Yip’s

I’ve been working in Midtown for nearly three years, and during that time I’ve sought out inexpensive lunches that are worth what I pay. One of the first places I found, thanks to coworkers, Yip’s operates from a nondescript storefront along 52nd Street a few doors down from one of the side doors of my building. That’s all the signage they’ve got, yet it’s typically packed with customers waiting in two lines for their almost-Chinatown-style Chinese lunches. As it’s perfect for a quick lunch grab, I buy from Yip’s about once a week.

While Yip’s isn’t buffet style, you do get to choose either one main or two atop white rice, fried rice, or lo mein noodles. I used to get lo mein, but it just proved too greasy and mealy for me, so I’ve been ordering white rice. If you choose two dishes, obviously you receive about half as much of each, and you’re charged the full price of the more expensive of the two. With no main dish as much as $7, however, it’s not a bank-breaker.

A typical lunch for me, the roast pork — char siu — and crispy grilled fish, over white rice, is perfectly fine. Portions are plenty for me, and smaller folk probably are looking at tomorrow’s lunch too.

The pork eventually gets a little dried out, but bought early enough, it’s fairly good. There’s a little more sweetness than I’d prefer, but a little hot mustard goes a long way to eliminating that.

I taste a lot of garlic in the breading on the garlic fish. The fish itself, some sort of whiting, was a bit overcooked as well, but served as a vehicle for the garlic rather admirably. There’s still a little fishiness to this filet as well.

On a separate occasion, I tried the roast pork noodle soup. At $5.75, it’s more expensive than Chinatown, but it’s a different beast. These are egg noodles, your average thin squiggly variety, and there is an absolute pile of them resting on the bottom. Otherwise a few stalks of Chinese broccoli accompany the char siu pork and a wealth of spices, which need to periodically be swirled back into suspension. The broth as a result is a little spicy, and certainly savory.

The roast pork isn’t as dry as with the regular meal, or course, but it tastes a little waterlogged more than juicy. It isn’t terrible, but I’ve had better roast pork in soup form.

On a more recent visit, I chose the pork chop noodle soup. Aside from the fried pork cutlet, complete with bones, this soup was very similar to the roast pork one. The soups are assembled to order behind the counter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen fried pork on the menu, though, so apparently this breaded monster is created just for soup, and plenty of it is added to the broth.

It’s… really quite salty. I’m not affected by MSG, so I can’t speak to its attendance in this soup, but the saltiness isn’t lost on me. There’s a lot of meat chopped into the broth, but as large chunks that have to either be divided or surreptitiously bitten and put back. The noodles, while nothing special, didn’t get mushy, and the broccoli stayed crisp — a little too crisp at times, but that’s preferable to a mushy mess. I’m quite pleased with the broth in the soups here, and this one didn’t disappoint. I did add the very good chili oil, available at the register, after a time, and this packed a wallop, one I really appreciated. Well worth the money.

Over all? Yip’s is popular for a reason. There are typically a dozen or so steam table-type choices, plus around six soups, so really there is something for everyone. Don’t expect standard American Chinese takeout, and don’t expect a wide variety of flavors or vegetables swimming in the various bins. It’s just well-executed, filling, tasty, inexpensive lunch.