New Number One Chinese Restaurant

This place is awesome. If you want the typical «ordering chinese and staying in night» this is the place! I have ordered here ever since I started college its always been good service. There was one time, however, when my order was mistaken for meat instead of tofu but besides that I have always had good service. i do want to mention that you might have to wait an hour to get your food but besides that they are super good at taking orders and the special side directions you want to give them about your food!

Just moved to Philadelphia and I can’t stop ordering from here! The Wonton Soup and Pork Dumplings are so great.

I meant to write this review a long time ago. Quality has declined massively over the past couple of years. Brief explanation: last time we ordered, the food arrived in 17 minutes. It takes about 17 minutes (considering traffic) to drive from their location to ours. Heaven only knows when they cooked the food they delivered to us that night. Yikes.

Horrible food poisoning. I am doubled over right now and have been sick for hours… The food was unpleasant; the aftermath is torture.

This place has the worst food ever. I ordered a fried tofu with broccoli. While it tasted bad, I kept eating it anyway, until one bite came with a glob of something sticky and grainy, like gunk found on a greasy stove or something equally disgusting. I threw the whole thing out after that. NASTY! Never again.

Best pork dumplings in the city! Also, delicious general tso’s chicken. I always, always order from here; reasonable prices and excellent food!

It’s your standard fast food chinese take out place. The folks running this place are nice enough, and provide good customer service. We usually go with the sesame chicken, hunan beef, and hot and sour soup — unfortunately, the last time (and only time this has happened) we got the hot and sour soup, it was inedible — it tasted burnt — like it had been cooked with a pot that had something burnt on the bottom. Other than that one pretty obvious mistake, every other time we have come here it’s been alright.

Their 炒麵 is actually served with cabbage instead of noodles. Didn’t find that out until after I ordered… Terrible.

New Number One is the best chinese we’ve tried in the University City-​West area. The Chinese of choice for an unusual number of Kevins, as it turns out!
Their General Tso’s is excellent, and their delivery is very consistent, arriving early most of the time. Curry chicken is another good choice.

I’m in love with their General Tso’s tofu and steamed pork dumplings (though people seem to think that they’re overly doughy). The beef chow fun is pretty great too. It may well be bad Chinese food, but it keeps me happily coming back.

On the first evening of the Era of Collective Regeneration and Universal Love I found myself sitting at a plastic wood table looking out at a sparse wintry street corner through a glass door. The sign on the door said WE’RE CLOSED, which meant WE’RE OPEN. Boxes of fortune cookies were stacked three high along the wide window frame to my right. Along the other window two vigorous succulent plants, conditioned to low maintenance perfection in the time of unliving, sat soaking up the regenerative neon. Xmas lights were woven through their meaty stalks.
A camera mounted on the ceiling scoped out the entrance and the street corner beyond the greasy glass door. No doubt the camera had recognized me as a familiar face when I came in, as one of the countless blurs it had documented passing furtively by in search of… what? Recognition? Thai food? What were they looking for? Where were they going? How did they get here? Don’t they know it’s the beginning of a new era? They won’t find a more pristine, efficient, serenely detached operation this side of the Pacific. And why, tell me friend, the camera asked, turning in my direction with a confiding air, why do they never come around when we’re open and insist on coming in when WE’RE CLOSED?
I casually averted my eyes from the touchy security camera, stuffed some extra duck sauce packets into my coat, grabbed my order of shrimp chop suey and bounced.

While a student at Drexel Unviersity New Number one was my go to place for take out chinese food and is usually where I get Chinese when in the area. The food is good, nothing special, but good, and the delivery time is very quick. The price is very reasonable and if you order more than $ 15 you get a free egg roll which is always nice, especially if you’re ordering as a group and they aren’t aware of the complimentary treat (don’t tell my friends I took advantage of them for years, please). My usual order is always chicken and broccoli with brown rice and if you order this dish during lunch the «lunch special» price is about $ 3 cheaper than the dinner price, so that’s a plus.
In the end New Number One is your run of the mill Chinese take out joint with a bit too much sodium and a bit too much enthusiasm from the order taker, but the price is just right and the delivery time is super quick so give it a shot!

It’s not that New Number One is that bad, it’s just that they’re not particularly good.
This food is probably only slightly below average compared to most Chinese takeout places, but it’s dissapointing because I’ve come to expect a lot of Philly food. There are some pros: they deliver within a reasonable timeframe, I’ve never had an order messed up, and I’ve never hated a dish that I’ve ordered there. It gets the job done, but it won’t bring you much in the way of pleasure.
Helpful tip: If you order through
, you can get free extras, depending on how much you spend. It’s something like a free eggroll or soda if you spend $ 10, better incentives as you spend more.
Also, they make really good sugar donuts. Those things are like crack.

They have killer Chow Mai Fun, and the atmosphere is fantastically minimal, come hang out with some actual locals.

I have to agree with most of the previous reviewers. It’s unremarkable — literally. There isn’t much to say about it. There isn’t anything to commend nor anything to chastise.
It’s on my walk home so I go in when I’m craving some Chinese. I’ve tried others in the area but this is probably the best. Sadly, the Chinese food scene in University City is kind of lame.

Sweet mother of all that is good and holy… Number One is not the name that should have been given to this MSG palace. No, just the memories of my husband and his two roommates ordering food from this place and having only one bathroom in the apartment is enough to trigger PTSD. Enough said.
Husband likes to justify it because it was so cheap… he might as well have eaten deep fried cardboard soaked in Ex-​Lax, because it would have accomplished the same effect at the same price.

This is like Beijing, just further west. They can definitely do sauces on the side and they often prepare food without MSG or extra salt (we specifically had a guy who needed sauce on the side to his dishes), which definitely helps them, it at least felt healthier… No spectacularly unusual choices, but everything they’ve done was pretty normal, nothing stuck out, and nothing really made a strong impression on me.
I’ve never had the chance to stop in and eat, I always have taken out or had a delivery order.

I was trying to think of how to start off this review, but Unilocal did it for me:
Meh. I’ve experienced better.
This is Chinese food purgatory. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s not really cheap, but it’s not expensive by any means. It just is. I can’t recommend it, but I can’t say you won’t like it either.

Super average, even a bit below average, chinese food that was dependable for delivery to Penn and Drexel. there are some other delivery options, but they all fall into the 2-​star category. I’d say that we ordered from here more than the others but not for any specific reason.
The sesame chicken is ok. The lo mein is not great. The dumplings are dry.
I’d probably avoid it if you can, but I know most students will want delivery of chinese concoctions so it’s as good as i’ve had in the area.

When we learned about New Number One, it meant I had a place to order food from that wasn’t Beijing.
Is it great? No. Is it good? Probably not. But the General Tsao’s chicken (pretty much all I eat from these places) is passable, and since I don’t think Beijing’s is even carbon-​based, it made it the place to go to.
Delivery generally takes a reasonable amount of time, but they have a tough time finding non-​traditional addresses. We ordered to school and tried to express the concept of the south-​west corner. That did not work. But they did make it to the north-​east corner, and that’s only a short walk away! :)
Can’t really give you a hearty recommendation, but if you’re in the mood for General Tsao’s, call them over Beijing.