We, like many New Yorkers, order in a lot. We’re trying to change that by cooking more, but some nights we end up running errands or working on household projects for too long and end up still ordering some delivery food. Tonight we went to Home Depot, and hopped in a cab for the short ride home since we were lugging really heavy shit. The cab driver had some Chinese in the front seat with him, and damn did it smell good. He told us about his favorite restaurants around town - turns out he lives a few blocks from us and he had some good recommendations for other types of cuisine nearby. But after smelling his garlic chicken, we were craving Chinese, so we ordered from a place that our roommate has ordered from before - Bamboo House.

Now, we know that’s not a vegetarian restaurant, but as only my fiance is vegetarian, we usually order from restaurants that also serve meat and just get him something from the veggie menu. We ordered some veggie dumplings, a veggie entree for him and chicken entree for myself. When the delivery guy arrived (quite promptly, I must add) he quoted us a price that was higher than what we’d been quoted - just a few bucks more, but still. I compared the prices on the handwritten order ticket with our order receipt from Delivery.com, and every item was a buck or two more on the ticket than it was on the website and on our delivery confirmation. The delivery person didn’t speak very good English and my Mandarin is a bit rusty, so we just paid him and figured we’d call them and tell them later. We were pretty freakin’ hungry at this point.

After that, we cracked open the dumplings. They were the extra-healthy fried version, so you couldn’t see the contents. My vegetarian fiance took a bite of a dumpling, made a face, held it up to me, and said, “What is that?”

It was pork.

He immediately spit it out, dumped that dumpling, and went to get a drink to wash it out of his mouth. I felt awful. I went back and checked the order (thank you, internet-based delivery services) and noted that I did, indeed, request vegetable dumplings. I called the restaurant and they apologized profusely and sent someone over to exchange the pork dumplings for vegetable ones. The veggie ones were indeed veggie and quite tasty.

We’re not going to order from them again - they did make it right, but we just don’t want to deal with taking the chance that they’ll make the error again. But what should we do next time? I am fine with ordering from an all-veggie place, but sometimes I just want some garlic chicken. So please recommend a really good Chinese place somewhere between Murray HIll and the East Village, if you know of one. Or maybe some good recipes.