I am a huge fan of Shanghainese and Taiwanese food in NYC, Philly and many other places across the country. We've been eating this cuisine for over 15 years nearly every week especially in NYC (Chinatown Manhattan, Chinatown Flushing and elsewhere). After having tried all the Dim Sum Factory/Tom's locations (Center City, Media, Horsham, Krewstown), we were excited to learn about this new location less than 15 minutes from where my partner lives.
So we recently went one week after opening, once just to take out two items and once to eat in.
Take out was great. The Chongquin chicken and scallion pancakes were excellent. Could not have been better and I hope this never changes. Better than any of the other locations, with Krewstown coming in a close second.
The food was great when we ate in. Since our bill was over $70, we tried an array of items: scallion pancake, stir-fried noodles with pork in brown sauce, 2 pork soup dumplings, bok choy and roast pork fried rice.
The noodles were great as was the scallion pancake. THe dumplings were good but very, very small. The fried rice was also good but the portion was extremely small for the price. The same goes for the bok choy. Portion way too small for the price.
The service was good. We absolutely loved that they didn't bring all the food to us at once as they do at Krewstown. They thoughtfully spaced out the delivery of the dishes to our table without us asking them to do this and it was very greatly appreciated. They were readily available if we needed napkins or more water. Place was clean and organized.
Aside from the extremely small portions of some of the dishes (especially the rice - we were so stunned and sad), there was an adorable, little girl (approximately 5 years old) walking around who was singing, "LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" non-stop. Just that one note, very loudly, without stopping. Neither her parents nor the restaurant staff put a stop to this and everyone in the restaurant just looked tortured. The child was absolutely beautiful but please, parents and staff members, you need to put an immediate stop to something like this. We understand that children have to make noise but this was ridiculous. Although we were sitting far away from her, she was so loud that it really ruined our dinner. As we exited, we just looked at the tortured facial expressions of those customers nearby. Spending all that money for small portions of food and having to listen to that non-stop. She was loud. I understand that some children have autism or tics but this truly didn't seem to be the case at all as far as we could tell. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who absolutely loves children but this was so loud and it never stopped.
Please make sure you do not serve such small portion sizes (the prices have increased by so much!) and try to keep children as reasonably quiet as possible. We want to be regular customers and big fans who will rave about this place to all. read more