Location: Chai on 55th and 8th (chai-restaurants.com)
Edibles: duck salad; beef stir-fry; cold glass noodles
Musings: We tried this place reluctantly, having not budgeted enough wait time to get seated at Yakitori Totto. The theatre district is infamous for having dismal dining options, and unfortunately Chai is a place that proves the rule.
It's a tiny space, and they really crammed the tables in. The table next to ours was pretty much inaccessible. The waitress had to reach over our heads to serve them, and couldn't even fill water glasses without the diners passing them to her. If the owners were really so desperate for extra seats, they should have foregone the large water fountain behind our table. Which is quite poorly situated anyway - I kept worrying I'd knock my purse or my coat into it accidentally.
When it came time to order, they didn't have any of the three dishes Erin wanted to try. I also heard them tell another table that they only had two of their desserts available, one of them being just ice-cream. My guess is that they were too ambitious with the menu when they started out, and have since trimmed it drastically to keep food waste down.
Of the dishes we ordered, the beef was the only decent one. The cubes of beef were surprisingly tender and the dish overall was pretty flavorful. The glass noodles were completely waterlogged, like they hadn't drained the noodles properly before dressing them. The duck salad the worst - the pieces of duck were totally dessicated and tasted like nothing so much as balsa wood.
In any other NYC neighborhood, this place wouldn't last three months. But with a steady stream of clueless theatre-going tourists, who knows? Do yourself a favor at least, and give Chai a wide berth.
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