Hunan House
“Before this one opened, the closest Hunan restaurant was Hunan manor and it was like 15 blocks away from where I work.”
“They now have pork soup dumplings, omg they're even better than joe Shanghai.”
“It is such an indulgence to have a break here, temporarily away from stressful work 🙂
Ps: Great service and dinning environment.”
Hunan House
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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The food here is authentic and high quality, but the portions are really small for what you're paying ($18-20 per dish).. more like appetizer quantity. Rice is also extra.
Place is otherwise clean and staff are nice. The music they play here is really weird (crooner music from the 90s, at least the night I was there).
I'd go here if you value food quality/authenticity significantly over price/portions.
This place is more like a hit or miss. We had 8 people so ordered quite a few dishes to share. Some of them were really good (the cabbage dish and soup) but the rest were just okay. I was really excited about the fish dish but it was so bland. The pig feet were way too salty. The service I experienced was not as horrible as people say they are but it definitely wasn't good either. Other than a great location…I don't really know what else they are good for.
Food was okay. The staff was nice, but very unhelpful and didn't seem to understand us or the people around us. A bunch of tables of people were laughing together about how impossible it was to communicate to the staff. I tried to order a gin & tonic. 3 people didn't know what that was and when I finally did get one (I should have taken the hint and not ordered it).. It was water and gin with next to no ice and no lime. We just kept getting things we didn't want to order and other mishaps. The other tables around us had the same experience. I would avoid the place, but it's clean and nice looking. Too expensive for the hassle.
This place is by far the best Chinese Restaurant that I've even ate in New York City. My favorite dish in this restaurant was Chairman Mao's style Red-Braised Pork. Unfortunately that dish was a temporary special, but I would recommend anyone to come! Went there for dinner!
I really liked the service and the restaurant itself is nice…however, the food is pretty bad.
We ordered:
scallion pancakes – too oily, but flavorful
dumplings – idk, i didn't try this
chicken and eggplant with brown rice – edible, but not enjoyable
hot and sour soup – i didn't try, but my friend said it "tasted cleaner than others" idk.
general tsos chicken – too much breading
i'm not someone that expects a lot from chinese food b/c i usually reserve it for cheat meals, but but this place unfortunately couldn't even meet my lowered expectations.
Nice staff, let us stay late without rushing us out, accommodating of our requests, but I wouldn't return.
Horrible, horrible, horrible. The food here is so spicy you can't taste any of the flavors. Hot oil drenches everything, making the dishes barely edible. At the end of your meal, your plate is a oily mess of orange and red oil, and your tongue (and sometimes lips) are on fire.
Okay, I'm being a little unfair. Some of the dishes are actually edible. On a recent visit, I ordered the Dan Dan Noodles, an appetizer of rice noodles, spicy chili oil, minced pork, and spinach with a hint of peanut sauce. The dish comes unmixed, so it's up to you to stir it up to incorporate all the flavors. You can err on the side of caution and leave some of the hot oil separated, and this makes it edible and delicious.
Ordinarily, I'm a customer who seeks out spicy foods, especially when the chilies add an extra dimension of depth of flavor to the dishes. However, bone-in chicken casserole was way too spicy, like eating a nuclear bomb. This was exacerbated by the fact that tiny bones littered the entree, like shrapnel from a destructive explosion. Unfortunately, my mouth served as the razed and rubbled detonation site.
Other dishes range from the fairly spicy to the extremely spicy but the pattern is pretty consistent. Service is a little absent-minded and can sometimes be aloof, but they ferry water to put out the fires quickly.
Pros:
– Has some interesting dishes on the menu
– One of the only Szechuan restaurants in midtown (above 42nd)
Cons:
– Most of the menu is too spicy, and not the flavorful kind of spicy
– Some of the ingredients taste unfresh or maybe expired
– Expensive for Chinese food (they have $25+ entrees)
– Service is aloof and weird sometimes
After a long hiatus following an unpleasant service episode, finally revisited Hunan House again. After a few visits, I'm relieved to see that the super hostile manager appears to have moved on to greener pastures…
Upping to four stars for:
– large selection of food including some pretty unique Chinese dishes that are hard to find around the city
– menu has photos – always a plus with exotic food
– overall decent and consistent quality of food – I do usually stay away from the lunch special menu which tends to be a bit more lackluster compared to full menu, though much faster to come out from kitchen
To be improved – minor:
– some dishes a bit pricey for what they are
– lunch portions on the small side
– don't expect too much from the ambiance – which is fine with me, only there for the food
Overall, much improved dining experience. Look forward to trying more items from the menu.
Won't change the rating, because I've been consistently ordering pick up from them for the past year, and this is the first hiccup. Plus the woman on the phone was very courteous while working to understand and resolve the issue.
FYI: Their version of Mai Fun is different than what one would expect when ordering Mei Fun (and different than every Google image I found before ordering ;-), not a simple inconsistency throughout their menu, as I originally thought.
They serve Mai Fun as thicker, round, white rice soup noodles with the protein on top, and broth w/scallions on the side. The only Mei Fun they serve is Singapore style. You'd only get a clue about this difference if ordering directly from their site, where the Mai Fun dish is listed as "Mai Fun or Noodle Soup"; the standard food delivery sites just list it as a noodle, not a soup.
Fortunately, the kind woman understood, and had the order remade, since they gave me fried pork dumplings rather then the pork soup dumplings I ordered. They don't accommodate the request for Beef Flank Mei fun….but she offered up traditional Singapore style…and to have it delivered to my office, since I'd already used my break time for the incorrect pick up.
The order was there within half an hour. Solid soup dumplings, though the dipping sauce tasted funny (I think too much fish sauce mixed in). Singapore Mei Fun portion was ginormous! Very strong curry fragrance. Solid flavoring.
Hunan House remains a grand recommendation!