Monday, November 5, 2007

Silver Pond - Review

Intro
Silver Pond - Slightly Recommended
230 Main St
Fort Lee, NJ 07024
Phone: 201-592-8338

Have been looking to check out Silver Pond for a while based on recommendations from family and some reviews online. It's hard to get good dim sum even in NY's Chinatown. Silver Pond is serviceable, but really not worth the price. Overall, I give the restaurant an 73/100.

My Menu

1) Clams in Black Bean Sauce - Highly Recommended
2) Shrimp Rice Noodle Rolls (Cheong Fun)– Average

3) Tofu Skin stuffed with Veggies Not Recommended
4) Fried Noodles Highly Recommended
5) Pork and Shrimp Dumplings (Siu Mai) Highly Recommended
6) Shrimp Dumpling
Highly Recommended
7) Chicken Feet
(Fung Zao) Recommended
8) Garlic Chive Dumping
Recommended

Dish Comments
1) This was off the hook good. Very fresh and super tender and flavorful. So f'n good and setting the bar really high.
2) This was OK. Basically tender rice noodles stuffed with shrimp and topped with a sweet soy. Not that good for some reason to me.
3) Tofu skin stuffed with shitakes, tofu pieces, noodles, and maybe even enoki mushrooms? Great texture, but where's the flavor. Plus, this thing was cold.

4) This was super addicting and very tasty. Basically fried semi-crunchy noodles with onions and scallions.
5) This is one of my all time favorite dim sum items and Silver Pond knocked it out of the park - juicy and flavorful.
6) Really haven't had this style of shrimp dumpling too much, but it was again juicy and very flavorful. This wasn't made well though, as it fell apart when you picked it up - but I didn't care...this was hella tasty.
7) When you eat chicken feet, it's a little scary to look at but basically you suck the skin off the feet and eat the cartilage around the feet. I've had this numerous times before and this was decent.
8) This was so f'n tasty, but unfortunately this came out cold. Very disappointing, but this was still very tasty.

Overall Restaurant Experience (73/100)

  • Food 7.9/10 – In terms of dim sum, this was pretty tasty stuff. Unfortunately, some of the food comes out cold which is ridiculous...food still tasted good though.
  • Service 7.3/10 – Waitresses were very nice, but the host was pretty rude to everyone. Food comes out very slow in terms of dim sum which could be because they don't use that many push carts. Mainly ladies walking around with trays holding the dim sum.
  • Atmosphere 7.5/10 – Standard Chinese restaurant that's slightly nicer than some of the holes in Chinatown. Mix of Chinese, Koreans, and non Asians. Lots of families here. Got there at 12:30 on a Sunday and got a table at 1pm...this place gets packed.
  • Price 6.5/10 – For two people, Dim Sum should usually run you $30 ($3 a dish) unless you go to town and order everything. This ran us $45 (around $5 a dish) which I think is really pricey for dim sum. Flavor is sill good, but not that good for the price.

Closing Comments
Good dim sum is so hard to come by and this place is decent, but the price is a big turn off. I may go back and next time bring more people. But, this is not a go to place and I will still need to find another dim sum joint.


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