Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant
“The flounder was steamed and gently flash fried with a thin, crispy layer of coating that complemented the freshness of the fish.”
“According to some of my friends, their favorite dish of the evening was the Crab Meat over Snow Pea Sprouts (Dou Mew).”
“Came with a party of 10, and ordered a banquet's worth of food, and almost..almost everything was above-average to excellent.”
Sing Kee Seafood Restaurant
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
Rate and write a review Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Summary: Classic Cantonese place. You have to know what to order or ask the waiter. Cheap lunch menu. Veggies are very average.
Atmosphere: Classic divey Cantonese place with limited seating and fish tanks in front. While the place seems large, it primarily gets large tables, given that it's classic Cantonese food. On the weekends, it will book up fairly quickly. If you are 1-4 people, you should be ok for seating. If you're 5+, it could be a wait. They do have the larger circle tables for 12.
Service: Classic Chinese service. Flag them down if you need them. You often will have to wait for a table, so book in advance if you have a large group. The staff knows what is good, so just ask them.
The Food:
Always ask the waiter if he thinks what you're ordering is good. They know if the chefs have changed and will steer you to the right stuff. As of the date of my review, this is what to get:
1) Ginger Scallion lobster. It runs about $12-14/lobster depending on market price. This location has a load of sauce options. I'd love to go back and try the other flavors. Their ginger scallion was extremely well executed. For those not familiar, Cantonese seafood is sall about licking the sauce off the shell. 5 stars
2) Clams in Black bean sauce – This is a Cantonese classic, and they do it well. Again,lick the shell and use the sauce as gravy for any rice you order. 5 stars
3) Soy Chicken. I know a lot of people are saying Crispy chicken, but hands down soy chicken is the one to get these days. 5 stars
4) Whole Season Live Fish in ginger scallion. They really did this quite well. The flavor went all the way through the fish to the bone vs. sometimes, the cook doesn't steam it quite enough. It cost about $22-26/lb and the fish is about 2lbs, but sooo worth it if you have enough people at your table to share.5 stars.
5) Veggies – bland. This really made me sad. I've now gone twice and each time it's been as if the guy hates the veggies. Snow pea pod shoots should glisten as if they were happy to be presented to the table for eating. They kind of just sat there for me. The same with the Bok Choy with mushrooms, which they made at our request (so fair game if this wasn't good). I think the chef doesn't know veggies well. Luckily he knows the rest of the stuff pretty well.
There's also a daily soup that you likely need a Chinese person to get for you (lie tong). It varies and was good the Sunday afternoon I went. It was eh a different time. I'd suggest it if you were Chinese. But if you're not, I'm not sure it's going to be your deal.
Still hoping to go back for the Chicken stuffed with Sweet Rice. That looks awesome.
I wanted to try this place at first because my dad said he used to come here when he was working in Manhattan like 20 years ago. I found out later that it wasn't the same restaurant he was talking about. That one is long gone, but the food here was still great. Not as good as some of my childhood haunts in New Jersey (which sadly are also gone), but definitely a good Cantonese restaurant in general.
Before the food came out, the table received complimentary pork bone soup with lotus root, carrots, and white beans.
Claypot Oxtail Stew with Beancurd (支竹牛尾) – The oxtail was very tender and really soaked up the tasty sauce. And it had beancurd skin and bamboo in it. So good! Highly recommended.
Mixed Asian Mushroom over Beancurd Rolls (鮮菌扒腐皮卷) – This was listed as one of the most popular items to order on their menu. I thought it would be fried, but it looked like it was steamed. I liked this dish not only because it was stuffed with mushroom but it also had other crunchy vegetables (shiitake, napa, 麵筋, bamboo)
Crispy Fried Chicken Cantonese Style (脆皮炸子雞) – Order the half size. The full size is way too big even for our large group of 13 people. I enjoyed this dish mostly because of the pickled mustard they put on top. Chicken is simply seasoned and the chicken wasn't dry like I thought it would be.
Braised Fish Cubes with Bean Curd (豆腐辦腩煲) – I always order this dish at Cantonese restaurants. There version of this was disappointing. There was more breading than fish and the tofu didn't really soak up the flavor of the sauce and instead soaked up the taste of oil.
Peking pork chop (京都肉排) – Ick. I never order this dish if I can, but my the rest of my group enjoyed it. Tastes too sweet and Americanized. Thumbs down for this dish.
Braised Beancurd (紅燒豆腐) – Bland and taste like oil like the tofu in the beancurd grouper dish.
E-fu noodles (乾炒伊麵)- Kind of bland. Also a dish I'd probably pass on next time.
My table also ordered their soup dumplings. I'm not picky about soup dumplings so I thought they were fine, but everyone else disliked them. I should have warned them not to order soup dumplings at a restaurant that doesn't specialize in Shanghainese food.
During lunch we didn't get any free dessert soup, only oranges. I guess they only serve the dessert soup at dinner? They also charge extra for white rice. When we were ordering, the waiter kept on saying it wasn't enough. Don't listen to him; we definitely over-ordered. I had leftovers for days, which actually tasted even better than eating the food at the restaurant itself.
The decline of quality Canto spots in Chinatown has been an ongoing, disappointing, sad reality. Locals would be hard pressed to disagree the Canto climate has changed for the worse, and the alternatives are dwindling as time goes on. The now defunct Danny Ng's (yelp.com/biz/danny-ngs-p…) was a pseudo the last stand and in some circles, the shining standard for Manhattan. Now, it's all about Sing Kee.
Reminiscent of a lot of Brooklyn Chinatown places, Sing Kee has an unmistakenly narrow interior stacked full of round tables and the usual C-town decor. Reservations are recommended for big parties and the service is above the neighborhood standard. Like all good restaurants, the major standout is the food itself.
Chalked full of Canto classics, Sing Kee's menu is traditional and versatile. Perfect for any family dining occasion, their dishes are well executed and reasonably priced. One of my favorites, Cantonese Crispy Chicken (炸子雞) is crispy and the chicken is super tender. The ginger lobster (薑蔥龍蝦) over Yee noodles is wonderfully seasoned and delicious, while the Peking Pork Chops (京都肉排) are fried to perfection. I am surprised by the tasty Salt and Pepper Squid (椒鹽魷魚) and the Yeung Chow Fried Rice (揚州炒飯) does not disappoint.
They also have the infamous Braised Beef In Pumpkin (南瓜牛肉) a la Danny Ng's and even the T-bone steak, in which the meat is a fantastic medium rare. Just when one couldn't ask for more, they come out with my favorite Shrimp and Eggs (滑蛋蝦仁) whipped masterfully and with abundant pieces of shrimp in soft egg. I could eat it all day and all night.
Here's hoping Sing Kee can survive the brutal Chinatown landscape where successful spots end up randomly closing all the time. I am rooting for them in a big way and hope to enjoy their food whenever I'm back.
not a bad chinese restaurant to get family style chinese food & seafood
HOWEVER the waiter was pushy to try to sell more dishes and the more expensive dishes and WOULD NOT leave us alone when trying to order ourselves so it made it stressful
came for chinese new year dinner as they were able to accommodate our group of 12
–beef chow fun: GET IT DRY, dry still has the gravy sauce VS wet which would probably be soupy
–fresh fish: don't rmbr the exact name BUT prepared steamed, soy sauce ginger style, this was a tasty dish
–walnut shrimp: can't go wrong with this dish, although i've had better
–bean curd with buddha's delight: nothing too special, but perfect for mushroom lovers
–crispy fried whole chicken: i liked the skin & the moist dark meat
–szechuan style eggplant: good eggplant BUT WARNING wasn't a vegetarian dish as we anticipated
–bean curd rolls: eHHh skip
–roast pork lo mein: just okay
–yang chow fried rice: standard
–complimentary orange slices at the end of the meal
I was honestly surprised by this place that's under the radar
I think it's definitely worth coming to these more homespun Chinese restaurants with more people, as you can definitely try a much broader spectrum of food items than you can when it's just two people! That said, my wife and I ate here for dinner a couple weeks back when she was in the mood for Cantonese-style Chinese food. The restaurant is next to a place where a hotel is being built, so it's not obvious right away where the restaurant with the scaffolding in the way. Once inside, we had to stand around and wait about 5-7 minutes before a table freed up for us to be seated at. Service was pretty quick, and unlike most Chinese restaurants in Chinatown that have (at best) indifferent attitudes towards their diners, our waiter was a gentleman who was very friendly and talked about the different dishes as they were being brought out. Sing Kee didn't give me the vibe of being a touristy place, so I was very impressed with the unexpected hospitality).
We started out with the fish maw soup, which, if you haven't had it before, probably will make you think a bit and wonder what you are eating (it's the sac of air that keeps fish afloat), but it's got a very nice, light flavor to it, and the fish maw isn't overcooked such that it's too chewy or hard to eat. We went through a relatively big bowl pretty quickly to say the least! Next up were the main courses; we went with the lobster served over lo mein and the Peking pork chops. This was aggressive, as we were both stuffed only being a few pork chops in (you get a lot, and they are large), but I really did enjoy both dishes. The lo mein noodles were a bit thicker than I was used to – it was very similar to spaghetti in that sense, and I do prefer the thinner lo mein noodles I've had elsewhere – but it helped absorb a lot of the juices and flavors in the dish. The lobster meat was pretty fresh as well, although I wouldn't compare it to upscale lobster that I've had at other restaurants. You do have to pull it off the shell, though, so you will have to work for it! (thankfully my wife was up to the challenge) The pork chops were also full of flavor and not too heavy (despite looking like they have been deep-fried), but I do wish that they cut the chops into smaller cuts, making it easier to eat smaller portions without winding up with a big chop on the plate.
I have been eating less in Chinatown these days, but the occasional visit like this does make me want to come and enjoy the cheap eats of the neighborhood a bit more frequently. Being on the eastern edge and south of Canal Street makes this feel more like a neighborhood spot than some of the more tourist trap-like spots on Mott Street as you make your way north. I'm sure we will be back soon to sample more food!
Sing Kee is a great Chinese restaurant I go to for family get-togethers, especially for bigger birthday celebrations and Chinese New Year.
I think I go 3-4 times a year, and every time I've been to Sing Kee, I've left full and happy. And not regretful for having eaten so much MSG.
We always seem to order our courses in advance.
The stand-out items are the crispy chicken that they deep fry a few times, stuffed with sticky sweet rice, and Peking pork chops.
Their soy chicken is decent, and not served cold, like it usually is in other Chinese restaurants.
Service is good.
Clean restaurant, relatively.
Great prices for huge portions of good food.
Slightly pricier than other ctown Cantonese restos but we'll worth it.
I came here for my birthday last year and on a recent weekend.
Sing kee is on bowery and slightly off the tourist trap section of Chinatown though only a few minutes walk away.
Steamed flounder for $25 was good and had a generous portion though the sauce and flavoring was a bit light.
Seafood with tofu casserole in claypot was some of the best I've had of this dish. They actually added a generous amount of fresh clams (first time I've seen that in this dish) and overall it had a healthier flavor than I've had at other restaurants. The sauce on the bottom was clear and tasted like a healthy seafood soup – not thick, greasy or salty like I've had at other places.
Dou miao aka snow pea shoots (for any lao wai reading) was fresh and delicious.
Garlic crispy skin chicken was very good as well though Pings might have them beat for this dish.
Overall a healthy and delicious meal was had and for only $75 or so shared among two adults and a three year old with plenty of leftovers. Yes! Chinese food can be healthy despite what some ignt folks at my work say as they scarf down fried egg rolls from a local takeout place.
Authentic Quality Cantonese food with a big menu, solid service at fair price! (4/5).
We visited here on Friday night with a reservation of 12 people ($25 pp). They have several special made items that need to be reserved in advance. We got the crispy chicken stuffed with rice! It was amazing. The whole process took long time: first split the chicken skin and take out chicken meat, while keep the whole skin complete. Shower the skin with special-made sauce (can be simply honey) then dry it up (so it will be super crispy when fried). Separately, chop the chicken meat, stir-fry the meat with cooked rice and veggies (carrot, peas and etc). Then stuff the stir-fried chicken rice back to the chicken skin, and fry the whole thing. We absolutely loved it! The skin is crispy, the rice and chicken inside is tender, and flavor well-balanced.
Other dishes are solid too – braised beef inside of a pumpkin, chestnut with frogs (4.5/5), ham and winter melon soup (4.5/5).