Tai Pan Chinese Restaurant

I would rather that this review be taken as a warning to the weary travelers out there in Halfmoon…
I went to Tai Pan solo on a Tuesday night, there was little to no evidence that there were any diners in the parking lot, and inside confirmed it. The restaurant is remarkably spacious out back, with decorative wood accents, vaulted ceilings and modern lighting. Tables and cleanliness were average, evidence of the day’s prep work was still left in the front side tables along with piles of newspapers. Bathroom was average.
The dishes: Mostly Cantonese and Szechuan and impressionistic-​type Thai. I ordered an avocado «salad», which was one of the most half-​assed things I have been served in recent memory, it was literally a pitted avocado with 1−½ shrimps in each side tossed with russian dressing, on top of a thin layer of days-​old tiny shreds of lettuce and carrot. I am telling you: bottled Russian Dressing. Pathetic. My main course was an «Evil Jungle Prince» shrimp curry, which had some characteristic EJP tomato base and thai curry spices going on, but the use of reconstituted mushrooms, short grain rice, and lack of kaffir lime leaves relegated it handily into the inauthentic «fakers» pile. Digestion got off to the wrong start out of the gate, when a woman (not the hostess) ran out of the kitchen and just plopped it down in front of me with a gasp and said, «For you, ok?!». I ate it fast and just stopped caring like she must have in making it, about half way through.
Plus one star for the interior space. It is a redeeming factor, and I think I just ordered the wrong things. I would only go back (if forced) for traditional Americanized Chinese fare and definitely not on a weeknight.

Best Chinese food in the Clifton Park area! Good service. I had Chicken with Cashews, Wonton soup, and tea. All good, chicken was fresh and tender! I will be back.

Love this little place. The laksa lamak soup is my favorite. Everything we have had there was excellent. Except the evil prince whatever it is called. It was an odd flavor. However, the general Tao chicken, spring rolls, and crispy shrimp are other top favorites. Vegan choices on the menu– our vegan friends loved the sweet potato dish. The staff is great and super friendly.

The food is scrumptious at Tai Pan. We had the evil jungle prince dishes… shrimp and chicken. My husband likes very spicy food and he ordered his 8 out of 10. He was crazy about it. It was flavorful and it was spicy enough for him which never happens! :-)
The wait staff is excellent. Very helpful and very friendly. We highly recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for awesome Chinese food.

Heard some positive ratings about this place so decided to give it a try. I will say that the dim sum here offers a wide variety of choices compared to others in the capital region. The primary problem here is not the taste but with the freshness and quality of food. It’s always important to observe a quick turn around at restaurants but perhaps due to a lack of customers, this place does not turn around food fast enough to keep its freshness.

this is the best Chinese food I have ever eaten in entire Albany NY,…
we had almost all our meals here everyday.
Definitely deserve a 5 stars !!!

4 stars may be a bit high, but this place is much better than «average»; and much better than any other chinese restaurant (all the others in the area are the small, «take-​out» with 4 – 5 tables). So, Drew W’s review (below) is mostly a fair one, as relates to the building, etc., but it’s still a lot nicer than ANY Other Chinese restaurant in or near Clifton Park! As for the items on the menu that have «white labels» over them; that’s true. Items that don’t sell enough to keep the ingredients, have to be removed. The menu is still EXTENSIVE… this evening I had a wonderful Thai soup made with coconut milk, rice noodles, shrimp and tofu. it was outstanding! Pad Thai was good, not spicy enough for my taste, but not bad.
For above average Chinese Food in a pleasant, albeit «tired» atmosphere, and very friendly service, give Tai Pan a try.
BTW, about 2x a year I like to order Peking Duck there. I call a day or two ahead so they can get and prepare it. they really do a nice job… above average for sure! they do aim to please… and yes, you do have to wait for your food; it’s cooked to order.

I haven’t explored enough to say how this compares to other Chinese food in the area, but it wasn’t awful. It also want very good. The restaurant was clearly a nicer place at one point in time, but isn’t very well maintained. The food was decent, but the soup was greasy, the rice seemed stale, and the vegetable components of my main dish seemed as if they had been cooked days ago.

The best Dim Sum in Capital region.
I would recommend getting a soup or noodles and a number of dim sums.
The selection is very good, and most of the food tastes authentic — like in Guangdong.
Be aware that for average American taste buds spicy items can be a bit too spicy, thus you could get chrysanthemum tea to cool down.
I liked steamed pork buns, duck soup, shrimp shumai and beef stomachs (we have ordered much more).
Each portion of dim sum is relatively small, thus I would recommend ordering several.
Also be prepared to wait a little bit — this is not a fast food place, and they cook everything only after you order.
Oh, by the way, the owner and waitress are adorable!

Was hoping it would let me give 2 and a half stars. it wasn’t that bad, but It’s been better. I used to eat here a lot more, but hadn’t been in many years.
First off — they were VERY disturbed I was eating by myself, but other than that the staff seemed friendly, however as my waitress spoke very little English, it was hard to tell.
IT took a VERY long time to get food, even though it seemed like I was the only one in the dining area.
Second, neither dish I ordered was what I was expecting.
Third, I have an issue with peppers, the dish I received was covered in them. When I tried to talk to the waitress about this her lack of English made it indeed a difficult task.
I had really been looking forward to my meal, and left in not the best of moods, and still hungry.

This was a great dinner in keeping up with the family tradition of Chinese food on New year’s eve. The décor is very nice and the waitresses were friendly. They were patient with us even though my son was running around. I tried to keep him quiet so as to not bother the other diners :-) We had very good dumplings to start. Then we shared pork and garlic, sweet and sour chicken, beef low mein and a Thai vegetable dish. They were all very tasty! And the most delicious was the veggies with an interesting name, something about bad jungle… don’t remember exactly. I’m not comparing this to San Francisco Chinese or Thai food, but it was very good. I would definitely recommend it and I would go here again.

I had a seafood soup. Light flavors, not discreet and overall uninteresting. My friend had chicken and yam curry. Delicious. Cannot reconcile the two.

The place was pretty much empty when we walked in at 12:15 on a Tuesday. The décor, chairs and interior building needs some attention: broken backs of chairs around the tables and packing tape one the window edges to reduce the drafts are just a couple examples. However their sAving grace was the food. I had the Indonesian chicken rendang and it was very tasty with red peppers and sweet potatoes with a delicious curry sauce.

It’s basically the only dim sum place in the area, or one of the few, and frankly, given possibly the lack of supply, what you get isn’t necessarily the greatest dim sum in the world. Of course, this comes from a guy who lived with a bunch of dim sum snobs from Southern California for a good chunk of time, so I suppose depending on who you are, I should provide a salt shaker for people to take a grain from. It wasn’t really crowded, but even then, service seemed somewhat slow, not a generally good sign. The food in and of itself wasn’t bad, but when the must celebrated dish (at our table) is something along the lines of an instant powdered dessert, I think there’s something kind of missing.

Don’t know what’s going on but the shu mai just isn’t as good as before, and other dumplings just seems off. I still like this place and really appreciate the choices for dim sum that they have… but execution just isn’t as good as I remembered. Perhaps they just had an off day? Or did the care and quality start to slip? Again, I only stop here for dim sum so I have no idea what their other food is like. Just thought I would write this update to express my new opinion. Still in my rotation but I need to go down to Flushing NY more often for good dim sum.

Pros: Great atmosphere, helpful waitstaff, tasty food, food is made to order, listing on
Cons: Long wait for food, sometimes you’ll be the only person in the restaurant.

I have to deduct a star. I’ve been back here several times since my first review over a year ago, and I’ve found the quality of food to be unpredictable. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is… Maybe they have ‘off’ days, maybe I’m ordering wrong, or maybe the menu is too extensive for them to ensure it’s all good quality.
I still really like the Thai Curry Bowl soup, and other soups have also been tasty. We have had a few fried items which were nice and crisp without being overly greasy (however, I try to keep my intake of fried food to a minimum). The Teriyaki Chicken is very tasty, but I would prefer it not be fried. My husband was pleased with the Tsing Tao Beef and thought the Mongolian Beef Flambé was good but not great. I had the dim sum once and would not get it again. I’m not a dim sum connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn’t hold a candle to what I’ve had at Ala Shanghai in Latham. The Pad Thai here also left much to be desired, and it contained so much sodium that I had to stop eating because it made my head spin.
Overall, Tai Pan is hit-​or-​miss. I’ll come back if it’s convenient, or maybe for takeout to get the soup. But for most things I’d want to order, there are simply better options nearby.

I don’t know what you all are talking about. The dim sum here just isn’t good. For starters, shrimp wrapped up in rice noodle is never one shrimp. Are you kidding me?
The only thing that was decent was the fried taro stuffed with pork. Eggplant with shrimp was okay, but the two components weren’t well integrated and the pieces of eggplant were measly.
But the steamed wrap around the har gow wasn’t up to snuff. And nothing I had was good enough to justify a return trip.
Perhaps some day I’ll return on a weekend, when the kitchen is busier. However the next time I go, I’ll be walking in with lower expectations, and that might help. Because this place had been held up high by the Times Union food critic as a great place for dim sum.
One thing is clear. It’s not.

Maybe it should have been a warning sign when it took the staff 20 – 25 minutes to seat us after saying «one minute». Maybe her not coming back but rushing around doing other things should have been another warning sign. Maybe when they sat us in the section off of the front I shouldn’t have said «I feel like I’m sitting in a hallway, let’s move». Maybe all of the to go orders I saw should have been yet another sign. I must be colorblind when it comes to red flags!
After about 30−40(20−25 for first table, another ten or so for second one) minutes we finally sat down. The place wasn’t very crowded. It was us and another table (family of four) in our section, 1 table in another, and 3 tables in the third section. I did notice something a bit *off* when we first sat down. That was that there were three tables in need of clearing in our section.
Took about 10 minutes to put in a drink order and get the obligatory crispy noodles and sauces. We also put or dinner orders in then as well. Seemed like the smart thing to do. get it done while she’s at our table was the idea.
After a few minutes a table from another section got up and said «we’re leaving! We’ve been here an hour and haven’t seen any of our food.». Hmm. Then the table next to ours got some of their food, the two kids dinners. Awhile after that the parents dish came out. Some time after that the woman pulled the waitress aside and said something like «I’m paying because I have to but I’m not happy. Our dinner came out after the kids were finished, we never got one of our dinners and the table next to us and another already left. This isn’t ok.». Hmm. All signs pointed to run but we stayed put.
About 40 minutes later our appetizer came out. We ordered the pu pu platter. It was good but would have been better hot or at least warm. It had been sitting awhile. The satay was juicy and had a nice flavor to it, the cheese wontons were fried nicely. I don’t eat ribs but my date (daughter) liked them and was a fan of the spring rolls as well.
Dinner came about 20 minutes later. I order pad thai. It had that look food gets when it sits awhile and it also had onions which I didn’t want. The waitress had the kitchen make up a new dish, which was a good thing because it came out hot. Very tasty. Though I didn’t eat much because my appetite was pretty much gone. My daughter ordered the sesame chicken and wasn’t the biggest fan of it. It was basically chicken, fried sweet and sour style with sesame sauce over it. I liked it and thought the crispiness was light and nice, and enjoyed the flavor.
The total came to about $ 44.00, $ 52.00 with tip. The service was nice and did a good job when they were around. She said someone called in and that’s why they were so behind. I’m not sure how just one person can throw off an entire restaurant though. While waiting to be seated a lady picking up take-​out said «service is slow here, but the food is good». that says it all.
1 star for the food because I really enjoyed it. 1 star for the service, they were great when they were around. –3stars for the ridiculous wait for everything and no warning.

The food here is pretty good and unique. Tai Pan offers South East Asia and Hong Kong cuisine including mostly Chinese and a bit of Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian for dine-​in or takeout (prices & offerings vary slightly between menus), with lots of spicy dishes offered. You can get dishes like SESAME CHICKEN (gets a 5.0 by one of my friends), Chow Mein, Roast Duck, Satay, Pad Thai, Chicken Rendang, Evil Jungle Prince, and Phở Bowl. The Takeout Lunch Menu offers 22 choices ($ 5.45-$ 6.05) served with fried rice. The Dine-​In Lunch Menu offers over 30 choices (most priced at $ 7.75) served with vegetable fried rice and choice of soup. Special Combination plates ($ 6.65-$ 7.75) are served with spring roll & fried rice. The atmosphere is like visiting a large wooden house in Asia with nice décor and wood floors.
I stopped in here for lunch recently around opening time. I was given complementary fried rice noodles with duck sauce & hot mustard and a pot of hot tea & ice water. I ordered the Pad Thai with Shrimp ($ 7.75) lunch combo. The Hot & Sour Soup was thick and spicy. The Pad Thai was pretty good and made spicy and had plenty of shrimp, eggs, sprouts, vegetables, & crushed peanuts, more of a stir fried version here instead of the usual sticky version I’ve had at other places. The Vegetable Fried Rice was tasty. The service was good and timely since I was the only diner here.