Cafe Evergreen

[Fat Guy]

I kid you not: Evergreen's First Avenue branch (at least I think this is related to the other Evergreens) has very good dim sum. I was dragged there kicking and screaming but was instantly converted by quality mostly on par with the better Chinatown places. Advantages: quiet, clean, well-spaced tables, servers are polite and have excellent English. Disadvantages: prices higher than Chinatown, not quite as big a selection of dishes as a big Chinatown place, less turnover than Chinatown so you can get stuck waiting a long time for a reappearance of a dish. Best items were the three different variations of crystal shrimp dumplings: one just shrimp, one shrimp and chive, and one shrimp and scallop. The quality of the fillings was superior to anything I've had in North America outside of Vancouver. Other stuff was mostly quite good, like the shrimp rice noodle rolls, the sticky rice with pork, the pork buns, and the vegetable dumplings. Fried pork dumplings weren't hot and were too doughy. Salt and pepper shrimp were just okay -- not enough turnover at Evergreen for this dish to be a successful part of the dim sum rotation. I don't like the fried shrimp dish with the sweet mayonnaise sauce, but the other people at my table felt it was a good specimen. I'm sure we ate ten other things but the memory is going.

Cafe Evergreen

1288 First Avenue (between 69th and 70th Streets)

212-744-3266

[Pan]

I truly am amazed. The one time I went to that place for lunch was extremely underwhelming, including dim sum items. I'll dig up that review if anyone's interested, but it was a while ago and things could have indeed changed. Still, I'm not planning any trips to the Upper East Side for dim sum instead of Chinatown.

Edit: Wait a second. Is this what used to be called Henry's Evergreen, or is that a different place? I think that was on 3rd Av.? It's very hard to keep track of the "Evergreens." Ray's Pizza, anyone?

Edited January 5, 2004 by Pan (log)

[Fat Guy]

Were you there for weekend dim sum with the carts and everything, or was it just a regular lunchtime meal? And was it the one on First Avenue as opposed to the one on Third Avenue?

I'll definitely be returning, since I live on the Upper East Side and this place is far more convenient for me than Chinatown, so sometime within the next month I'll be able to evaluate whether or not this was a fluke.

Edit: Cross-posted with your edit. Yes, this was formerly Henry's Evergreen. 1288 First Ave.

[Pan]

Has the management or chef changed in the last 2 years or so?

[Fat Guy]

It was Henry's Evergreen in 2000. It was Cafe Evergreen at the end of 2003. I'm not sure when the conversion occurred.

[menton1]

Are the main dishes any good here as well, or should one just stick to the dim sum?

[Fat Guy]

I had dim sum only. Often dim sum doesn't predict the quality of anything else at a restaurant, so I wouldn't even take a guess at whether or not the other stuff is good.

[Fat Guy]

I've got to say, if you live uptown and are accustomed to schlepping down to Chinatown for dim sum, you should really consider giving Cafe Evergreen a shot. Everything I said above has been confirmed on subsequent visits.

Today the three kinds of shrimp dumplings were, as usual, the standout items. They were also serving some really nice shredded duck rolls -- that's bits of shredded duck and vegetables rolled in bean curd skin. I also found them to be totally amenable to executing orders for anything they didn't have on the carts, for example I asked for vegetable dumplings and they went back to the kitchen, screamed a few things, and a little while later they brought us an order and added a bunch of orders of the same to the carts.

I think that being outside Chinatown they're more accustomed to dealing with customers who don't eat pork, so they have a good selection of non-pork dim sum, such as chicken dumplings, beef dumplings and bean curd crepe beef roll (similar to the shredded duck roll but with seasoned finely ground beef).

[Fat Guy]

So, every year or so I post to mention that if you live uptown and you want dim sum without schlepping to Chinatown then Evergreen is a great option. Admittedly for a premium over what you'd pay in Chinatown, you get dim sum that's mostly as good or better than at the big dim sum places down there, albeit not as huge a selection (but a very respectable selection). You avoid traveling and the experience is quite pleasant.

I had a camera with me today. I didn't photograph everything, but here are a few of the items we had:

Shrimp cheong fun (rice-noodle roll). Very well prepared.

Beef in bean curd skin. Superb. Better than any example I've had in Chinatown:

Shrimp with walnuts and that mayonnaise stuff, a dish I don't love anywhere. This was a fine example of it, though:

Terrific steamed vegetable dumplings.

Chinese broccoli and a few kinds of dumplings: shrimp, shrimp-and-asparagus, and pork-and-chive. All quite good.

Evergreen uses a combination of carts and butlered trays for dim sum service. A piece of information worth having is that the tray system is not equivalent to that at many of the big dim sum palaces. At the big places, what usually happens is the carts run low and then they send waiters around with trays full of the dregs. So you never want to take from the trays at most dim sum places. But at Evergreen they use the trays for items that don't go on the carts: Chinese broccoli, bok choy, the fried shrimp, etc. I've watched the kitchen (it's in open view) and they prepare the stuff fresh a few portions at a time, load it on small trays, and send a waiter around with it. So you do want to take from the trays.

I'm not a careful observer of dim sum pricing per item, but just as a point of comparison last weekend we went to Jing Fong with 5 people and spent about $70. This weekend we went to Evergreen with 6 people and spent about $110. I think we had similar amounts of food per person. So, it's definitely more expensive. Then again, at Jing Fong our friends paid $28 for parking whereas at Evergreen they parked easily and for free on First Avenue within a block of the restaurant.

Evergreen's website, which has been at a couple of other addresses over the years (those posts have been removed from this topic), is now:

http://cafeevergreennyc.com/

I noticed a reference to a New York Times article, and searched for it on the Times website. In 2005, Nick Fox wrote:

Cafe Evergreen (1288 First Avenue, at 69th Street; 212-744-3266) has the best dumplings north of Grand Street. The shredded duck roll, har gow and shark's fin dumpling are perfect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/dining/0...r=1&oref=slogin

[Sneakeater]

Here's a perhaps tastelessly TMI thing to say:

When my wife was dying in New York Hospital, Evergreen dim sum were about the only thing she could stand to eat.

I'm not sure that's the kind of endorsement any restaurant wants. But it's an endorsement nonetheless. It certainly made my wife's last couple of months on earth more pleasant.

Edited December 31, 2007 by Sneakeater (log)