Yi Mei Gourmet Food
Yi Mei Gourmet Food
Take-out: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$ Price range Under $10
4 reviews
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If you're short on time and need to order something to go, you can't go wrong with Yi Mei! $3 will get you three items, rice, and a smile. OK, maybe not the smile. Unsure if the staffer even understood my English.
Rice wasn't crunchy (a good thing), food* was tasty (a better thing), and I had plenty of time to enjoy it on a three-hour long bus trip from NY Chinatown to Philadelphia's Chinatown (the best thing). Yi Mei has a large selection of dishes available for order. Recommended for cheap, good eats.
*see my photos for what I ordered
I am going to give you five for this one.
Anything for this place less than 5 star should be ignored. there are a few reason.
If you can get a meal that feed 2 people or more under $5 in NYC, that is amazing. Taste, cleanness, crowded or whatever should not be a reason unless they poison you which is possible in some place but not this. I ate here for 10 years and the place across. I am still alive since I am writing this review.
I always come here for a comfort food after a sad stressful day. paying for cheap food and a full stomach makes me really happy after.
Please don't expect much if you come here. Imagine going to street food in a third world.
I also dont like their aggressiveness. I past by this place a million times and never tried. Frankly I usually dont like these buffet places but decided to give it a chance. I like it. It not swimming in a pool of oil. That is always a plus. I think it is better than the Division Lunch Box Buffet because of less oil.
Seriously I had manila clams, pigs feet, snow pea tips and sesame chicken with rice and a seaweed broth for $4. Happy camper here! I like looking at the variety in the window. Just that the flavor is so-so.
It can never be better than Sanur on Doyer Street though. Too bad Sanur is closed on Mondays!!
But wait. I just bit into the snow pea tips and there is NO FLAVOR. I make it better! And the pig feet is CRUNCHY HARD. They need a better cook. (-1 star)
There is nothing gourmet about this dive, food not excepted. For $4.50 you get 5 choices from the trays, rice being one choice. Unlike other Yelpers, I actually found the food decent, not too greasy and while not as heavily flavored in a thick sauce as other places, it was okay and somewhat tasty. I had the eggplant, string beans, fish(a measly half a fish, I must say), and the manila clams, which were a little overcooked by the time I took my takeout to where I could eat it Is Yi Mei a place I dream of returning to? Not at all. But I needed something quick, and even the ladies who couldn't understand my Cantonese or English managed to whip it up fast and had me out the door in two minutes.
My only gripe was that the food was not steaming hot, but I guess the ubiquitous metal trays are always easy to keep hot and I did travel 15 minutes.
There is a lot of variety here, and none of the food seems heavily cornstarched in some thick gravy. The veggies, like baby Bok Choy looked good and the string beans were very fresh.Maybe carnivores get more food. I got 7 baby clams and thought the string beans were skimpy in portion. But hey, a FAST meal for $4.50. Oh, rice gets counted as 1 of the 5 choices and what self respecting Chinese doesn't eat rice!