XO Kitchen

XO Kitchen
148 Hester St., New York, NY 10013
(212) 965-8645, (212) 965-8652

Running around and doing some errands in Chinatown, my parents and I were ravenous by late afternoon and scrambled to find a decent nearby place to grab a bite at.  We've been to XO Kitchen before many years ago (which I don't have much memory of) and it was near, so we thought why not revisit the place?  The one thing that stood out about XO Kitchen was all the variety and options they offered.  This place has so many dishes!  There are 216 listed on the menu alone (no, I wasn't bored enough nor do I have the super fast counting skills to have counted all of the options - in fact, they were nicely numbered on the menu).  In addition to the menu, there are more pictures and featured dishes plastered onto the walls of the restaurant.  Luckily for most diners, the menu is written in both Chinese and English and descriptively so.

We went with a few options.  We got the (#126) Baked Assorted Seafood in Cream Sauce with Cheese, (#19) Spare Ribs Rice Noodles in Casserole, (#82) Pan Fried Dumplings, (#122) Baked Pork Chop over Rice with Cheese, and (#???) some kind of Abalone/Shrimp Wonton that I think we ordered off the special menu.

#126 (see this number system does come in handy, come on, it's easier than typing Baked Assorted Seafood in Cream Sauce with Cheese) was my choice.  I'm a big fan of cheese and also of seafood, so I thought we couldn't go wrong with this choice.  There wasn't much wrong with this dish, but it didn't stand out either.  I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as thick and creamy as I had expected - after all it did say "cream sauce" in it's description.  The cream sauce wasn't very rich and lacked flavor.  The seafood was pretty fresh, but I wish more of their natural flavors were brought out.  Surprisingly, even with the addition of the cheese, the dish was somewhat bland.

#19 the spare ribs, I unfortunately didn't thoroughly taste - I just tried the noodles.  This was a fun dish.  It came sizzling in a mini caldron and smelled delicious.  The sauce was pretty strong with some black bean and soy sauce flavors.  The rolled rice noodles however, were somewhat disappointing.  The outside was soft, but as I got further toward the center, it got drier and harder - they should have cooked the dish a little longer to soften the center of the noodles.

#82 the dumplings, were all right.  They're not your traditional dumplings.  They were very greasy on the outside.  I think inside they were filled with pork, fish paste, a type of Chinese crunchy greens, something crunchy (maybe water chestnuts?).

#122, the pork chop dish was the most flavorful of the dishes.  I didn't eat the pork, but had the rice, sauce and veggies in the dish.  The saucy was rich and tangy with pieces of sweet peppers that were very soft and tasty.  The sauce covered fried rice that was somewhat bland (it's okay though, because the sauce made up for the blandness).  The cheese was nice and melted.

#???, the wontons were decent.  I didn't really taste the abalone in it, which made me sad - I'm a big fan of abalone.  Each wonton had a a small piece of shrimp in it and nothing much else that was memorable.

For some reason something tells me that XO Kitchen has tastier dishes I was unfortunate enough not to have ordered.  I wouldn't mind going back here again.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt - since they have so many dishes, some are sure to be hits and some are sure to be misses and this time around,  I happened to get more misses than hits.  -10/20/09

OVERALL RATING: * * 1/2
FOOD:  * * 1/2
SERVICE: * *
AMBIANCE: * *
VALUE: * * * 1/2

PROS:

• Lots of variety and options
• Relatively cheap
  

CONS:

• Oily/greasy food
  

SUGGESTIONS:

• Check out the photos of dishes (posted on the wall) before you order them to get an idea of what you'll get