Best Time

Jesus Christ Almighty. What about this place isn’t fucking wonderful? It has damned good Chinese food, surprisingly good Mexican food, and delivers fast and with whatever sauce and sides you ask for. I’ve never had a problem with a take-​out or delivery order. The boiled dumplings have the consistency of Play-​Doh and are absolutely delicious. Eat them with the peanut sauce.
TL;DR; The sign says Forever Best Time for God’s sake. It is awesome.

On a limited budget in Manhattan, I don’t ask for a lot from my Chinese food.
Please be cheap
Please deliver rapidly
Please include utensils of some sort, because if I’m ordering from you, it’s probably because my kitchen is kind of sketch
Please don’t make me sick
It’s kind of scary how few places are willing to check off even those boxes, considering how many Chinese joints there are on any given Manhattan block.
However, Best Time is wonderful. Their portions are enormous (I get two and three meals out of every entrée delivery), they show up at my doorstep practically before I’ve put down my phone, and they always remember that I like lots of hot peppers in, well, practically everything.
What really makes them special is the following, though:
You know how if you’re paying around $ 8 an order, you can either hope for 1. food that doesn’t seem like it’ll cause giardia OR 2. food that is tasty? Well, Best Time magically provides both. All the ingredients are fresh and delicious, and they don’t over-​sugar their sauces or over-​cook their ingredients into an indiscernible mass. Everything has kind of a healthy produce-​store glow to it (I mean, under all the oil — this IS American Chinese take-​out we’re talking about here), INCLUDING the Tex-​Mex options, the few times I tried them.
What prompted me to finally review them after 2 years is this fabulous steamed tofu and veggie combo I got this evening with a yummy ginger sauce on the side. Healthy food is NOT supposed to taste this good, at least not from a hole-​in-​the-​wall semi-​sit-​down (you know what I mean) Chinese joint. VERY nice work.
They also are SO accommodating with special orders — in addition to (what they consider) my bewildering addiction to hot peppers, they give me Chinese broccoli when I ask for it, etc.
It’s SO nice having a reliable place like this just down the street from me. Oh, and about that: once I wandered in close to closing time, and they’d packed up the ingredients for the dish I’d wanted. So they just sort of made me whatever they were having for dinner back in the kitchen, and it was delicious.
So Best Time. 5-​star service and experience out of a necessarily 3-​star cuisine. I’m pretty loyal.