Yen Ching

Marilyn is absolutely amazing. Impeccable service, food, presentation, everything. This is a family owned business that cares about their reputation and your dining experience. Extensive menu options and an interesting ambiance. Highly recommended.

Been here several times and everything was great. Went there on Monday June 13^th, 2016 and was totally disgusted with the filth of this place. The table we were sitting at had sticky stuff on it, you could tell it had been there for a while and they kept wiping off surface dirt. Looked at the table with a glass top next to us and you could see they had cleaned around the condiments instead of taking them off to clean table. Got our tea pot and the outside as well as the rim were filthy with crusty and sticky stuff the salt & pepper were the same. Asked for a clean teapot and showed her the filth, she took it away and brought back another dirty one. Marilyn is very sweet as usual and food was good. All i can say is if the kitchen is anything like the front or the house (and I’m sure it is) I won’t be eating here again it was disgusting to me.

There are reasons to like it here and reasons not to like it. I still recommend trying it once.
Likes:
— favorite part was the owners /​servers.
They are so funny, they leave you feeling
like you have to like the place.
— Décor: I was really amazed how it was
decorated inside. If you look at the
ceiling tiles they all have fine details and
dragons. The tables have pictures
embedded into them and the booth
seats have symbols. Really nice picture
of the Great Wall of China and other
artwork.
Dislikes:
— the food is very generic tasting, and
probably not any better than a fast
pick-​up place. With all the ornate
décor I would expect the food to be
more authentic Chinese… but it’s very
Americanized. I’ve been to China and
other Asian countries, as well as some
great restaurants here In America that
have amazing food. This is not one of
them.
— even though the servers are funny,
there aren’t many of them. With that,
you tend to wait longer for service

I LOVE this place! A must if you live in this area. I get the egg rolls and beef fried rice. Then I alternate between the orange chicken or cashew chicken. Both excellent choices. The oolong tea that they serve pairs well with my meal. I love the fortune cookies!
If you got a craving for Chinese food, look no further! The service is usually quick but if it’s busy, then naturally it takes a little bit longer to get your meal but that’s anywhere.
We come here so often that Marilyn remembers our order! LOL!

My favorite Chinese restaurant in DeKalb. I highly recommend the pot stickers and Lemon Chicken

Great staff ! Great food!!! I will never stop ordering from them. We only order to go, but looks like a great place to eat at also! Love everything they have ever given us

Amazing find in dekalb. The food is always consistent. The service is always so pleasant! The yen Ching beef is to die for! It’s a spot my boyfriend and I always come to!

After 20 years this place is still pretty good. The sizzling rice soup was a little bland but still good. I love the fried wonton there. Only issue I had was the waitress forgot to put in my appetizer order. Still a pretty nice place.

The chicken and shrimp were good. Oh the waitress was good too. That’s it. The eggdrop soup tasted and looked exactly like a cream of potato soup. That’s not Asian. The white rice was alright. The cashew chicken… the cook forgot the cashews… the crabmeat Rangoon I’ve had better in an Americanized Asian buffet.

Great find in DeKalb. Food is great, prices reasonable. But the best part is the friendly service. Their family treats you like family. An experience worth repeating.

I LOVE this place! As someone who has been sorely missing my favorite takeout from Chicago, this is a God send! The BBQ pork fried rice is out of this world, crab Rangoon is delicious, everything else my boyfriend has tried has been awesome. The ladies who are there when we get takeout are always incredibly friendly and funny, and the prices are very fair. It’s the only takeout I’ll eat here!!!

Four stars, are you freaking kidding me?! I challenge anyone who rated this place 3 stars or more to go to a decently rated restaurant in the Chinatown of any major city, and then come back to Yen Ching and see if you might want to re-​evaluate your four-​rating! The extremely friendly service is the only thing keeping me from giving Yen Ching a one-​star rating.

We have been coming here ever since my daughter was a student at Northern Illinois University. We love it. We really love the family that runs it too! I’ve never had a bad meal in this place!

Anyone who gives this place more than a 2 or 3 star rating must not have taste buds.
I give it one star higher than the absolute minimum because of the atmosphere.
Other than that, the food is bland and tastes like it’s been reconstituted from frozen sauces and vegetables. I have made the mistake of trying this place a few times, always telling myself that the food couldn’t be as bad as I remember it, but it always lets me down.
I would recommend China One on 4^th Street over this place.

Super nice people.
Super greasy food.
They are selling the building and retiring.
I remember going there as a youngster and enjoying the hell out of it.
It still remains a good value, and boy are they nice people.
Think of 20+ years of drunken foolish college kids as your primary patrons and still friendly after all of those years!

Yen Ching is truly a singular Mandarin Chinese experience. It is family-​run, and if you come in more than once, the staff treats you like family. Child friendly, inexperienced eater-​friendly, and accommodating of allergies as well.
The food can be spicy, flavorful, savory or sweet, but every dish has the same thing in common — high-​quality ingredients. At other Chinese establishments, I often run across gristle, bone, or chewy fat disguised as meat under a thick sauce. Yen Ching’s sauces are delicate, bursting with gusto and contain no nasty surprises.
The Kung Pao packs a punch, the chicken eggrolls are incredibly fresh and handmade, the vegetables and meats used are bite-​sized and expertly prepared.
I went to NIU from 2003 – 2006 and ate at Yen Ching consistently because of the epic quality of their food. The prices, the flavors, the kind family treatment, it’s simply the best. To this day I still make bi-​annual trips from Chicago to DeKalb just to eat there, and this is coming from someone who lived in Asia for years.
The major complaint from some is that Yen Ching operates on an a la carte basis. It’s true that Yen Ching is not a huge buffet of lukewarm food that you can gorge yourself on, but the US is getting too fat anyway. Go for quality, not quantity.

Super friendly staff. Egg rolls were good. Dung Ting Chicken and Mongolian Beef were excellent. Feels like an authentic Chinese experience without the airfare.

I went here for lunch after hearing a speaker on some science topic. I went with my research professor, since he knew I wanted to go into Dentistry and the presentation was related to the topic.
I forgot what I got, but I want to say it was a chicken dish. It was good. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too memorable. I just remember it being really awkward. I actually discovered right at this point that I had no desire to go into research. I guess I should be thanking this place.
Anyways, I did a triathlon 2 days later. I set some PRs, so thanks for that too. I think this is the best chinese in Dekalb, though! I want to give it 3.75, but its not 4 star, hence the 3. Great décor inside, though!

Good Chinese food near Northern Illinois University campus? We were skeptical, but believing in Unilocalers, we plunged forward.
And Unilocalers did not disappoint! On the road home from Iowa on Christmas Day, we knew that Chinese restaurants would be our best bet. And after some debate between stopping here or in Aurora, we decided, fortunately, to stop here! Easy to find off of I-​88.
We weren’t adventurous in our orders. After some initial disappointment –they were out of the pancakes for Mu Shu Pork, our table orderied egg drop soup, Veggie fried rice, veggie chow mein, chicken chow mein, and szechuan pork.
5 star for the egg drop soup — one of the best I’ve ever tasted. Definitely order this. You’ll receive heaping portions for two people were enough for six bowl fulls; we took some home.
5 star for the szechuan pork — sweet and spicy, with generous portions of thinly cut pork that wasn’t too fatty.
4 star for the veggie fried rice
3 star for the chow mein — nothing bad, not as spectacular as the other dishes.

The staff was as friendly as advertised, though the one white employee (possibly husband of one of the daughters) wearing green and red and exclaiming Merry Christmas seemed a tad out of place (dude, it is Christmas Day; not everyone here is Christian.)

There is no better Chinese in Chicagoland, period. Marilyn and John know there stuff. Both are friendly whether you have been a customers for years or your first time there. The food is prepared fresh when ordered, not mass quantities to be divvied up as ordered and suggestions and explanations are simply a question away.
We started to lovingly refer to this as «crazy Lady Chinese» because of Marilyn’s exuberance. Her sister and their daughter, who help when home from school are equally as friendly. It is almost like you neighborhood bar experience, just a little classier. Highly recommended and the sizziling rice soup and crab ragoons are must have.