No major restaurant attracts as wide a range of customers on the North Shore as does Trey Yuen. Diners converge from all over the area, even Baton Rouge. Few local Chinese restaurants can match its kitchen for versatility and ambition; almost none are even close in terms of surroundings. In its specialties (anything with seafood or tong cho sauce), it's consistently excellent.
Trey Yuen set new standards for New Orleans Chinese restaurants when it opened in 1981. Until then, even the best Chinese places were essentially neighborhood cafes, slinging the food out in minimal surrounding at minimal prices. The Wong brothers, who had been successful in Hammond for years, built an impressive restaurant in Mandeville (and, a few years later, another one in Hammond). They made up a much more ambitious menu than had previously seen hereabouts, and defined themselves (quite rightly) as gourmet chefs. Since then, all Chinese restaurants have been compared with it.
An impressive domed dining room, flanked by two smaller rooms with windows giving onto the lush, exotic Asian gardens planted outside. The dining areas are extensively furnished with genuine Chinese antiques. The service staff is on the young side and not always up to speed on the fine points of the food. But the Wongs are always there, and they can explain everything.
Go for dinner rather than lunch. Ask whether dishes are stir-fried rather than deep-fried; the latter seems to be taking over the chicken department in particular. And for goodness sake, forget about all those old dishes you've eaten in every other Chinese restaurant of your life, and get something new.
| Attitude | 1 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 2 |
| Hipness | 1 |
| Local Color | 0 |
| Service | 0 |
| Value | 1 |
| Wine | 1 |
