Thursday, July 22, 2010

For Lunch-Lee's Deli

It was a typically cold day in the city yesterday. I was on the short block of New Montgomery and opted for Lee's Deli for lunch. This is my first venture into this local chain of sandwich stores with a hot food/salad bar that charges by the pound

The salad bar is the usual greens and fruit with some prepared salads as well. The hot food bar consists mainly of chinese fare with rice and noodle sides with various entrees

This sampling of items was my choice. From top left: California roll, cocktail shrimp, ha gow, fried shrimp, crab salad, chicken salad, fried rice, and orange chicken. There were a number of sushi items and the one I chose was so so and could have used more seasoning in the rice. The cocktail shrimp was bland and the texture almost gelatinous. The ha gow had been out for a while and the outer wrapping started to form a rigid helmet around the filling. The fried shrimp was crispy and the breading was not too think. The salads had too much mayo in them and the taste was rather mundane. The fried rice was pretty standard in all respects and the orange chicken is the same as you would expect from many fast food chinese places

Due to the weather, I had a hankering for a warming bit of soup. Three choices were available. I forgot the first one. The second was chicken noodle. And, I had the hot and sour. I hope the others were better because this was the worst hot and sour Ive ever had. It was somewhat hot, taste wise, but it was definitely not sour. The whole soup was tather bland. I would not have thought it was hot and sour if it were in a blind taste test. There were a good amount of vegetables and tofu swimming around it but that was the only thing it had going for it.
I may be a bit harsh on this place so I will try another location and different items to see if it either confirms or demies my initial reactions