Vora

So i thought id give this place another try and it was not bad. We peeked in to see if the same waitress was there and apparently not. So we came in and the food was better and our waiter and the bus boy or someone in training were amazing and friendly.
They did good and we decided to come here more often if there that waitress isnt working lol

The quality was good, but the pick up time was very long (40 minutes). Also my Kung Boa was not spicy at all. The description says chili peppers, but they were not present in the dish. Bummer of a first visit, not sure if I’ll return.

Chicago is blessed to have this authentic Taiwanese food restaurant.
The Chinese menu give you a good selection of typical Taiwanese dishes.
The taste is perfect and make you homesick a little;-) The environment is trendy and definitely one of the better Chinese restaurant in Chicago.
This is a place worth repeat visits.

Incredible spot!!! Paul took such great care of us, not only checking up, but also engaging with us. Always nice to meet an owner that cares! Paul not only surprised our group with complimentary dishes, but also some delicious saki as well! I felt like my presence was actually wanted there!
There is a great assortment of dishes-​after having just traveled from Korea and China, I was pleasantly surprised by the authenticity of each dish. One thing that we really enjoyed was each dish’s freshness. Indulge in some Crab Rangoon, and make sure to have the Tom Yum! Absolutely delicious!!! I can’t wait to return! Thank you Paul :)

I hosted a private event at Vora. Key Points: the Asian Peach Martini handcrafted drink, the group sized Hot Pot, Pork belly over rice, Zhonghzi, Three Mushrooms & Tofu, and Curry rice was great. The owners paid great attention to detail, from the service by the staff, the setting, the food, the birthday cake setup & lighting. I highly recommend this place to anyone.

If you think this is just another Asian food spot in the neighborhood. YOU R WRONG.
They had to accommodate the closed minded Chicago eaters and added lots of standard generic «Asian food» items such as sushi rolls, hot and sour soup, spring rolls.etc. VORA has real Taiwanese food: a whole line-​up. Breakfast is just the best. The combination A has 粥，菜脯蛋，清炒蔬菜，酿肉。The taste was just comforting because it was supposed to be that way: Monday style. It’s a thing that non Chinese heritage people will understand. I’m glad they have the food that reminds me of it. However, they don’t have the best moms breakfast. I would say the best in Chicago at least.

Arrived on a Sunday evening around 8 PM.
Service — Exceptional. Everyone in the restaurant checking in politely throughout the meal.
Drinks — House hot sake was on special ($ 4) and they brought us a complimentary «Apple hot sake» — which was just apple pucker added to the hot sake. It was a sweet gesture and we appreciated they were having a good time! I loved it (however I may have been 2 sakes in at this point), some may think its too sugary.
Food — We ordered a few appetizers and soup. It was more than enough for 2 people. Crab Ragoons, Salmon Tartar and Spring Rolls to start and Thai Seafood (tom yum) and Thai Coconut with shrimp instead of chicken to finish.
Total — The total was only $ 60 for everything. This was a surprise because we thought the bill would be well over $ 100 for the quality/​amount of food, service and overall experience. e
I will certainly be back!

My fiancé and I absolutely love Vora — it is our favorite spot in Chicago for healthy, delicious Taiwanese cooking. The selection of authentic Taiwanese dishes is quite large and includes Taiwanese breakfast. The beef noodle soup is addictively good — incredibly flavorful broth swimming with tender morsels of beef. The pork belly over rice melts in your mouth. The three cup chicken is also very tasty, and you can’t go wrong with classics like the xiao long bao and gua bao. I really enjoy exploring some of the more adventurous Taiwanese dishes on the menu as well, like oyster omelette and oyster w/​noodle thread (adventurous to me at least — my fiancé is Taiwanese so he is my guide on this tasty journey). One last note on the food — I find that most dishes at Vora do not have that greasy, oily quality that you can get at a lot of Chinese restaurants which I really appreciate. It reminds me more of home-​cooked family food.
Beyond the food, the ambiance at Vora is contemporary and inviting, and more importantly the quality of service is really terrific. The staff is very attentive and always treats us warmly. Even on busy nights, multiple staff members will come by our table to ensure that there are no snags in the pace of service. Our water glasses are always filled (cucumber water gets extra brownie points). It’s a very enjoyable dining experience all-​in. If we lived closer, we’d definitely be on the regulars list. :)

For what Vora is trying to achieve, simple, healthy, tasty, authentic, traditional, yet contemporary Chinese food in a brightly lit, clean contemporary space, I believe they own a niche all their own in Chicago.
They have a small sushi bar and do a nice job with fresh tasty sushi and have a regular bar with more traditional whiskeys, sakis etc.
I’m sitting here at lunch listening to some smooth classic Jazz, some indescrete tv’s in the front area are showing the NFL channel, without sound, and the western and Chinese staff could not be nicer. Stephen our server was very polite. There is a nice mix of locals and young stylish Chinese whenever I’m here.
Nice to have Vora in the neighborhood.

Had an unpleasant experience with the take-​out order. Fortunately they were willing to fix it up.
Recommend: pork belly over rice, noodle soup, and the black bean coconut soup.

I can’t believe someone gave it one star… I’m glad I tried it out. I got the dim sum box (which basic the best taiwanese street food samplers) and pork belly over rice with eggs. They taste amazing!!! The taiwan guan bao in the dim sum box blowed my mind!!! The pork belly is very flavorful and tender. the savory taste combines well with the sweet bun outside. It is just sooooo good!!! the pork belly rice taste awesome too!!! I’m not from Taiwan, so I can’t say if it’s authentic or not, but it tastes awesome. That’s enough:))
Don’t like the oyster thread noodle soup though… Too much vinegar in it… I feel I was drinking vinegar…
Will definitely come back and try other stuff.
Btw, the have a bar inside and the interior deco are neat. Might be a good place for a date night.

We have been here for a total of four times, and I really wanted to like this place and make it one of the regular places to go to since it is walking distance to our house. And three times out of four, it had been disappointing.
The food:
1. We ordered one time the pad thai and anther time the pad see eww. it was very strange tasting and the oil was reused many times, that you could taste it.
2. The most recently ocasion, I ordered the oyster omelete and it hardly had any egg in it. Perhaps this is the style, so I can say that maybe it is my fault for ordering it.
3. The thing that was edible and tasty was the pork belly with rice and egg as well as some of the typical dian xin like radish cake.
So if you had to go there and try, don’t bother about their dishes from the main menu that is thai. Just go for the taiwanese dian xin stuff.
The service
1. The service has been deplorable. While they seem very earnest when you enter the restaurant, they leave you alone for the most part to fend for yourself, even when the restaurant is pretty empty.
2. I waited over forty minutes once for take out food even though they promised me 20 minutes.

We came here on a Saturday and although the place was empty, the food and service exceeded our expectations. Or maybe we were reaping the benefits of Vora addressing the issues in their negative Unilocal reviews. Either way, we ate happy.
The menu has a lot of variety so I’d suggest coming here with at least 4 people so you can try a bit of everything. The hot pot is good. Not quite like Chinatown but it’ll do considering the diversity of the area that it’s in.
The only thing I will say is the prices are high relative to the portion size.

This place feels pricey. I think it might be the rent, given the location (a few blocks from the Clark and Division Red Line Stop).
We had meat-​in-​sticky-​rice with sweet sauce ($ 6) and beef noodle soup ($ 10). Both were great! So I guess the price can be worth it in that case. It’s still a bit high for what’s more or less street food.
It’s one of a few places you can get Taiwanese Cuisine… which is why I want to see Vora do well. It was kind of empty on a Sunday around 12 PM. It’s nice to see an Asian restaurant that isn’t Yet Another Sushi Or Ramen Place .
One suggestion is that the music choice and the televisions Make No Sense. The 90s/​00s adult-​contemporary-​hits border on disturbing especially juxtaposed with the 10 flat screen TVs showing infomercials. Our theory was that Vora receives Ad Money for these. Well, I guess that’s fine then. Also the bulbs in the bar area’s wall look like eyeballs from far away.

Updated review on Vora!
Great place again. Love the food in the Taiwanese Night Market Section. I ordered a Dan Zai noodles, but it definitely wasn’t what I expected, although it was fairly yummy.
Service was great, and the cucumber water is always something to look forward to while eating here.

This is a very confused restaurant. It appears to be a slightly up «up-​scale» establishment but then they have large flatscreen TV’s on all the walls playing really odd stuff. Weird. The décor is nicely done and an interesting bar that looks well stocked. You get cloth napkins but plastic coated menus like you get at the iHop. Weird.
One really bad experience which I’ve never had before was that we had to have our menus exchanged before we could tolerate reading from them. Why? It seems like they used dirty dish rags to wipe the menus down and the water was so rancid that it made the menus stink. We didn’t notice it until we picked them up to read and just the movement made a waft of putrid smell hit our noses. Once we figured it out we tried to not touch them but it was too offensive to continue so we had to call the server over and have her change out the menus. She did and that made it much better. Though a little concerned about the cleaning habits here…
Anyway, we went ahead and ordered drinks and dinner. My dinner companion ordered a glass of champagne and I got a large hot sake. The sake arrived and we waited a few minutes before my companions drink arrived — a glass of red wine. We pointed out the error and it took 15 min to get the correct drink. Keeping in mind that the place is only about ¹⁄₃ full so not sure what the hold up was. Since there was only one sake cup I didn’t want to start drinking before her champagne arrived my hot sake ended up being slightly warm sake.
Unfortunately this pattern of service continued. I ordered 8 pieces of nigiri and a special maki. My dinner companion ordered 2 maki and some tofu. My nigiri arrived, my maki arrived — nothing my friend ordered arrived until about 10min later. Good thing I didn’t order a hot entrée…
I will say that the fish here is very good and well prepared, however the service is pretty sad and the whole «smelly menu» bit is very off-​putting. Server seemed really «robotic» — no expression, no personality — just «doing her job» and not doing very well at that.
Someone who could have been a manger? Owner? Did stop by as we had our coats on and we’re leaving to say «hope you had a nice dinner». We were there for about 90min and even sat for about 20min after dinner having tea (which got strangely bitter as one go towards the bottom of the pot) yet he never stopped by then. Again — weird.
While the fish alone could have earned this place a 3 or possibly a 4 star rating, the combined experience brings this down to 2 stars and had it not been for the fish, easily it would have been 1 star. While many of the problems are fixable, the final nail in this rating coffin is that the prices here are what you would expect at one of the highest end sushi restaurants. Way over priced even with the quality fish they serve.
This is not a place I would consider trying again nor recommend. In a city where there are so many choices for quality food AND service, I don’t see how this place will survivor with an experience like the one we had. So much for a nice Valentines Dinner…

my hubby got really sick from their food… pork belly with rice and shalongbao were what he tried…
I had Vietnamese food — not authentic at all…
They carry very diverse Asian food like Taiwanese food, and even Korean… but I can’t trust those places that are trying to do everything… Focused authentic places are usually better. Meaning, if you do Vietnamese food, do only Vietnamese food, not like try to do Thai, Chinese, Taiwan and even Korean…
In terms of both Quality and Taste, this place can not be recommend.

Hands down best Taiwanese food in downtown Chicago. There’s not very many selections for Taiwanese snacks but for what they have, they do it right. I’m not saying it’s completely worth the money, however after taking into account its authenticity and the fact that you can’t get Taiwanese food as good anywhere in the vicinity, Vora hits a solid 4.
The minced pork over rice (ru rou fan) is about as authentic as you can find short of your own Taiwanese mom or grandma making it herself. I can just smell the dish and know automatically that this is the real deal. Eating it brings me back to the old Taiwanese market streets. This is a must get item here!
Dan dan noodles and the pan fried pork bun (sheng jian bao) were both solid dishes as well. The Taiwanese ba-​wan (menu calls it a meatball??) is very authentic too. I loved the texture of the outside but wasn’t a fan of the inside, only because I hate the dried shrimp that’s in the filling. However, that is just my personal preference and typically, the filling in Taiwan has dried shrimp in it too so I can’t really complain.
Excellent, excellent service!
Parking is super annoying. Vora itself does NOT validate for the parking structure next to Dave & Busters but you are able to get away with going to D&Bs to have them validate your ticket to a discounted price — we went from $ 15 to $ 5. (Note, do this sneakily with just one person to pull it off).

Get the pork over rice from the Taiwanese market menu. It was fabulous.
On a windy Saturday night, we walked a good 25 minutes from downtown Chicago to Vora, wanting to take a chance on a restaurant that seems to have a little bit of everything that we were craving for: sushi and Chinese food. Though we were confused by the outside decoration (which suggests an organic salad place), we were further confused by their interior decoration (where’s the mandatory Asian decorations, fans, a picture of Great Wall, lanterns, and anything that suggests you’ve traveled to somewhere else). Instead you have a clean, modern look that is somewhere between upscale and mid-​scale restaurant, and an atmosphere that is comfortable.
Our hostess made one mistake, which was to take us to a little 2-​person table. Didn’t she know that we looked like starving tigers, wanting to eat the biggest prey? We asked the store manager (who later identified as the owner) to switch to a bigger table, and thank goodness we did.
We targeted at the Taiwanese market menu even though we were talking about sushi the entire 25 min walk. Mostly because it’s nostalgic, but partly it’s curiosity. We ordered the dim sum box, wa guei, oyster noodles and pork over rice. The owner treated us shaved ice for dessert, so that was also very generous of them. Overall we absolutely loved the pork over rice. Coming from DC/​Maryland/​Virginia area, We thought it was better than any gazillion Chinese/​Taiwanese restaurants we’ve had. The wa guei was done a little different than what we were traditionally used to, but it was decent. And the dim sum box was a decent value, where you get to try multiple items on the menu, just so you know what to get next time.
Given that their Taiwanese night market menu (and perhaps other parts of their menu) are changing based on customers’ feedback (Vora has just opened for about a year), the owner/​manager was very receptive to customers’ feedback. So make sure you let them know what you like and don’t like. Do me a favor, and say you like the pork over rice, because I definitely want to get it again next time we’re back in Chicago.

There are seriously too few Taiwanese restaurants in the city. I was very impressed by what Vora’s menu has to offer. Vora is Taiwanese owned with a Taiwanese chef and serves up some serious quintessential traditional Taiwanese food like oyster noodle, Taiwan pork meatball, and Taiwanese pork belly sliders. The last time I had Taiwan pork meatball was IN Taichung, Taiwan. It’s not something you ever come across in the Midwest.
I ordered 2 dishes which was way too much food but affordable at $ 6/​plate. The minced pork belly over rice was delish. The turnip cake was not what I’d hoped. It was piece-​y, not crispy enough on the outside, and served with the wrong sauce. My friend also orders 2 dishes and only liked 1 of the 2. According to her, the oyster noodle was good while the steamed beef meatball was lacking. Seems like it’s hit or miss here so you need to know what to order.
We finished off with one order of Taiwanese shaved ice between the both of us. It was a refreshing, palette-​cleansing conclusion to our meal.