Delight 28 Restaurant
“As one of the few spots that are relatively unknown to the masses, Hee Win Lai or Delight 28 is another solid Dim Sum spot along Chinatown's Barbershop Alley.”
“Yet, a lot of reviewers give it lower stars, which makes me wonder how much better Jing Fong and Golden Unicorn actually is.”
“I would recommend this place if you have a large group (although I'd get there early to find a table, since it's usually packed).”
Delight 28 Restaurant
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Delight 28 is a standard no thrills restaurant for Dim Sum and banquet dinner.
During morning and afternoon they serve the rice wraps, shrimp dumplings and bun dim sum.
Their dim sum takeout counter at the front part of this restaurant is very popular and I have purchased many boxes of dim sum early in the morning when visiting friends in NJ and the outer boroughs.
This place opens very early so if you are hungry and need dim sum at 8am, they'll be opened.
In the dining room I usually see the old-fashion Chinese man sitting there reading newspapers and drink tea with one or two dishes of dim sum just to keep the waiters quiet. Most are also chats with the waiters because they are regulars. These guys can sit for hours.
This place is popular with Chinese wedding for couples that are budget wise; there banquets are much cheaper then the big flashy new restaurants. I have even held too Unofficial Yelp Event here several years ago! 🙂
FYI- this restaurant is very popular with families that are attending funerals two blocks away on Mulberry, so you may notice groups at the table morning, noon, and night all dressed in black…. just let you all know.
When you're starving, waiting for an hour for food is just unbearable. By the time an hour is over, my stomach walls would have been eaten up by the acid in my stomach.
Nom Wah Tea Parlor had an hour wait, Ping was the same situation. We were walking around like a pack of hungry wolves and decided to walk into Delight 28. The wait? A mere 5 minutes. Sounded pretty good.
We were seated at a table- we had a big enough group to take up a whole table without having to share. It was pretty crowded, don't get me wrong. It wasn't half empty or anything. There were lots of Chinese ladies going around with carts of food. We ordered a bunch of foods- har kow, siew mai etc. The lo pak ko (pan fried white radish cake) was ok. The dumplings were decent- not outstanding but not horrible either. We kept drinking our tea, and they did a good job of refilling our pot with hot water.
The bill? A mere $7 per person. That's cheaper than a meal at Mickey D's!
I would come back here as a back up, if all the dim sum places are full, and if I am starving.
It is telling that my visit to Delight 28 Restaurant for Dim Sum was my THIRD option (and picked by my mother's friend, not me) because our two prior options were too full. Even before we set foot in the restaurant the immortal words of Han Solo rung through my head "I've got a bad feeling about this."
To the restaurant's credit, they seated us on a busy day within 10 minutes ,which was kind of amazing given that other restaurants were giving us estimated wait times of an hour (this accounts for one star of this review). The layout of this restaurant is classic Chinatown style with lots of round tables taking up a good chunk of the restaurant. Smaller square and rectangular tables were found elsewhere. The rest rooms are downstairs, but watch your step as the stairs were a bit dirty.
Service was bare minimum. First, they don't have Chrysanthemum tea so it's regular black tea for you! Once you have your tea that's it, good luck getting the attention of anyone again. I literally waved my hands in the faces of waiters and they walked away from me. I wanted to order a noodle dish, get water and hot sauce and no one paid enough attention to us to take our order. My philosophy is, if you don't want my money then I won't give it to you so I gave up after waving my hands around like a fool on and off for about ten minutes.
Dim Sum here is served cart style, with ladies pushing carts around. They were nice enough and efficient (which gives this review its second star).
Often time when I rate a restaurant I try to remember something distinctive about its food. A scent, a particular flavor maybe a texture. But this food was so tasteless, so non-distinct that I honestly can't recall really loving, liking or hating anything. It was like I was eating some type of scifi protein cubes with vitamins purely for nourishment and not for enjoyment. Seriously, I can't recommend anything here because nothing stood out at all. That also means of course that nothing was horribly bad, so that's good…I guess?
I didn't enjoy my time here at all. Overall bad service, food that was okay at best. There are at least three other better places to go for Dim Sum nearby that are infinitely better in both respects.
First of all, the state of dim sum in Manhattan is actually kinda sad but nonetheless I need somewhere to get my takeout dim sum when I am staying at my brother's. I used to come here a lot in the morning before I went to work. They have a busy and brisk takeout service for their dim sum on the front of the restaurant. That is where I go for my brunch items to take with me. The service is usually brusk but what Cantonese dim sum place service isn't brusque?…I'm running out of "b" words. You get your typical dim sum fare here; nothing innovative here. I haven't dined in the restaurant for dim sum since I was a child. So no comment on that. It's nothing that will blow your mind away just atypical stuff at Delight 28.
I see lots of people having banquets at this restaurant in the evenings. This place has been here for many, many years. Something is working for them to be there so many years.
There are so many better options for dim sum that I am not sure why anyone would come here. The shrimp is not fresh for any of the steamed shrimp dishes. The dim sum is bland and has no flavor. On the plus side, I believe they allow BYOB as the guys sitting next to us had bottles of whiskey in brown paper bags open. The food was not expensive, but they really shouldn't charge much for the quality of food they are serving.
I came here for dinner for a family meal and I think the word to describe this place is GHE-TTO. My parents chose this place on a whim on a Monday night and long and behold, a Chinese wedding was being held on the side of the restaurant. So it was a dinner and a show. We had no idea who these people were but it sure was entertaining to watch. I thought I've seen the epitome of what a Chinese restaurant has to offer in Chinatown but this one took the cake. Like literally there was a three tier pink cake within our table view.
Anyway….as for the food, it was fine. Cheap! And fine. We got a number of things that I honestly do not know the English name to. My dad handled the ordering (but I paid the check) so the only thing I can say for sure is that for the amount of food we got, it was cheap. It was also BYOB but they have beer and other things to order to offer I believe. We ordered string beans, peking pork, a steamed fish, two sautéed lobsters, curry noodles and ginger and scallion chicken, amongst other dishes. The best dishes were definitely the pork and chicken. Full of flavor and plenty of meat to go around.
Overall, an interesting experience. I don't think I would necessarily go back because the place is not my type of vibe but it was definitely a unique experience and a great story to tell (with some videos we couldn't help but take). I am slightly curious how their dim sum is based on other reviews but only ever-so-slightly.
Not the best dim sum in Chinatown, but it was one of the only places open at 8:30 am on a recent Saturday. The crowd consists of regulars who take up a good portion of the main dining room and who sip their tea and eat their food very slowly.
Meanwhile, the family was able to have dim sum for less than $30 and a decent amount of it. Unfortunately, the food was so so. I did like the congee, but it was agreed around the table the ha gow and gelatinous rice left little to be desired.
Bathrooms are downstairs and are pretty clean.
Came here because all the other dimsum places were packed. There was no line and we were seated pretty quickly. Food isn't the greatest BUT it will do in order to save time. They have your usual dimsum eats but WITHOUT the line. If you're craving dimsum and desperate this is your place. Cheap too!!!