Lichee Nut
“The delivery is incredibly fast and I've also ordered the crispy bean curd cakes, which arrive STILL crispy.”
“The food is delicious, and the lunch special is obscenely cheap for what you get.”
“This place is my new fave take out (or walk to, if I'm feeling healthy).”
Lichee Nut
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
PokéStop Nearby: Yes
Price range.
$ Price range Under $10
8 reviews
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Love this Chinese-American restaurant. Never had a bad meal and they're so quick and courteous. This is my go to for Chinese food in this area.
I used to order from here frequently when my mom worked in the area and I would come visit her. I remember always loving the chicken with broccoli. I came here this past weekend, the food was just as good as I remember. I tried the sesame chicken lunch special which is such a great deal. Iced tea rice and chicken all for 6.50. The only downside is the place was empty but like other reviews it felt rushed. We barely started eating when the check was placed down on the table. That didn't let us feel rushed though. I would come back it's cheap quick and good food.
The scallion pancakes are boss, the steamed dumplings, ribs, potstickers and fish cakes you should skip, pork fried rice and cheese/crab wontons are alright, but stay away from those bubble teas! – tasted like really sweet baby formula with super hard (not chewy) tapioca. Decent take out though a little on the pricey side for the quality you get.
I do love the feature on Seamless – where it points out the most popular food items for restaurants. Which so speaks to me as a Yelper! I've ordered the beef with broccoli & the chicken version, both excellent. The delivery is incredibly fast and I've also ordered the crispy bean curd cakes, which arrive STILL crispy. When I crave faux Chinese food delivery, this is my top choice!
It completely befuddles me when someone slams a place like this for not serving up authentic Chinese food. If that's what you want, you're not likely to find it here…or anywhere on Montague Street for that matter. You come here for one thing and one thing only – Americanized Chinese food.
Lunch specials here are the way to go. You get an entree, your choice of soup or iced tea (think Lipton mix and water), and crispy wonton strips for $6.95, which rivals most meal prices in the area and given the amount of food you get for it, this is a great deal. Dining in also allows you free hot tea, though service can range wildly from warm to dismissive, and it all depends on timing. If you choose to stay during the lunch hour, expect brusque service – choose your order within seconds, eat it within fifteen, and no lingering after your plates have been taken away. Come during the quieter hours of the afternoon and you'll find that things slow down for the better.
Since my lunch hour at work falls squarely during the chaotic period at Lichee Nut, I usually get takeout. I place my order from my desk at work, walk five to eight minutes to the restaurant, and my food is usually waiting for me by the time they get there. If I were a more suspicious person, I'd wonder if these people are secretly order-stalking me or hiring clairvoyant chefs to man the kitchen. Most of the time, I'm just happy that my hangries have found a quick cure.
Note: any time I come to pick up the order, the lone woman at the desk is handling dining checks, answering the phone, AND disseminating takeouts. It is easy to ream them out for the snappy phone calls (and I've been on the other end of those once or twice), but the last time I was waiting there for about a minute for my food, the phone rang once. every. five. seconds. If I had to do that for a few hours, I imagine I'd soon violate some social norms of politeness. To avoid phone fights like the ones a few yelpers have mentioned, speak clearly, know what you're ordering, and choose your order options in advance (white/fried rice, soup/tea, etc.). Yelp provides the menu online. Use it.
I generally order the broccoli with garlic sauce, and if you receive any 'with rice' entree in a takeout container from this place, it's going to seem like there is a disproportionate ratio of rice to entree, but fret not. After placing several orders here, I realized they plop the rice on last, so there's usually more food buried below it; you just have to dig for it. I find my food is usually a little oiler than I'd prefer (which might explain why I always feel like I need to take a nap underneath my desk after eating lunch from the Nut). I've also ordered the fried veggie dumplings which are all right. They're served with a soy sauce blend that gave the plump morsels some much-needed flavor.
A MUST TO AVOID
Today, after listening to several hours of boring testimony, in Russian! :(((( , at a court reporting office on Court Street, I searched for a quick late afternoon bite. I chose Lichee Nut on yuppified Montague Street.I must have been nuts.I walked below street level into a non-descript, half-crowded space.The waiter,who can plainly see that I'm reading the menu, asks if I'm ready to order.Suppressing annoyance I choose the twice cooked pork lunch special. The hot and sour soup is a funky tasting unusually light color. A couple of tastes and I'm done but, before that, the waiter plops the main in front of me.Seen this before. Some call it cultural. I call it rude. The twice cooked pork is nestled under an ample mound of dry and pork-less "pork fried rice". It consists of four tasteless thin pieces of pork studded with gross mystery vegetables. Talk about mailing it in!
One final point: I regard the term "Americanized Chinese Food" as a patronizing slur because it implies that round eyes don't have palate enough to recognize inedible crap. That is no defense for this restaurant.
Hence the rating: NOT RECOMMENDED.
I ordered from here over the weekend and I was really happy with my order. My bf got the general tso chicken and I got the general tso shrimp. They both were really good and came quickly. I am really picky about the quality of my food and this lived up to that standard. I also really liked how you could pick which type of chicken you wanted for picky meat eaters!
My first impression of Lichee Nut wasn't great. They've got a B health rating, and in an affluent neighborhood like Brooklyn Heights where you expect more, that's a bad sign.
Still, my family was set on this place for our mini (7 people) family reunion lunch. So we went. It was actually a pretty tasty time, but the service could use some help.
We ordered several dishes to share including the sesame chicken, shrimp in garlic sauce, schezuan beef with broccoli, and chicken and broccoli. All were very flavorful.
My qualms are with the service. At first they were inattentive (i.e.: it took 3 tries to get water for the table), and then somewhere mid-meal they became overly aggressive (i.e.: hovering over us and taking plates away before we were finished). It's not as if we were rowdy or stayed a long time. We must have been there no more than an hour — and there were plenty of tables open for other guests.
Between the health grade and the service I don't think I'll be back.