NYC Restaurants

Chinatown's newest spot is Red Egg, a restaurant specializing in Peruvian-style Chinese food, which, when made well, offers bolder flavors and more heat to its dishes that traditional Chinese food. The restaurant itself has a minimalist look with its ruby red round banquettes, oversized copper ball fixtures and concrete flooring.

Red Egg offers three different menus; traditional Chinese, dim sum and Peruvian. From the dim sum side we sampled Red Egg's shrimp dumplings ($5.25). They were plump and juicy, and were truly a delight to eat. Unfortunately. the veal chops in a black pepper sauce ($4.50) were swimming in grease. And I'm still not sure how you can make a black pepper sauce without any flavor. Usually, it's pretty overpowering. Things kind of went downhill rather quickly from here.

Dishes from the Peruvian side of the menu, which I shared with a Peruvian friend of mine, lacked any sort of authenticity. Popcorn Tuna ($18), which we envisioned as crispy bits of deep fried tuna were bland and limp. Even dipping them in a lively Rocoto sauce (which was about the only authentic Peruvian item we tried) couldn't save these puppies. We found ourselved trying to finish them off anyway since each bite was costing us about 2 bucks. We wound up leaving 4 pieces behind. The Red Egg Steak ($18) was also less-than-stellar; tough bits of beef with shriveled up pieces of asparagus (mostly stems). Again, the sauce was flavorless. We did enjoy the Pork Chow Fun ($9) with its carmelized red onions and other root vegetables, while fried rice ($15) with golden raisins and scallops (We actually ordered the pork fried rice, but got this by mistake.) had a fishy taste that lingered well after the meal was done.

Being a true fan of Peruvian-Chinese I was sincerely hoping Red Egg would become a destination spot. But after dropping close to a hundred bucks and not being satisfied, you might be better off ordering takeout from your local Chinese restaurant and spare yourself the trip and expense.