Probably about $30 less without the drinks.
please describe?
Cut $30 from that, so 65 for a lot of food.
Lobster was $48, fish $33. (iirc lobster at HK cafe was $35 or so).
Having been to a few of of this genre of place now, the price point is very similar for the specialty fish & other “house” dishes – all north of $30. Take a look at Blue Willow, Che Li, and Alley 41 for starters.
Portions are more generous than the next price point up / fancier spots.
Prices are higher than the next price point down / less fancy places.
WHICH people
(wrong people, silly people)
we saw this across the street when we went to Banh Anh Em iirc?
(eta – over the past few months, i have walked by this place, this place, this place, this place, this place, and this place, which makes me wonder about some kind of sauerkraut fish conspiracy)
easier to post this:
this is how I’ve come to expect the dish to look from a szechuan restaurant:
Interesting – the first pic look like the noodles at the bottom of the fish soup, and i think I’ve seen them sold dried at the store.
the additional texture of the cucumber and peanuts was very pleasing.
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Not superficial. I had a Sichuan lunch scheduled for today (which for me ruled out any substantial dinner last night) at Spy C, in Forest Hills. Ten of us spent $27 each, all in. I wouldn’t have minded spending, say, $35 to add a well-prepared twin-lobster dish, if this were a restaurant that offered such a dish. To be sure, we were outside Manhattan, and we weren’t drinking, but with the extra cash in my pocket, I expect to enjoy a couple more good group lunches.
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you were missed jen!
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I thought the meal was fairly priced but pretty sure cafe hong kong is around $40 for two lobsters. wasn’t there a recent HO thingie there?
edit: lol, you posted the photos, it $38 for 2 back in july.
We spend in the range of $100 for 2 of us at nice restos with friendly service, some ambiance and very good (non-chinese) food in our neighborhood, sharing 2 dishes and each having a drink., Not much French dining recently. Its not that I think chinese food should be cheap, but our Chinatowns still provide better value than what you can find in MIdtown Manhattan or gentrified Brooklyn. t $100 pp would be quite a ways out of range for opur dining in chinatown where probably a shared meal with several dishes and some food to carry away at the end and no alcohol or maybe 1 beer would be maybe $35-50 pp. Depends on what is ordered of course, things like whole fish and duck will bring up the cost.
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Yes, true. I think it’s very location-specific. There’s a critical mass of Chinese restaurants near Cafe Hong Kong that might put twin lobsters for $38 on the menu as a loss leader - which is not happening in midtown.
Yes, and I tried to plant the seed then, but it did not grow and flourish.
That’s for sure! Honestly, I thought it was something of a bargain given the food, service and restaurant row location.
Reminds me, I have something else I want to write about but will take longer than the last one to achieve the same level of silliness.
You are turning into my muse!
Yamada–small (11 seats, two nightly seatings) kaiseki restaurant in Chinatown. My cousin and I were asked to move from our 8 pm reservation to 5:30 p.m. in August (sorry, I am so behind on even reading the blog!). We ate at the beautiful counter with another couple. It was an extraordinary meal. I worried that it would not remain open till Christmas…
But here we are, and the joint is jumping. I can post my pictures from August, if there is interest, but mostly here to share the NYT four star review (that’s my kid with the mushrooms!):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/dining/restaurant-review-yamada.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U8.QZjO.8Tmgbn9r_3SM&smid=url-share
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Your own pictures would be nice, too, time permitting, even if they’re only photos of the food!
This is uni and abalone with tomato (first item on the menu–I think the pictures pretty much correspond). Anyway, the dish was memorable and delicious! You could taste all of the parts, but it still went together, and I had never had a combination like that. I could say that about pretty much every part of the meal:
I have some pictures of the pairings I, ahem, drank too:
That last is from the Japanese whiskey bar in the same alley run by the same small group of restaurateurs. I could not drink any more, but my cousin who had only drunk some wine with the meal did taste a few kinds. The bartender was fun and knowledgeable, from Eritrea of all places, and our evening that started at 5:30 ended well past midnight!
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I aspire to be the kid with the mushrooms.
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looks liike it might have been more expensive than sushi sam, the discount man 
maybe she’ll adopt us!
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