Columbia Cottage, Amsterdam and 111th

Columbia Cottage is our local Chinese restaurant -- and it's good.  The corner dining room surrounded by windows (you can gaze across the street at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine if it's still light out) is usually crowded with Columbia students and professors who often hail from provinces represented by the menu's varied cuisines:  Szechuan, Hunan, and Shanghai.

We often order in (columbiacottagenyc.com/food-delivery/ConsumerMenuSelection.m?extVendorLocationId=2715), but prefer to sit in the restaurant and be served hot, steaming food straight from the kitchen.  The Chow Fun noodles with 10 ingredients were pleasantly smooth and sticky.  Chow Fun noodles, those thick rice noodles served in Chinese noodle shops, are often coated with a smokey, aromatic sauce and are wonderfully chewy.  Our dish came with slivers of beef, chicken, pork, and whole shrimp, as well as an assortment of vegetables.  We also ordered the chicken with eggplant which came aromatically spiced with big, tender chunks of eggplant and sizable slices of chicken.  

On other occasions we've had the okra with green string beans, Moo Shu Gai pan with chicken, corn and chicken soup, General Tso's shrimp, Lake Tung Ting Shrimp, and fresh roast duck.

To my palate, the food's a tad oily, but none-the-less, delicious.  And the range of options feels limitless.