I regret to write such a poor review in the wake of Chinese New Year but the experience that I had with DanDan made for a rather disappointing night. I have spent hundreds - if not thousands of hours - eating Chinese food. Since the occasion called for a bit of Chinese food, I decided to give DanDan a try.. My rationale was that the reviews and higher prices must suggest that the food is quite good. Unfortunately, my prediction was incorrect. I order the shrimp shumai (14), sour sausage (12), mapo tofu (12), and sea scallops (22). Individual reviews are as follows:
Shrimp Shumai - none of the characteristic flavors of a shrimp shumai yet in the characteristic shape of shrimp shumai. My contention with this was that the quality of the shrimp was extremely poor, grainy, and did not taste fresh whatsoever. Of course, I realize that Milwaukee shrimp is often frozen but it's clear that there was little care taken in defrosting whatever they actually used. If these are fresh made then that would be the problem, else they seemed to me to taste frozen. I've actually had better shumai from the frozen section at my local oriental mart.
Sour Sausage - wow, what a disappointment. The flavors were okay. I was looking for something a bit different, but at 12 dollars you would think that the dish would have a bit more to it. My brother actually came to the table and asked me how I'd eaten it all so fast. I hadn't. What we received in our take-out box amounted to 5 or 6 half-inch pieces of sausage. I'm sure they're aware of the fact that there's nothing in this dish because they decided to beef it up with pieces of fried sticky rice.
Mapo Tofu - now this was an extreme disappointment for me. Mapo tofu has been a constant in my eating experience since I was very young and I was happy to see it on the menu. What I received was a horrible mess. The tofu had a strange, alkaline flavor to it and the dish was utterly without flavor. This was, at least, a substantial dish in terms of volume but lacked in all other areas.
Sea Scallops - The dish was quite bland. There was no real flavor to it. My only great contention with it might be the fact that what you are paying for here is three measly scallops. This is another dish that my brother thought I'd already eaten half of as he made his way to the table. Very unfortunate.
To be honest, for an experience this bad I would typically drop to one star. The extra star is because people are at least trying to do something different with Chinese food in Milwaukee, but the fact of the matter is that there are some serious quality control issues here. None of the food that I received would have passed inspection if I was controlling that kitchen, on Chinese New Year of all days. I hope that the owners take this review to heart and rework how they manage their kitchen, order food, portion food, and control what comes out. If that happens I'll give these guys another try but as it stands I'm going to be taking my business elsewhere. read more