Mandarin House

Does anybody know if the Mandarin House staff has opened up another restaurant in Austin?
Earlier somebody said they opened up Rice Bowl Café
but I can’t find that comment anymore.

Sorry to see them close.

Authentic Sichuan/​Taiwanese food… we have been coming to this place since college (like a decade ago).I took my parents here (and they are from Taiwan. big foddies too) and they loved it!
Few dishes for highlight:
1. Boneless fried duck — not spicy but crispy and to die for if you like duck
2. Hot & Sour soup — sounds weird but they have the best in town and authentic too
3. Pork Belly with preserved vegetables… for $ 10 you get the quality/​quantity of top restaurants… you cannot beat that if you like pork belly.
4. Beef clay pot — beef stew in clay pot. YUM
5. Any stir-​fried vegetable is good.
All these goodies are on the chinese menu, not buffett or the american-​chinese menu… enjoy.

Authentic and delicious Chinese food. Order the lo mein, it’s fabulous! The buffet looked just ok, but the food from the menu is fabulous! There are two menus, so if you want the more authentic foods like kung pao squid and pork stomach, request the menu. But for you chickens, they have the «American expectations» like regular kung pao chicken and whatnot — all equally delicious. Best Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been to, and they are always so nice to me. My girlfriend and I went there two nights in a row and they gave us free food! They like the regular customers, I guess!

My first experience was borderline «ok.»
Today my coworkers talked me into ordering again. I got a different dish and it was overall not good.
I LOVE asian food of all kinds but I will not be ordering from Mandarin House again.
One word to sum up both of my experiences: MEH.

Alas my quest for good Chinese food in Austin continues… After a sneaky door hanger man left his wears in my apartment complex I decided to give Mandarin House a shot. I’ve passed it on Lamar many times and it looked interesting, to say the least. I’ve been searching for the aloof NYC Chinese food quality that I got at my old apartment in Brooklyn and sadly this isn’t it.
This rating is strictly on delivery service. First the good, the person on the phone got my order correctly and the delivery was quick. My first order included General Tso’s chicken, Shrimp and Broccoli, fried rice, rangoons and egg rolls. My initial impressions were good. the chicken was a variant of the familiar sweet and spicy saucy I love and it peaked my interest at first, then the quality of the chicken (stringy and grissley) ruined the experience. I ordered this 2 more times from Mandarin with quality degrading further with each order.
The same went for the fried items. They went from greasy, do literally dripping grease by my third order. The shrimp tasted like rubber, and the fried rice varied from good to below average with no rhyme or reason.
I guess my search continues. If anyone know of truly good, NYC style Chinese food, please let me know.

I’ve been coming here for years but only for the buffet. The reason for that is that they usually have fried dumplings on the buffet.
They two groups of people coming in here; the Asians who order off the menu and then the rest of us who eat the buffet.
I realize if I go in at an odd time the selection won’t be as fresh. So I time visits at the beginning or end of a busy period.
Staff is always friendly and helpful.

This place offers authentic Chinese food off their menu. I have taken many friends here and all of them have enjoyed the food.
Things to try: Jellyfish, pig’s ears, 3 cups octopus, boneless duck, sweet and sour fish, pork and green beans, pork intestine and blood lol

First of all, I would like to state that I am Taiwanese American and my dad cooks the best Taiwanese food ever, so I know what is good and bad. Mandarian House has some amazing authentic Taiwanese/​Chinese food. It is one of the best in town, there is not many authentic Taiwanese food to be found in Austin.
You can’t eat at their buffet, that is catered to Americans who loves greasy Chinese take-​out. Ask for their authentic menu and there you will find the good stuff. I am a pescatarian, so I have not had had pork, beef, or poultry since 2005 but pre-​2005, I’ve had their meat dishes and their crispy duck skin is soooooo good!
My favorite dish is the crab with tofu, it comes in this yellow sauce, looks like curry but is not curry. That is by far my favorite dish, one of my favorites in Austin. They use soft tofu and they have crab meat and sometimes with shrimp. It’s the best thing when you mix it over plain white jasmine rice, so good.
People need to order from their authentic menu, ask them for it, bring an Asian friend with you or better yet, ask the manager there for their advice, don’t eat from the buffet!

Was and still is one of the best places to go for authentic Chinese food. Don’t bother with the plain-​jane Americanized Chinese buffet… be adventurous and order from the menu!
Some of the «regular» items we almost always get when we visit: Crispy boneless duck, sweet and sour whole fish, tofu stewed with crab caviar, dry stir-​fried green beans, three cup basil squid, Taiwanese style pork chops, soy braised pigs feet, pork intestine and blood hotpot, and several of the cold dishes (jellyfish, braised pork ears, etc). Trust me, these dishes are as good as it gets not just in Austin, but in the States for that matter (vs Houston, NY, LA, etc).
If the dishes listed above aren’t convincing enough of this place’s authenticity, then try this on for size: The Vice President of a Taiwanese company I previously worked for would request to eat at Mandarin House… when he was in town on business travel from Taiwan!

Ok so i like an Americanized «fake» chinese buffet as much as the next person, they are affordable, and ALL YOU CAN EAT. As far as buffets go, mandarin house’s is relatively small, but i can honestly say they have the best tasting general tso’s chicken, and their chicken wings with fried rice is great. But really, that kind of stuff is common fare at any chinese buffet.
What really separates this place from other buffet spots is the ordering menu. I have gone here several times with a friend of mine, and luck out every time because he can speak mandarin. The hot pots and seasonal dishes here are Great. Im a pretty adventurous eater, and they have never failed to impress me with the more unusual hot pots, and fried goodies.
In the end, this place is the best of both worlds The «Fake» chinese food world and the authentic. You cant go wrong. From the outside it may seem like an average run of the mill Buffet, but get your hands on a menu and get ready for a great surprise.

Just ordered delivery: (1:15pm Friday)
Roasted Duck in sauce
Bean Curd with crab,
Mapo Tofu, and
Hot & Sour Soup cup.
The total was $ 30.31 + $ 3 delivery charge + $ 3 tip = $ 36.31.
The Hot & Sour Soup cup was very hot, temperature-​wise. The cup might as well have been a bowl, it was so large. The soup was spicy and delicious. Ive had better H&S soup (at Four Seasons Chinese on Bratton) which was sour the way it should be, but this was still delicious.
The Roast Duck with sauce was interesting. And by interesting, I mean terrible. I didn’t see it on the menu. But there were so many Unilocalers proclaiming it the best dish on the menu, I decided to try it. It was garnished with cilantro on the side which was very wilted. Without the sauce, the duck was chewy and over cooked. The batter was hard to chew. It seemed as if the duck had been frozen, then roasted, then deep fried. If dunked in the accompanying sauce, it was semi-​edible. The duck itself seemed fatty and had a strange taste to it. Like licking a stray animal (not that I’ve ever done that). I will not order it again. The rave reviews for it seem suspicious. I removed the garnish and batter, and gave the duck meat to my dog. She actually seemed to like it.
The Bean Curd with Crab was surprisingly delicious. It came with crab, shrimp, and egg. It tasted a little like egg drop soup, which I didn’t mind. It did Not taste fishy like spoiled seafood. Overall, good dish. I would order it again if I was hungry for an extra large helping of egg drop soup. But it will not be my first choice on the menu, even on a drunk night.
The Mapo Tofu was very spiced. I’ve never had it from any restaurant before. I couldn’t tell if that was ground beef or ground pork. It had a kick to it, and the flavors were pungent and not delicious at the same time– although still more edible than the duck. I won’t order it again either.
Everything was piping hot, as it should be during lunch hour.
They gave me a big to-​go box full of steamed rice which was perfect for soaking up the juices in the mapo tofu and the bean curd, so they would be easily eaten with chopsticks. I thought I would get free wantons for ordering so much, but nope.
I’m sad. But I will give this place another shot. Maybe I need to order something more Americanized; general tso, kung pao, sesame chicken, orange beef, or broccoli beef.

This place is great, and authentic Chinese food. The owner is from Taiwan. The chef is from Taiwan, too, but I heard he doesn’t cook all the time nowadays — you just need to try your luck.
I say it’s authentic because I know exactly what to order: the crispy duck, the bean curd with crab meat, and the pig blood/​intestine dish. These are the three star dishes they have. However, I would not compare them to Din-​Ho or Asia Café, because these are DIFFERENT kinds of Chinese food, just like you won’t compare steak with cajun food just because they’re both American.
If you expect it to be Americanized food, they have it too, there’s a buffet. But then you’re missing out on the real good stuff.

So I am going to be blunt and hopefully this will still make sense. This is the cheap greasy, bad but good Chinese food, you sometimes crave. It’s probably a few steps up from mall food court Chinese…
I order from here when I am in the mood for that type of food and want it delivered. Have never been in the restaurant. I’d be weary of the cleanliness probably.
Anyway, the sesame chicken is good, the combo fried rice, the eggrolls and you get free cream cheese wantons. I am not a fan of those, but I hear they are great.

Thanks to Gary for reminding me about this place.
DISCLOSURE: I’ve never actually been to the restaurant. I’ve only ordered off the lunch menu and had it delivered to work.
I always order the same thing: Beef Lo Mein with sweet and sour sauce.
I really like it and I think it’s pretty tasty. My husband ordered the shrimp fried rice once and he wound up getting pretty ill. However, that was years ago and it may have been a bad batch. Needless to say, he’s never ordered it again. The food he has dared to try after this incident seemed just fine.
Will I order lunch from here again? You betcha!

We ordered for delivery tonight. I love tipping someone who brings me the wrong food.
I ordered General Tao (or however you spell it) Tofu and Kung Poa Chicken. What I got where the same dishes, one with tofu and one with chicken. It was a bowl of very, very sweet sauce. On top of that was some chicken in one and uncooked tofu in the other. On top of that was broccoli. It seems they were both General Tao something. I ordered the Kung Poa Chicken first, so you would have thought they would have given me two of that instead of the other way around.
It wasn’t really good. Other than sweet and uncooked tofu flavor (but tofu that hadn’t been marinated in anything). There wasn’t all that much. And I really hate when you order one item for $ 7.25 and one for $ 8.25 (although that item was wrong!), and the total is $ 23.39. I am really not sure how much the delivery charge is, but it seems to be tremendous. Then you still have to tip.
I wouldn’t recommend it. It wasn’t good. And, I can deal with some not great food. In fact, it kinda sucked. The order was wrong. And, it was prices weirdly. So, I won’t go there again. I will just wait for the next menu to be hung on my door and try that place.

I went with Joel W. and I’ll agree — the place was clean, the lights were bright, the inside was tacky and all, but it didn’t feel wrong to eat there. It was your average little mom and pop chinese place with both a buffet and a menu. We went for the buffet as we were starving.
I got in line and thought I was going to regret that decision. The food looked sub par, there wasn’t much to choose from, and it all looked as if it had been out for hours. Since I had paid for it, I got a bunch of different things and reluctantly tried them.
Surprise! A lot of it was actually decent! The general tso’s sauce was excellent — the chicken wasn’t that great because it had been sitting a while but I used that damn sauce on everything. There was also a potsticker sauce that was amazing, the potstickers were pretty great too. I liked the lo mein, and the beef and broccoli was awesome. The eggdrop soup pretty yummy too.
It was super cheap too, I think it was about 7 bucks, and our water was always full and plates were always cleared. I still prefer sea dragon for buffet chinese brunch, but this would be a decent place to go for dinner if the craving hit.

I am looking forward to coming back to this place. First I woudl like to respond to some other peoples reviews.
The lighting was great and bright, the floor was clean and not sticky when I was here.
I did not order off the menu but instead ordered off the buffet, it was 85% in the good to great area. I found some of the food was a little soggy, but everything had great flavor. The generals Chicken was great and all the dishes were well spiced. I can see how some people would think they were over spiced, but I have found people here in Austin do not appreciate a well spiced dish.
I would like to go back with more people and make a little party in the back room!

We went for lunch buffet.
I guess that we went at a bad time or on a bad day…
Everyone else gave it 4.
It was sub par food, the floor was dirty and sticky, and I just was not impressed one bit.

THE BEST MA-​PO TOFU IN TOWN…
This is my boyfriend’s favorite dish, so we have tried it at pretty much every Chinese restaurant in town. I basically rate a restaurant based on this simple dish. It’s contains tofu, pork, special sauce and peas. Pour it over some rice and you are good to go!
Hands down, Mandarin House makes the most authentic, spiciest Ma-​Po Tofu in town. I LOVE IT.
Now, this place doesn’t look like much off of Lamar. I stay away from the buffet. The menu has some authentic recipes. Service is great and there is NO WAIT time compared to Din Ho or T&S.