I had a rare craving for sesame chicken and other standard Chinese food fare so I did a quick search on seamlessweb and found Pearls, a restaurant that served both basic dishes and Chinese specialties at super cheap prices.
Just looking over the menu, it’s obvious that the restaurant caters to the work crowd. The combination specials include a choice of entrée, rice, an egg roll or spring roll, and soup. These specials run for under $7 at lunch time and for under $8 at dinner time. As a bonus, you get 20% off if you order through seamlessweb, making it an even better bargain. While the entrée sizes aren’t as large as you would normally get if you ordered a la carte, they’re still sizeable and enough for two people to share.
Josh and I decided to split three dinner combination specials, knowing full well that it would be too much food and I could take some leftovers for lunch the next few days. With the combinations, we decided to try a variety of the side options offered. We got two egg rolls and a spring roll so we could taste the difference.
The egg rolls were fantastic – hot, crunchy, packed with well-seasoned veggies. They were probably some of the best egg rolls that we’ve ever received in a delivery. The spring roll was disappointing, as the outer shell was soggy and very greasy. The filling was similar to the egg roll filling but I couldn’t get over the oiliness of the spring roll skin.
Egg rolls and a spring roll on the bottom
For the soup, we selected both hot and sour and wonton. The hot and sour soup was more sour than hot, but it had a strong pepper flavor that tickled the back of our throats. The soup is chock full of mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and other fillings, making it very rich and hearty. I could eat a container of this soup as a meal and be really stuffed.
Peppery hot and sour soup
The wonton soup was a chicken broth with scallions and a few pieces of wontons floating about. The wontons were just ok, a bit heavy on the skin and the filling was a bit too dense, but the soup was simple and light, a nice contrast to the rest of the meal.
Wonton soup
For our entrees, we selected the sesame chicken, mapo tofu, and curry chicken. The sesame chicken was a pretty good version, with a still somewhat crispy outer coating and a not too overly sweet or gloppy sauce. It came with crunchy pieces of broccoli and definitely satisfied my sesame chicken craving.
Sesame chicken
The mapo tofu was also decent, though not as spicy as I had hoped it would be. The tofu was a bit firmer than in most other versions, which I liked, but the sauce was too tame and a bit too thick in texture. I liked the little bits of pork mixed throughout, but overall the dish could have used some more seasoning and spice.
Mapo tofu
The curry chicken was a disappointment as I was hoping for curry chicken similar to what you would find in a Malaysian or Singaporean restaurant – bone in chicken stewed in a mélange of spices and a tiny bit of coconut milk until it was falling off the bone. This curry chicken was thin slices of white meat coated in a sauce that tasted of regular off the shelf yellow curry powder. It wasn’t awful; it was just really boring. Plus there were too many onion slices mixed throughout, and most of them were still kind of raw and provided a very harsh bite to the dish. I definitely wouldn’t order this dish again.
Curry chicken with too many almost raw onions
Overall I thought the food at Pearls was actually pretty good. We did order uncomplicated standard dishes though, and not any of the more “authentic” Chinese options. The food came fast, it was still hot, and everything was packaged nicely, making it a great delivery option for whether you’re at work or at home. Prices for the combination specials are very reasonable and you get a ton of food. I would absolutely order from here again the next time I get a sesame chicken craving, and I wouldn’t mind trying some of the more interesting dishes from the a la carte menu.
Pearls
732 7th Ave. between 48th and 49th St.
New York, NY