House Of Joy Reviews

House of Joy is your traditional, large dim sum parlor where servers push around carts of goods for you to select from. The food is solid, with the winner being the egg yolk lava buns being the most memorable item. However, the carts often push around dim sum that are cold after circling around with no takers. The servers would encourage you to take the cold dim sum and lie saying they are hot even when you see no steam emitting from them.

Flashback to older times in Chinatown- large floor of packed customers ( and a quick moving wait for a table) and roving dim sum carts filled with delicious food and great service. Sat for 3+ hours with friends drinking tea and eating reasonably priced great food! If u have visitors in town, bring them there to give them a feel of Chinatown pre- COVID era. Will be heading down there when dining with a few friends to fill up a table!

The pineapple buns were amazing!! No roast duck or pork though. My family of 4 (2 kids) were seated within 20 minutes for dim sum and shared a table with another party of 4. Totally fine! Make some friends! Lots of places around there are cash only but this one took cards. Shrimp dumplings were good, too.

We were in Chinatown and wanted cart served dim sum. Found House of Joy and could not have been happier. We were the only non-Asians and felt right at home. The food was great and the price VERY reasonable.

Totally unsafe place to eat in. Food was cold. More importantly, I have a shellfish allergy and was given a tofu dish and told by the server, and then the manager that it was ok for me. After I had eaten half, a whole shrimp fell out of it. It is appalling that in this day and age, the restaurant is ignorant about the seriousness of food allergies. Their response to this mistake was poor. Not a restaurant I would ever recommend.

It becomes crazy busy after the restaurant renovated last year. So crowded. The dim sum is good but not very good. Good value though…. The dinner is actually a overlooked part of the restaurant as they offer very good dishes. A special ones are the Lobster Sticky Rice and Lobster Noodles. You can choose one or two lobsters in the dish. The sticky rice is well fried with crunchy dried scallops and black rice together with the juice from the lobster. You may not be able to get somewhere else….

We chose this place cause it was ranked as one of the best in china town. It is in a really good position near some cute shops. But the experience was not good at all. The employees don’t speak any English they speak only Chinese. The inside isn’t really cute but it’s fine. We chose the all you can eat option but they didn’t get us to choose the food or order drinks. There were waiters serving random food on the table. We didn’t know what we were eating (cause they only spoke Chinese) and we got leftovers cause we arrived at 2 pm (the people around us had rice and spring rolls). But the real problem was the food. They gave us things I’ve never seen before (we had to google them to know what we were eating). It tasted awful so we left all of it. The only good thing was the lobster roll. I’m not used to Chinese food at all so maybe you can enjoy it as much as I can enjoy a pizza. But apart from that the choice and menu weren’t good either. The only good thing is that they didn’t charge us for the leftovers.

Optimal. There is good dim sum selection and quite cheap in general. Accepts credit cards. I was impressed by the sticky rice in the lotus leaves. If I were to return to Chinatown I would definitely stay here again.

This is one of the worst restaurant i ever visited. One star is too much for them. The best of the meal was the beer…. A normal Tsingtao… Keep out of it

Had lunch Saturday at House of Joy on Pell St on a recent trip to New York Chinatown. Only had to wait 5 mins to get seated at a big table. We (three) shared the table with some other folks, thats the normal way these places operate, so no big deal. The diimsum are on pushcarts and the lady running the cart will tell you what she have. The dimsum we ordered tasted as they should and were all good to average. Personally I enjoyed the rice porridge the most. Nothing we ordered were bad. We walked in at 10, and just beat the weekend lunch crowd. The place was full, noisy, and chaotic. Exactly what a Cantonese dimsum restaurant should be.

Came to Chinatown early on Saturday morning around 9:30 am and see no queue , so decided to give it a try. Walk in and the place about 80% full. Tell the female cashier and male manager we request a table for 3. They advised us to wait. A family of 4 came after us walked in and sat at a empty table because they knew the wait staff. Two other families of table for 4 and 5 also walked in after us got their table before us. After we complaint, the male manager advised us a table at the front entrance will be our table soon. However, people at that table still eating their Dim Sum. At that time, we decided to leave and never come back here again.

I think it’s a family restaurant. The food is very bad and disgusting. There is no water. The table is not clean. We eat with strangers on the table because there are a lot of people. I didn’t eat anything and Finally the restaurant is expensive

Quite yummy! The tripe, spare ribs, pork rolls + tarro dumplings are so good! Deliciousness rolling by on the carts👌🏼👏🏼it’s good.

This was an absolute experience. When you arrive there is usually a queue and you are given a ticket with a number. The 10 minute wait is worth it. The manager was the only staff member who spoke English and he was so helpful, friendly and thoughtful. Once seated the staff bring the food around on large trays on wheels and you pick what you want. They then mark your ticket and you pay at the end. There are so many things to try and alm the food was gorgeous. Unfortunately you don’t know the price if things so you may be reluctant to keep picking from the trays but to be honest it was very cheap. We had at least five different plates and a large sharing bowl of rice. All feed four adults for 70 dollars. It is organised chaos but all part of the charm. Food is delicious although hard to eat rice with chop sticks but part of the fun. Really worth a visit.

Visited House of Joy with friends. The food was typical American - Chinese and average but sufficient to fill our bellies. Won't visit again

Introducing our friends to NYC Dim Sum, we sought out House of Joy based on its reputation and exposure on Bon Appetit. Zero wait time -- a real surprise -- and seated the four of us at a nice round 8-top table on a mini dais. The place was packed and vibrant, with over 300 people enjoying lunch and time with family friends. Within 1 minute a server was at our table providing us with tea ... but then we waited .... and waited ... and waited about 10 minutes for the first cart came to our table offering dim sum items. Usually we are swamped with options, under high-pressure, but this time, they weren't coming around to our table. Throughout the meal, we had to ask the lead server several times to have someone come to our table with more food options. That was very disappointing. What we were able to eventually purchase was well-crafted and delicious, but the experience was not great, and certainly not all it had been publicized to be. At the end, they seated a single elderly man at our table ... didn't ask us, didn't even look at us as they seated him to see if it was OK with us. We made eye contact with the man, but he didn't speak English and we didn't speak Cantonese. I was disappointed as I wanted our friends' first experience with Dim Sum to be great -- and it wasn't.

We came here for a family birthday with two large tables. It was bustling for a Sunday night and the food was fantastic. I especially loved the dunginess crab with black sesame crispy rice. Presentation was excellent as well as the service. We didn’t feel rushed even though our reservation was for 5pm and some guests were late. Some of us arrived early and they seated us anyway. There were at least 4 birthday dinners when we were there and it was very festive inside. Every dish was delicious and we ordered the family special since we had about 20 people. I left so stuffed since the food was so good. Will definitely return.