Petite Soo Chow - Review

Intro
Petite Soo Chow - Highly Recommended
607 Gorge Road, Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
Phone: 201-313-1666

The fiancee and I have been craving Taiwanese food for a long time, so we were planning on visiting Flushing. Unfortunately, Porthos reminded us that the Pope was in town, so that would be a pain to drive out to. Instead I turned to the Chowhounders and as usual they never fail. Someone recommended Petite Soo Chow and it was very surprising. Overall, I give the restaurant an 86/100.

My Menu

1) Pickled Cucumbers *
2) Tripe
3) Shen Jian Bow ***
4) Do Jiang ---
5) Oyster Pancake *
6) Lao Bao Si Bing *
7) Scallion Pancake
8) Garlic Chive Dumpling **
9) Xiao Long Bow **

Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way
* Good
** Great
*** What the F – in a good way

Dish Comments
1) Refreshing and good to cut the ridiculous amount of dishes we were about to order. Crunchy, sweet, sour, and very refreshing. This wasn't on the menu, but on the table out front which you can get yourself...very similar to joints in Taipei.
2) Usually, I love tripe - Chinese, Italian, French...whatever. This was decent, but nothing to write home (aka blog) about. Tender, but a little too oily for me.
3) If you've read this blog before, you know I loooove Shen Jian Bow. Basically, a pork dumpling that is pan seared with a very deceptively light and airy skin. These were shockingly good...like 85-90% of the quality of the ones we got in Taiwan. Great juicy meat texture and perfect skins. Missing the sweet soy that we get on the streets of Taipei, but this still brought me back.
4) Fresh soy milk that unfortunately does not have any flavor. Plus, it's completely unsweetened. Sad...but the you tiao (fried dough) is hella good.
5) Creamy scrambled eggs, cooked juicy oysters, and spinach with a sweet sauce. A surprisingly good dish and close enough to the ones I've tried in Taiwan.
6) A good dumpling with turnip, mushrooms (?), and tofu skin stuffing. Flavorful and a nice bread like shell.
7) Decent scallion pancake, but not worth mentioning. Still better than the majority of the Chinese restaurants scallions pancakes in the tri-state area which suck.
8) Amazing garlic chive filling that had such a good earthy flavor. The shell was almost like an empanada, but crispier. I wish I had one right now as I write.
9) I'm a big fan of soup dumplings and these were super flavorful, nice filling, great broth, and very tender skins. The ones at Grand Shanghai are better due to the better skins, but these are still great.

Overall Restaurant Experience (86/100)

• Food 8.5/10 – Really good to great Chinese / Taiwanese style dishes.
  
• Service 8.4/10 – Food came out super quick, but the waitress had a bit of an attitude. However, the hostess and the lady making the dumplings up front were extremely nice and we chatted them up after our meal.
  
• Atmosphere 8.4/10 – Chinese restaurant that was reminiscent of the ones in Cupertino, California. Tinier place, that maybe seated 30 or less. A good amount of room in between tables, so not cramped at all. Crowd was 75% Chinese, and 25% white. Got there at 2pm on a Sunday and were seated with 5 minutes.
  
• Price 9.3/10 – $18 a head for 3 people which is a phenomenal deal for the unscripted banquet that we had. 8 gargantuan shen jian bow, 8 xiao long bow, and a plethora of others. We had so much extra food to take home - it was glorious. Go now!
  

Closing Comments
The other dishes that people ordered looked out of control good - like the dungeneous crab and the pork belly buns. Food is great here and very reminiscent of the street food we had in Taiwan. Definitely must come back with reinforcements to try all the other dishes...