lychee house

new york, ny

website

there's a category of chinese restaurants, mostly located in midtown, which have fancy white tablecloths and high-quality chinese food. it's more expensive than your average chinese restaurant. the waiters are usually dressed up and service is a little over-the-top (i don't really need someone to portion out rice onto my plate, but okay ...) lychee house, which was formerly known as shanghai tea garden, is one of these fancy restaurants.

the name has changed but the food is still shanghai-nese. one of my favorite things to order from shanghai tea garden was the shanghai-style fried rice - basically fried rice with ham and egg. i used to order it to-go all the time, it only takes a few minutes for the kitchen to prepare. it sounds simple and i have tried to recreate this dish at home, but it doesn't taste as good. derek and i were eating in the restaurant, so in addition to the fried rice, we had the beef with green beans. really good flavor - if you're stuck in midtown, this is an excellent (although expensive) option for chinese.