here is a rundown of what we got: Pork Soup Dumplings (Xiaolongbao), Steamed chicken dumplings, Chicken and Corn Soup, Mapo Tofu, and Chicken with Broccoli.
The good… the chicken and corn soup was excellent. Lots of chicken and egg with a perfectly thickened broth. Also, the Steamed Chicken Dumplings were clearly hand made and had a really great flavor and texture. My fiancée didn’t care for the vinegar flavor in the dipping sauce, but I think that is just how they do it in Northern China, so no worries.
The «Just OK»…The Mapo Tofu was solid. It was swimming in chili oil, which was a little spicy for our liking (Szechuan food CAN be well balanced, it doesn’t have to burn your face off!) Also, good Mapo Tofu usually has a nice pork presence, but the small diced pork in this dish was really not noticeable (perhaps it was drowning at the bottom of the chili oil). The Chicken and broccoli was good. It did not blow me away with flavor, but there was nothing bad to say about it. The chicken was tender and the sauce was not too salty.
The Bad… I love Xiaolongbao. I was very excited to see it on the menu. They were not good. So far the best soup dumplings I have had have been at 456 Shanghai House in Chinatown. They are not the soupiest, but the flavor is amazing. «Taste of NC» had neither the soup nor the flavor. Their dumplings were not very soupy (and they were not broken on the way home, so there goes that excuse) and they really didn’t have much flavor.
I am MOST disappointed at the décor. I used to go here a lot when this was «Grand Banks». Over the years, the space has become very run down through neglect and just age. The space is fantastic, and a few bucks, some elbow grease, and a little vision could make this restaurant beautiful. Sadly, the new owners have done NOTHING inside. They made no renovations, even the old Sushi Clock is still on the wall. A little paint, some artwork, some new table clothes and candles would go a long way. I probably would not want to eat in, it is not very inviting.

Yum! Was deciding on a place to eat on Memorial Day and happened to see their menu by the door. Got there about an hour and a half before closing and to my horror the place was dead with only two other tables. Not a good sign. As we sat down to look at the menu we found out the place had only been open for about a week. A good reason for why the place wasn’t pack.
Wasn’t too sure on what to order so we just got the braised beef noodle soup (紅燒牛肉麵) and the fish fillet in hot & chili broth (水煮魚片). Tried to change the noodle to a different type, but the waiter would not allow it. I wasn’t too happy but okay. So the noodle soup came out first and it was tasty. The beef was tender. A good start to dinner. Next came the fish fillet and I have to say it was amazingly good! The broth was spicy enough that I didn’t need any additional hot sauce, but not so spicy where you are in pain from each bite. There was enough fish fillets to qualify as two orders if it was from another restaurant.
The only thing that can be improve is the wait staff. It seems like it was their first time waiting tables. I saw another table order about five dishes and the waiter didn’t even write any of it down, which would be impressive if he didn’t forget two of the orders.
Can’t wait to go back and try the country style pork chop (東北醬棒骨) that I saw another table ordered.