Let’s start off by saying that New City Palace is not the best Chinese in town, but in our opinion, it doesn’t need to be.
The place feels like (and more than likely is) a family-run establishment, and at first glance you may even call it grubby. Look again however and you’ll see that the folks there are rather clinical with their cleanliness, with plastic wrapped tables, a window to the dish storage area and your empty plates arriving piping hot, like they’ve just been in the dishwasher. And while the plates are certainly clean, all this does leave the place with far less character than you expect from the mysterious orient. You’ll also find the staff lacking in charm, although not necessarily unfriendly: the waiter had very strong opinions on where we should be seated as soon as we walked in, and once seated, made it very clear that he was waiting for our order.
The food is cheap and straightforward, and the portions are large enough to share. We ordered some fried dumplings to start, and 15 of them hit the table faster than you can say chicken or shrimp; 15 dumplings for Dhs16, and rather delicious to boot. Our mains (which incidentally made it to the table in under 5 minutes – somewhat unnervingly) were incredibly hit and miss: the sweet and sour chicken strips were tender and drowned in thick, tasty sauce, but the crispy beef strips tasted like someone had dropped a salt shaker on top of them. We had those two dishes with a plate of fried rice, and although in itself intact, it had surely been scraped off the top of burned rice, and we could still taste the smoke.
But we don’t want to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, because despite what it sounds like we did really enjoy our visit there. The place was packed a few minutes after we walked in (and on a weekday no less) with a party going on upstairs and some delicious smells wafting in from the kitchen. And while the whole experience was a bit surreal, right up to the part where we were served iced tea straight from the bottle, we definitely will be going back there to try the rest of the menu, and we think you should as well. Just bring some cash (very little, as the place is dirt cheap); their card machine is on permanent vacation.
The bill (for two)
Fried dumplings Dhs16
Sweet and sour chicken Dhs24
Spicy crispy beef Dhs32
Fried rice Dhs18
Total (excluding service) Dhs90
