Restaurant
Grand Central and Far East Side
Land of Plenty
It’s rare to find a halfway decent bite in this grim stretch of east midtown, let alone well-executed regional Chinese. Yet Land of Plenty, a chic white tunnel of a restaurant that cropped up in late 2011 in the former Mia Dona space, has earned a following among the city’s Sichuan hounds. The spot doesn’t stint on spice: From the get-go, pork dumplings emerge doused in a spicy and also pleasingly sweet bath of chili-soy sauce. Meanwhile, crispy chicken with chili is like a hot-head’s popcorned fowl—delightful fried salty morsels of white meat laced with whole chopped chilis that practically dare you to ingest them (N.B.: not recommended). Lamb filet with napa cabbage swims in a tureen of spicy oil; the flavor is nice, but the quality of the meat could be better. And that quintessential Sichuan dish, mapo tofu, isn’t the best in town, but it does the trick. Service can be a bit slow, and acoustics make group conversations a challenge, but on East 58th Street that’s easily overlooked. — Jenny Miller
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