Chow Bar - Review

Intro
Chow Bar - Not Recommended
230 W 4th St, New York 10014
At W 10th St
Phone: 212-633-2212

Fiancee's friend was visiting and we wanted to take her out to an Asian place that has a decent fish and vegetarian menu. Looked up good ol' NY Magazine for some potential places and Chow Bar was recommended, so I was figuring why not - I've passed by this place before and was always curious to check it out. Man what a bad decision. Overall, I give the restaurant a 60/100.

My Menu

1) Crispy vegetable spring rolls – Recommended
2) Summer rolls - Highly Not Recommended
3) Crispy Roast Duck in Black Vinegar Sauce – Average
4) Crispy whole fish - Average

Dish Comments
1) Standard spring rolls with an overly sweet sauce. Crispy and stuffed with some mushrooms. It was decent, but then again most things fried are pretty good.
2) A what the f moment here and not a good one. Summer rolls were insanely bland and was stuffed with an abundance of shredded lettuce. Absolutely no flavor. Then, the peanut sauce was a soupy green mess with absolutely no peanut flavor. Did not bode well for the upcoming entrees.
3) Ok. So I like crispy duck and we've had lots of it before. This was an interesting combination with almost a sweet chocolate sauce. Unfortunately, the duck was not juicy or flavorful. Basically crispy and overly fatty, but not a good fatty. And the scallion pancakes were a joke - basically a flavorless crepe with a little bit of scallions.
4) A whole fish that was served with a way too sweet sauce. The fish itself was OK (crispy but not juicy), but the sauce was a color of orange that does not exist in nature.

Overall Restaurant Experience (60/100)

• Food 6.5/10 – Ok, so the food was pretty average to terrible (summer rolls). Not really ridiculously terrible, but I would never want to eat that stuff again.
• Service 7.5/10 – Food came out very quickly. Nice wait staff and host.
• Atmosphere 7.5/10 – A smaller sized restaurant that has lots of asian colors and motifs. A decent amount of people at the bar. All couples there Friday night. We arrived at 7 and were seated immediately. Good energy at the bar.
• Price 4.0/10 – So, even though the food was not terrible, the price was a joke for the quality. All entrees are around $20+ and definitely not worth it. The 4 pieces of summer roll was $10 and was completely terrible.
  

Closing Comments
Maybe a cool place to hang out for a drink, but 100% stay away for the food. Still a good time, but this was due to the company rather than the place. I would recommend Fatty Crab for a similar Pan Asian style food with some good crowd energy - food there is 100% better. That's two places that NY Magazine has missed the mark - Spotted Pig being the other one...