Mandarin Cafe

My wife and I always went to Mandarin House for Chinese when we were dating. Now when we moved back to Columbus we found the Mandarin Café. My wife always gets the Mongolian beef, and she always says how good it is. She won’t order it any where else. I really like their soups. The House Special and sizzling rice soups are delicious. I normally get one of the fried rice dishes, which has always been very tasty and the portions are enough to eat and save for the next day.

I used to go to this restaurant every week. During my last visit I had two cockroaches crawl over the table. I can’t bring myself to eat there again. Such a shame because the food is good.

Apparently it’s some kind of sin to admit to liking Americanized Chinese food, but this is my go to guilty pleasure.
Mandarin Café has the best sesame and sweet and sour chicken in town. It doesn’t taste like chicken mcnuggets drowned in watery syrup. The vegetables are also fresh cut. They also have a small Korean menu available.
The atmosphere, while not on par with the palace that’s Chef Lee, I find Mandarin Café setting is clean and somewhat charming. Fine for a date or family.

This Chinese style restaurant has everything for everyone. For those that want American style Chinese food to those that are looking for more authentic, to even those that are looking for korean style Chinese food.
We ordered the black bean noodles and fried chicken. They were probably the best I’ve ever had. They don’t cheap or on the ingredients or the quantity. Really impressed.
The service is adequate, nothing special but they won’t forget about you or come by every five minutes.
Would definitely recommend for those that want both quality and quantity!

Great food and great service! I would highly recommend it to my friends. Best Chinese food since I left New York.

My girlfriend (who is a chef) simply didn’t want rice, and wanted vegetables. They wouldn’t substitute it even with a higher fee. She wanted noodles and shrimp then and they couldn’t do that. They said they make it from scratch, which obviously they do not. Sucks they get a bad review over something so simple. They must pre-​make everything. Sad

Sweet and sour chicken was a 5. Just like I get up in the northeast. Crab rangoons where not too bad, a little over cooked. Pork fried rice was a 1, if that. Totally ruined my experience. I would try again though just because the chicken fingers from my sweet and sour dish where delicious. But I’d stay away from the fried rice.

We came here because we saw it had great reviews while they were at their previous location under the name Mandarin House. Its pretty close to where we’re staying right now, so we were going to order take out and eat in our room but we decided to dine in.
We ordered 3 dishes: sweet & sour chicken, vegetable lo mein, & coconut curry beef. The sweet & sour chicken was really good with chunks of carrot, onion, bell pepper, & pineapple. The coconut curry was good but a tad on the sweet side. I liked the veggies in it though — broccoli & carrots the most. The veggie lo mein was my favorite since the noodles had a really good flavor and were nice and thick. The veggies were not soggy butnstill had crispness, and of course there were a lot of them, even better. Sides of rice came with the meat dishes, i assume, so we got 1 white and 1 fried. All in all, the food was very good and tasted freshly made.
Usually at the end of a chinese food meal, you’d get a fortune cookie but besides that, we also received a small plate with 3 pieces of dessert on it. It was a folded wonton fried and covered in a sticky sweet coating. It was delicious! Wish i wouldve asked what that was now.
The service was just as good as we were constantly checked on and our glasses were never empty. I’d come back again.

Never had a bad meal here. This is my go to restaurant when I want great atmosphere and food

First time. Satay Chicken was horrible, chicken had no flavor and was over cooked and peanut sauce was out of a can and cold. However, the Golden crispy rice soup and Kung Pao chicken were excellent. The menu is a bit strange, it seems to be a fusion of Thai and Chinese. Will definate go back and try some other dishes… but my take is that it will be hit or miss. when it hits it’s great and when it misses it misses horribly.

We like a spicy, crunchy grouper dish and a stir-​fried bok choi at this place so we usually have to go there after lunch hours (i.e., after 1:30pm) otherwise the wait will be long and the fish will not be as crunchy as it supposed to be (since the cook was busy with lunch special orders, I think). Their fish dish costs about the same as steamed fish at Chef Lee so I came here when I want something spicy and crunchy and go to Chef Lee when I want something savory.