Sam’s Spring Roll
“The samosa curry spring roll and the cumin chicken with crack sauce is the best!!!!”
“TLDR; Sam's spring rolls are a must try with fun fillings and great sauces!”
“I also tried the waffle fries from my friend's ordered and tried the "crack sauce" from her also and I can see why it's call "crack sauce".”
Sam’s Spring Roll
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$ Price range Under $10
8 reviews
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Strolled in around opening tip on Saturday morning – small interior yet plenty of seating about. Interesting options of spring rolls (duh), grilled cheese, tacos, and fries.
First off: Yelp check-in offers a free spring roll of your choice. Got the Bulgogi beef roll – heavily fried with seasoned meet, veggies and the life. A perfect appetizer, though I wish I had got one of the sauces they had available (settled on the table Sriracha). My actual order included the Pork grilled cheese ($5) and the Loaded Fries w/beef ($8). Grilled cheese is actually pretty light (relative to the fries) – a nice balance between the cheese and meat without being overwhelming. The fries are a different story – a large handful of waffle fries topped with meat and absolutely smothered in sour cream and fake cheese. It's a lot to take in after a couple bites, so had to take the rest to go.
Oddly enough I enjoyed the fries a lot better as cold leftovers (once everything settled in). Service here is fast and no qualms with the Yelp checkin offer. This is definitely a drunk-food paradise, so go if you're tipsy. Not bad sober too.
I stumbled here in accident when I tried to go to the Hester Street Fair… on a Friday (for future notice, it only opens on Saturdays). I'm not a huge fan of spring rolls, but after having trekked 20 minutes from my office, I was super annoyed and willing to eat anything. Sam's Spring Rolls is a small, hole in the wall with a few tables, dimly lit atmosphere, and grungy feel. What attracted me was their lunch special – $7 for three spring rolls, waffle fries, a sauce, and a soda.
There are four different spring roll options: Pork, Bulgogi, Chicken, and Samosa. I had the three meat options and the chimichurri sauce to match them. The food came out pretty quickly, very hot. The spring rolls are pretty small, but they pack a lot of flavor. The Bulgogi one was the juiciest (I'm still thinking about it!). The other two were good, but I couldn't really tell which one was which, so stick with the beef! The Chimichurri sauce was sharp and oily (in a good way, chimichurri sauce needs to be oily) and worked well with the spring rolls. The waffle fries were super plentiful and delicious. I would recommend a different sauce for those fries (maybe the more creamy, mayo-y options?).
It was a nice pleasant meal and maybe I'll have them deliver next time. Check it out if you are in the area and want a quick, cheap, tasty lunch!
Definitely really solid spring rolls. Not too greasy, good amount of flavor, and lots of filling inside. The cashier was really nice and friendly. It's so cheap, too! $2 per roll or $3 for $5. The sauces were good but they could have had a bit more flavor, especially the crack, which was supposed to be like a spice Thai sauce, but it wasn't spicy at all to me. I also got the garlic sauce, which was good. Overall, I think the rolls could have been much more flavorful. I liked the flavors of all of them, but I couldn't tell the difference between the cumin chicken and the samosa.
They also have bowls with rice and such. There is beer/wine for $5 and water/soda for $1.
You can really get a good amount of food for a good price here! There is a good amount of seating for a small place, with stools along the back counter as well. Pretty cool that they're thriving on just spring rolls!
Had takeout lunch from Sam's and perhaps that was the problem – the salad was soggy by the time I walked outside to a park to eat. However, there were other things I didn't love about my meal, including that the lettuce or dressing or something in the salad had a gritty/sandy texture that was unpleasant. Also, you could not tell the difference between the two spring rolls at all, even though I had ordered bulgolgi and samosa which are completely different flavors!
I recommend skipping the salad. I must say I'm still tempted to come back to try the grilled cheese which looks delicious in photos!
stopped by here to pick up a meal for the wife. this review isn't going to be on the freshness of the meal but rather flavor and texture since it wouldn't be fair.
the bulgogi rice bowl: meat was over cooked and very dry, lacked sauce and moisture.
the price is okay but the food isn't all that great. adding rice as a filler to an egg roll is just a bad move…
service was impeccable and they were super nice. the spring rolls they offer are definitely different and the choice of sauces are also different. it would be nice if they had a sauce recommendation for each type of spring roll (like a pairing) so we don't get some crazy combination.
being asian we know that spring rolls just don't cost that much, that being said pricing isn't horrible but also its not all that cheap either. i think having a more diverse menu with more authentic fillers/ingredients may help this place take off.
ill be willing to try them again but this time ill eat in to see if it makes a difference.
Fine, not great. Reasonable. Friendly staff, accommodating. Nothing special.
We ordered two rice bowls and a grilled cheese. Granted, we were the first customers of the day, but it took nearly 40 minutes for our food to come out. When it did, the rice bowls were very tasty but the grilled cheese was pretty much the worst grilled cheese I've ever seen, had or heard about. The kind of grilled cheese your 8 year old makes when you are sick in bed and he/she is trying SO hard to help out. It was greasy, flaccid, icky. When your two starving children refuse to eat a grilled cheese sandwich, you know it's bad.
The rest was fine but nothing remarkable. Bulgogi was ground beef and not thinly sliced beef as one usually encounters. It was also dry and over cooked. Disappointing. The ground pork was tastier and more interesting. The grownups also had a really bad headache an hour after eating it, so I don't know if there was MSG or what to punch up the flavor, but since we both had it…
The spring rolls were nice, but the flavors were basically the same as the main components of the other dishes. I wish those had been more creative.
Limited menu, slow but very kind service (the owner was aware of how slow it was and gave us some free lemonade and tater tots, both of which were very good), iffy quality on the beef and some real misses on the dishes. I think there's something good here and thus I'm giving it a 3. If we head to Seward Park again, I would consider another visit, but probably not until they up their grilled cheese game.
Came here on a Saturday night around 8 or 9. From the photos, I thought it would be busier at night, but it seems to be in a quieter part of LES. There were only two customers in there and one person working the counter. I like the concept of the reinvented spring roll, but like all of these "new" concepts, it verges on gimmicky. The spring rolls were pretty good, but nothing amazing, and I think I'm being generous by giving 4 stars.
The cashier was in a rush to take my order, for some reason, though she clearly was still tending to other customers, so she was distracted the whole time I was giving her my order, which was annoying because I felt the need to clarify three times.
I only ordered one spring roll and then used my free roll from my Yelp check-in for a total a two rolls, but paying for one. I ordered one samosa and one bulgogi with the creamy chimichurri sauce to-go. The samosa one really tasted like a samosa, but I was unimpressed. You can get real samosas that taste better. I liked the bulgogi one, though. This location was a bit out of the way for me, so I'll only be back if I happen to be in the area.
This happens ALL the time in Chinatown and I have a personal grudge when restaurants close early because they "just feel like it" but Sam's is a new (and welcome!) breed of restaurant attitude. I took my friends on an eating tour of the LES hole in the walls and Sam's was my last stop. It was 20 minutes until closing so I called ahead and Sam (the owner) was so nice and friendly on the phone and she said "Come on by – we'll make sure to stay open for you guys!" Needless to say, we were so happy they squeezed us in. We had the place to ourselves and had a great chance to chat with Sam and her manager while we sampled every kind of roll and sauce on the menu.
My roll rankings: #1 chicken, #2 pork, #3 bulgogi beef (leans sweet which is not my style but it was the favorite for 2 of my friends). My sauce rankings: #1 crack sauce, #2 crack sauce, #3 crack sauce… basically crack sauce forever.
The rolls are thin-skinned (win) and lightly fried (win) and remain crisp throughout (win). My only request is that Sam start experimenting with some glass noodle filling in addition to the rice (which is, I think, her twist on the traditional fillings). Totes coming back here to try the grilled cheese.