Full House Cafe

Very good to eat
Jul 8th, 2016

Nov 20th, 2012

Aug 23rd, 2012

If you're looking for dim sum, but not brave enough to handle the full experience, then this is where you want to go. This is a Hong-Kong style dim sum house, where you pick your dishes off the menu and they're made fresh to order as opposed to rushing the poor woman with the cart. The spot itself is very clean and modern-looking, and the food is of much higher quality than the standard dim sum restaurant, and it is all reflected in the prices. My favorite dish is the fried cruller wrapped in rice paper - it is perfectly fresh and crispy, and the rice paper gives it a great texture - you do get what you pay for here. I'm not a fan of the chicken feet here, there's something about the sauce they use, I prefer Ping's or Delight 28. Overall, if you're looking for high quality dim sum, without having to do any work, you want to come here.
Sep 5th, 2010

Came here for Saturday lunch. We had their specials. When you immediately walk in, you notice the decor. The high back leather booths and with additional seating upstairs. This place is quite spacious. They have flat screen TVs on the wall. I thought the booths were comfortable. It was high enough to have your own privacy. The restaurant can get noisy, but that's all dependent on the other customers. Service was excellent. They definitely have enough staff. We ordered their crab soup dumplings, pepper steak, shredded beef bean curd with spicy peppers, and fish fillet with chinese cabbage. There were 6 crap soup dumplings. The dumpling skin broke very easily. I preferred the skin from Shanghai Gourmet. They do give you quite a bit of crab meat. At the tip of the dumpling, you can see the crab meat. When you dig into the meat, they have crab mixed in it as well. I think you get more crab meat here than Shanghai Gourmet and Joe's Shanghai. The soup base, I preferred Shanghai Gourmet. The soup here was a little on the salty side. The pepper steak was very good. The meat was very tender, but probably due to meat tenderizer and not due to physically tenderizing the meat. But it was still good. It was served with green and red bell peppers. Crunchy and fresh. It was over cooked, not soggy at all. I liked the sauce because it had a little sweetness to it. I think the dish could have been improved upon by cooking it with garlic but not added the garlic pieces to the dish. The shredded beef bean curd with spicy peppers was excellent as well. It might be too spicy for some people, but I liked the kick it had. It definitely complicated my pepper steak dish. Majority of the bean curd and beef were sliced to symmetrical proportions. Not needed in this type of restaurant. But there's at least some level of detail in this particular chef's prep work. The fish fillet with chinese cabbage was presented rather elegantly. Not something I would have expected. The vegetable was crunchy and fresh, not soggy. Not dripping with oil. The fish wasn't over cooked. It wasn't chewy. I don't remember the type of fish but it's definitely a common fish that just works with this dish without fail. The sauce was definitely thickened with corn starch. Overall, this place reminded me of some of the cafes back in CA. It was nice to be in NY and be reminded of CA/San Gabriel cafes. I would definitely come back and here and recommend it to others.
Jul 31st, 2009