Mooncake Foods

I am quite a regular here since it’s only a block away from my office, and the food is pretty healthy and reasonably priced. If I can get away from my desk for an hour and have a sit-​down lunch, you will usually find me here.
I usually get the Lemongrass Shrimp & Rice Noodle Salad, Grilled Pork Chops with White Wine and Soy, Octopus & Spinach Noodles, or Short Ribs Shanghai Home-​Style. If I do get appetizers, the dumplings are my go-​to dishes.
I like to get here by 12ish the latest before the place gets filled up with the lunch crowd. The service is quick and the boss lady is really friendly and helpful =)

I order lunch through Seamless and it’s inexpensive and amazing. It’s like your mom’s cooking if your mom is a chef at a 5 star restaurant.

The steak salad comes with oil free dressing. Healthy much? It tastes like a salt lake. I almost suspect they used straight up soy sauce and called it salad dressing. I also paid $ 4 to add some limp, dry and wrinkly ikura. The salad base was a careless blend of greens, cucumber, carrot, tomato and jalapeños. The steak itself however was cooked nice and tender, so I would’ve been better off ordering the steak plate rather than the salad.

Next level comfort foods. An absolute spin on common favorites.
The menu here was a bit different from the surrounding establishments, so out of curiousity, my girlfriend and I decided to give it a try, and were so pleased we ended up going for the dinner after lunch.
We started with the lemon lynchee and mint homemade ice teas that were very flavorful, but a little light on the sugar. However, if you drink as you eat, the fruity freshness of these beverages excel every bite of food.
The wings are a must try. My girlfriend says that Asian style wings are her favorite and these were so good it was hard to argue with. I’d like to try more appetizers bit the wings were so good, we may have to get them twice.
Together we have tried the miso salmon, the serving size much more than you’d find for $ 12 anywhere else in this lower part of manhattan. The sweet peanut ginger dressing with the miso, blended everything together beautifully. The slice steak topped with the ginger chimchurri took your average steak and rice to another place having been marinated in a similar ginger soy mix. The friday dinner special we had at the end of the night tho, took over everything. I will warn that the serving size of this is great for one, it’s 3 tilapia over broccoli. The sauces they created blend so well togetger, you want to mix everything before taking a bite of flaky tilapia.
Everything here is so well done, will return again soon.

Ordered the spicy tofu Bahn mi and it was super bland and boring. The sandwich was also rather small and not filling with over half of the container filled with browned lettuce. For $ 10 I should be full and not bored!

Fairly certain I was given a sandwich instead of a plate like I ordered for takeout the other night. Got the «grilled vegetables» which turned out to be a pile of asparagus and eggplant slathered in what tasted like bottle BBQ sauce in a hamburger bun. Unclear what was happening. Only redeeming thing about this meal were the peashoot dumplings and whatever the spicy green sauce was on the side.

Let’s go with «meh». If chinatown didn’t exist this may be a three star place, but otherwise come here if you have nothing else to do. Had the curry chicken and rice and it wasn’t that flavorful. Not nearly as good as mama’s… A ton of cilantro (which I don’t mind) but was missing the curry flavor. Tried the steak sandwich was also alright, nothing memorable. Staff was nice enough.

Ordered takeout from this place.
New Zealand Lobster Tails Dinner Special– 3 lobster tails with a salad and brown rice for about $ 20. The peanut sauce might be too salty for some people, but I thought it was delicious.
Decent portion, though if you are a fatty like me, you might want to order an appetizer to be full.

Delicious but overpriced.
I got the miso-​salmon plate to go, and enjoyed every bite. Was sad to see the last grain of miso-​flavored rice disappear. Salmon was tender and flavorful, perfectly cooked. Salad was fresh with the perfect amount of ginger peanut sauce.
Unfortunately it cost me $ 14 after tax, which is a bit much for what you’re getting. I will go back here but it will only be an occasional treat.

$ 14 for salmon plate (w miso sauce), brown rice. You get 2 very large pieces of salmon, chopped romaine lettuce, and a bunch of rice.
:|
Salmon is kind of tough. On its own it’s salty. With the miso it’s mad salty.
I’m salty at the fact that I walked 20 minutes to spend $ 14 on salty blandness.

I ordered through Seamless and it legit took 1.5 hours for the food to get here. When it arrived, it was cold. I seriously don’t remember the last time I’ve had such a terrible meal.
I ordered a curry cauliflower and a grilled chicken entrée. The only thing good was the lime dressing and they only gave a drop of that. Total damage? $ 21.40 including tip. My meal was truly pathetic. It was a waste of money and a waste of calories.
I recommend for those who decide to eat here… At least do not order the cauliflower and grilled chicken.
I am still very upset at the moment… What a pathetic meal.

Had their grilled pork chop dish. Meat looked spoiled and had a strange odor. Absolutely not going back to this place again.
Update — went back an hour later and the restaurant gave me a full refund after reading my review. Very professional. Kudos.

I ordered the shanghai wonton soup. I guess it wasn’t the best thing to order, but I honestly didn’t want to spend $ 12 for a salmon salad for lunch. Besides, I love wonton soup.
What I received had a lot of greens, herbs, and bok choy in it. That’s fine, I typically like a little green in my wonton soup. However, there were around four wontons in this entire soup, and they were small and lacked a lot of flavor. The broth also lacked flavor. I also disliked how many stems were in the soup from the bok-​choy (or perhaps it was kale stems? I couldn’t tell). Nobody wants to have to dig around chewy, stringy stems to try to get to their wontons.

LUNCH REVIEW:
I would consider their food «light». Decently portioned for what you pay for, but nothing really fills you up here.
I highly recommend the Steak & Roasted Peppers Hero With Garlic Dill Mayo because it’s actually packed with a lot of steak. It’s the only thing I continue to order repeatedly. Once in a while I’ll try a new sandwich like the Grilled Chicken Hero With Napa Slaw or the Grilled Pork Chops With Mango Chutney, but they aren’t as worth it as the Steak!
Other recommendations:
–Short Ribs Shanghai Home-​style, they taste like every other short-​ribs I’ve ordered. Don’t take that as an insult!
–Grilled Squid With Curry Lime Sauce, can’t complain about this dish. Well seasoned and flavorful.
Non-​recommendations:
–Sliced Steak With Cilantro & Ginger Chimichurri, MUCH too sour for my liking. I was immediately regretting this order.
–Lobster & Mango Summer Rolls, this appetizer is a joke. They didn’t even use the meat from the larger part of the lobster claw, they used the meat from the smaller part that you would usually break off and throw away. Is that even meat?! I felt like I was chewing soft rubber with mangoes.
Overall, Mooncake Foods is A-​Ok. The restaurant is tiny (good for take-​out), and the staff is real friendly. Just make sure you bring cash because this place is CASH ONLY!

This place recently just opened near my old work place and it is really tiny. However the restaurant itself is really cute as it tries to put a twist on Chinese food.
I have yet to eat here but upon ordering they had my order out in less time than I had thought. I ordered the salmon salad and it was pretty good in that all the ingredients were super fresh but the seasoning was too salty. I would recommend trying the other stuff because I truly believe that all their ingredients are fresh but maybe the salmon isn’t so great.

This is such a tiny hidden spot near South Street Seaport. It said «Asian Comfort Food» on the outside. I did not really think it is in that category but I had a good experience here.
We ordered the crawfish dumplings to start and it comes in 6 of them. It is a decent dumpling and good portion for two to share. For entrée, I ordered their Curry Chicken Stew. It is actually a very big bowl and I can’t finish it in one meal. The chicken breast is very tender and the curry is creamy and rich. I was very happy with this spot and will definitely love to return to try other items.

Went here with Coworkers for some lunch. I ordered the Miso Glazed Salmon dish. Also had some curry califlower and choy sum for sides. The Miso Glazed Salmon tasted good with the miso glazed sauce definitely complimenting the overall dish. The portion size was just right as well.
The Curry Califlower was pretty bad though. It was overcooked and wasnt crunchy at all, very soggy and tasted like it was left out for a while. Also it wasnt spicy at all.
The Choy Sum was just ok as well, didnt have much flavor at all. Tasted like how I would make it at home.
Overall I might consider coming back for their sandwiches but definitely wont be ordering sides again, was left unfulfilled.

This place is Asian I guess, but then they have stuff like Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Smoked White Fish Salad Heros. Strange, but the food is pretty tasty.
I don’t know if the food suffered a bit from being take out, but the sandwiches could have been better. The bread was a little too chewy, and not in a good way, almost as if it was stale. Other than that though, the quality of the ingredients and the flavors on them were great. We tried the Vietnamese Pork Meatball Hero and the Steak & Peppers Hero ($ 8 each). They are similar to banh mi from the ingredients and the spiciness involved, and were both pretty satisfying.
We also tried the Grilled Chicken with Garlic Lime Sauce Plate ($ 9.50). I was a little skeptical at seeing that it was made with dark meat chicken, but it happened to be delicious. It comes with both rice and salad, which was surprisingly delicious with some of the dressing and that great garlic lime sauce on it.
I still can’t figure out what angle this place is going for, but another of the dimensions they are working with is the healthy viewpoint. You can substitute brown rice for white rice and they also have a bunch of vegetarian options as well. I also got the Salmon Roe Rice Bowl side ($ 5). I was initially disappointed at what looked like a chintzy amount of Salmon Roe, but I quickly realized it was plenty after tasting how salty and overwhelming it was. It went well with the brown rice I got in an attempt to be slightly healthier and was a good value for $ 5 since it would have surely been more at a sushi bar for the same amount of Ikura.
I would definitely order from here again, as there are a number of other good-​looking sandwiches and plates to try. Typical of the Financial District on the weekend, the place was completely empty and all that food was ready for me to pickup after calling in just 5 minutes or so.

Small, but at least air conditioned! Service was attentive and friendly! CASH ONLY people!
The grilled squid appetizer was too overpowered by the sauce– very tangy, and even sour. I didn’t enjoy it, and it didn’t seem like my companions did either. I couldn’t taste the squid at all until I wiped off the sauce. It was so sour it made my lips pucker. It did not taste anything like curry, just lemon.
The BBQ pulled pork was tender. Again, I wasn’t crazy about the lemon curry sauce on my burger… it was just too sour and not enough curry flavor. I did, however, like the napa cabbage slaw. The Vietnamese meatball hero was meh. I guess I’m just not big on asian fusion, I would prefer traditional cooking.
I was pleasantly surprised by how good the miso salmon dish was! If I ever go back, I will definitely get this dish. It was perfectly cooked (I absolutely loathe overcooked salmon), great miso glaze, and came with an option of white or brown rice.

The latest & greatest discovery in FiDi, is Mooncake Foods restaurant. This slight hole-​in-​the-​wall took over the rotisserie chicken shop on John Street after the Hurricane, and I have to admit, it’s my favorite new addition in the neighborhood thus far.
When you want a hearty, home-​cooked-​esque meal, with large portions and flavorful food with fresh ingredients, you will love what you find at Mooncake. It’s truly an Asian comfort food haven. I’ve come here a handful of time with my co-​workers and we’ve all been mighty impressed. The menu offers a wide array for lunch, from Heros, Sandwiches (not sure the difference here, but so says the menu), Plates, Salads, and even Soup, and their food seems to incorporate many different Asian cuisines (Chinese, Vietnamese Japanese, etc). Prices range from $ 7.50 to $ 9.50, and they are CASH ONLY. Initially, you may think it’s a bit pricey, but you’re getting every penny’s worth.
I’ve had the «Agedashi Tofu & Rice Noodles» Salad, and the «Curry Chicken Stew» Plate — both viable and delicious options for a satisfying lunch. The tofu dish was a bit on the sweet side, but the strips of yummy agedashi tofu were very pleasant and fulfilling, they do not skimp on quantity here. And the curry dish is served with either white or brown rice, and they even throw in a slice of bread to mop up that sublime curry sauce. The chicken, was really tender and moist.
The salmon plate seems to be very popular, as I’ve seen a lot of other people order this during lunchtime. You can order takeout, but they do have seating (can accommodate maybe 10 persons comfortably), and it seems to be a fast-​paced, but enjoyable atmosphere.
Dinner specials are even available from Mon — Sat ($ 16.00 entrée), and everything pretty much sounds fabulous:
Monday — «GRILLED PRAWN & GLASS NOODLES»
Tuesday — «LOBSTER SANDWICH»
Wednesday — «TUNA STEAK»
Thursday — «NEW ZEALAND LOBSTER TAILS»
Friday — «GRILLED FISH W/​SCALLION & GINGER OIL» ***
Saturday — «GARLIC & SESAME-​GRILLED HANGER STEAK»
Not bad for a casual meetup or date night, I’d say!
*** I definitely want to come back to try this!