Hunan Palace

Huge 8-​page menu; definitely something for everyone. Food is quite good. The serving size is enormous (largest I’ve seen anywhere), big enough for a family. If you figure that you’re going to take a lot home, and get 1 – 2 more meals out of it, the prices which seem moderate really are low. It is a fairly large, family owned, restaurant. Service is decent.

I’d say just okay. An average, but typical Chinese restaurant and menu. Pricey. I had the Kung Pao Chicken and Shrimp, and a veggie roll. The roll was overly greasy. The fried rice side was dry and mostly tasteless. A single person’s meal was nearly $ 18.00. Edible, but just average.

The egg roll was really greasy. Lo mein was greasy too.
Cucumber salad was pretty bland.
Overall pretty bad quality.

There was a decent sized room where you can have private parties. My friend reserved the space for her engagement party. There was a TV in the room and my friend said that there was a karaōke machine in the room. The service was great and food was decent too. The waiter made sure we had everything we needed. It seemed like a good place to hold any private gatherings.
The food was endless! It started with some appetizers. Then came the dishes like shrimp in a sweet sauce (the shrimp was huge!), peking duck, fried fish with a sweet sauce, pan fried noodles, and so much more. There was a really interesting dish that came with rectangular white bread and a sweet and savory ham. You had to make a sandwich with the ingredients and it was delicious.
My favorite thing was the peking duck. The wrap was chewy and tasted delicious with the crispy duck skin, slices of scallion, and a sweet sauce.
The pan fried noodles were delicious too. The noodles were crispy and tasted great with the gravy sauce that made the crispy noodles softer. You got bites of soft noodles and crispiness from the noodles that didn’t touch the sauce yet.
I loved the fried fish with the sweet sauce. The fish was huge and even though I was stuffed, I kept taking some fish to eat.
At the end of the meal, we got a interesting dessert. It was a sweet black bean soup with chewy rice balls. The soup was light and super sweet.
Everything tasted great and I left feeling stuffed all day long.

The food in this restaurant is good, but the waiter and manager are nothing but liars.
My friend and I split check into two; I paid a fixed number, and my friend paid the remaining plus 15%(before check splitting) tips. However the waiter told me YOU DIDN’T PAY ANY TIPS, IF YOU PAY CASH, YOU DON’T NEED TO PAY TIPS.
I don’t understand this logic, but I smell something like tax evasion, so I ask the manager (maybe she is the owner) to explain what happen and ask the waitress come to apologize. The manager see how much we paid and said we are OK, but she insist that she has no idea who the hell is the waitress come from and she only know the waitress’s name in Chinese but not English. I smell another tax evasion acts.

Tonight, I had dinner with friends of the family. It’s nice to know that they accept reservations by phone but tonight, they forgot about our reservation and we had to wait for a table large enough to fit our party of eight.
The restaurant was decorated with Asian plants and floral printed canvas. The wall gave the restaurant a warm feeling with the peach and yellow paint and golden yellow wood trims. The floor was clean and made of marble looking tiles. They had both booth and table seating with tan colored chairs/​booths and wooden tables. The round tables had lazy susan’s in the center. They have two flat screen tv’s — one with family feud on and the other with football. Our table had the perfect view for the Redskins-​Eagles game.
After we placed our order, they gave us pickled vegetables which consisted of cabbage, carrot, and cucumber and garnished with ginger slice and red chile. It wasn’t sweet and sour like I expected it to be but rather straight vinegar with hint of spices. The jellyfish had a great flavor as it was seasoned in salt and pepper and tossed in sesame oil, green scallions, and shredded carrots. The beef slices had a great flavor as it was marinated in sweet soy sauce and five spices. The snow pea tips were delicious as it was sautéed with finely sliced garlic. The pan fried Chilean Bass had a Japanese flare as it was glazed with a sweet miso sauce and served on a bed of kale and flowers made out of carrots. The pork belly was covered in a tasty brown sauce and served over preserved mustard green and spinach. The Peking Duck consisted of roasted lean duck meat, spring onion, hoisin sauce, and semi-​translucent, not doughy pancakes. My favorite dish of the night was eggplant with basil in garlic sauce. This is the first time I’ve seen eggplant with the bright purple skin. The basil gave the dish an appealing look and taste. It was quite delicious as it was cooked in oyster sauce, vegetable oil, and minced garlic. The vegetable stuffed beancurd consisted of chinese mushroom, carrot, and cabbage over a bed of spinach. With the leftover duck bones, they made a clear soup with tofu, salty sour cabbage, and clear vermicelli. For dessert, we shared an eight treasure taro cake which was sweet, consisted of mashed taro, dried fruit bits, red bean, and raisin, and was served warm.

Do not eat here. My family ordered soups and a few apps, but we were told there would be an additional minimum charge at a time when the place was nearly empty.

Do not order the xiao lung bao. It’s the worst xiao lung bao I’ve ever eaten. I think they have some good dishes. For example, Taiwanese rice noodle, raddish cake, soy milk, okra with shredded pork, etc. But, not all the dishes on their menu taste good. Definitely not the xiao lung bao.

The worst service ever. Rude waitress… The worst restaurant i have ever been too.
The waitress got our order wrong. She didn’t even listen to what we order. We ordered hunan shrimp for lunch and she brought out hunan chicken. When we told her it was wrong, she took the spring roll off the plate with HER HANDS and put it on my plate. HER HANDS. gross gross gross. I would never never go back to this restaurant again.

One of my favorite Chinese restaurant around rockville

My husband likes a dish of theirs. We don’t eat poultry, beef, or pork. I explained it very carefully and the host was very sure I only wanted shrimp and noodles and no vegetables in Rice noodles dish that normally has a bunch if stuff including shrimp. I never uttered the words vegetables. Some are of the mind you shouldn’t customize, but I didn’t want anything else there.
She was yelling and commanding me to do different things. I should have left. She was barking at me to «sit down!» While I wait for them to add vegetables (my request to a dish that should have had them). She commanded me to sit down several times including when I offered to pay ahead. Nothing but commands and shouting. I walked out of the restaurant to wait for my carry out. I came back and told her not to tell at me again and she yelled that she wasn’t yelling. Now, this isn’t the kind of yelling of a person who can’t hear. She was just rude. 2 stars for the Kung Pao otherwise 1 for the rudeness and being overpriced. Come on now. With all the Chinese restaurants (or any restaurant) around you should know I can go somewhere else next time. she didn’t seem want me in the first place.

Rude staff. I came in and waited for 5 minutes for a staff member. There were no-​one to be seen. I had Rio walk into back kitchen to ask for help. Once I was out an older lady asked where are you sitting? I said in this both near the outlet so I could charge my phone. She said no we do not allow that and she asked me to move out of that booth. There was only one table eating in there. The rest of the once was empty. I left.

Recently, this has become one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the area. The food is down-​to-​earth, authentic Chinese cuisine. A few of my favorite dishes include:
beef tendon hot pot (the tendon is stewed so that it is very soft and just the right consistency), crabmeat with tofu hot pot, and the loofah with tofu skin dish. All three are extremely delicious and are great to eat over rice. The chicken lettuce wrap (not on the menu) can be special ordered and is yummy as well. Great comfort food especially for cold winter days.

Hunan Palace has a name that is relatively easy to gloss over as just a generic Chinese restaurant. As such, it faces stiff competition among the different Chinese restaurants in the area. Interestingly enough, I can start this review off moderately positively, with moderately high marks for the cleanliness and how it felt to be inside. The inside was not crowded on a Thursday night dinner, and to my surprise, the bathroom was not outright dirty or disgusting. The servers were excellent in providing service, but being that we were one of two tables, it is not the best measure of attentiveness.
We ordered quite a bit of food that night, starting with Peking Duck with 10 pancakes (35.99), sizzling beef (13.95), Taiwanese Style Chow Mein (12.95), Duck bone soup ($ 10), salt and pepper shrimp 13.95, salt and pepper pork chops (13.95), and stir fried snow pea leaves (13.95). Unfortunately I can’t remember the exact prices for every single item, but I remember the pre-​tip total to be around $ 115. And also unfortunately, the number of nice things that I have to say from this point on are very few.
Let’s start with the item that could have been my favorite thing in the world, but decided to fall flat on its face instead. The Peking Duck was completely tasteless, was almost as dry as beef jerky, and despite the restaurant saying that they had to prepare it, it showed up first and not more than 10 minutes after we ordered it. If you put two and two together, it is obvious that someone popped the duck in the microwave. Double thumbs down. The duck bone soup was not bad, but it is not anything like what you might find in Beijing, the soup is clearer, and contained some sour notes that I personally did not like. However, some people at the table found that it did not have enough of the fermented napa that would have provided more sour notes. So I won’t turn my thumb upside down on the soup, but I can hold it sideways for you on that one.
The sizzling beef was one of the better items here, the beef was tender, and the dish was a good balance of saltiness, a bit of sweetness from the onion and the other sauces as well. It does come with a dramatic effect of being served on a very hot iron slab so it keeps sizzling as it is being served. The Taiwanese Style Chow Mein was not bad, but it was very home-​style, I believe 6 of the 7 people at the table chose it as the worst dish of the night.
The salt and pepper shrimp were much too salty, but it was well fried (I ran out of nice things to say), and the shells were crunchy enough to eat. The salt and pepper pork chops were even more salty than the salt and pepper shrimp and had the added downside of being overcooked, though they did have good flavor, with spiciness from jalapenos and a Chinese style barbeque sauce. I don’t eat snow pea leaves, so I’ll leave that out of consideration here.
In relation to the other Chinese restaurants in the area, I can drop a 3.5÷5 for cleanliness on first impressions, with the one reservation that I did not take as detailed of a look as I usually do. The high score is also for the quite beautiful knife-​work I found in the rose decoration that came with the duck and the salt and pepper shrimp. I usually lump in service with this number, so I’ll dock 0.5 for misleading waitresses trying to make us think that they make the duck on site. ³⁄₅ for décor and general feel.
The food was mostly downs with a few upsides, with the cost wiping away most of the upsides. The duck really was a 0/​5, and the saltiness and lack of balance in the shrimp and pork chops mustering a ¹⁄₅. The leader of the pack was the sizzling beef at ³⁄₅. The food comes out just outside of inedible at 1.5÷5. This gives Hunan Palace an overall score at 2.25÷5 with the reservation that I did not get a good look at cleanliness, but had a murky memory that everything was okay.
Recommendations to the restaurant: Dump the duck from your menu if you are not going to make it properly. Start with the flavors and not the decorations on the side of the plate; I’m not going to eat something that has been dyed bright red anyway. Your food has a base level of flavor that is being cleaned off the palate by globs and globs of salt, it’s time to get a salt shaker and stop using random scoops.

I come regularly for their fantastic Taiwanese style brunch, although I have also now been several times for dinner. The food is authentic Chinese/​Taiwanese, reasonably priced, and tastes great (and reminds me of my childhood). My favorites at brunch include the fried dough (dipped in sweet soy milk), radish cake, drunken chicken, Taiwanese hamburger, and their tofu-​hua dessert. For dinner, I am partial to their peking duck (and the duck soup that they make from the bones) and loufa.
To be sure, the décor looks like it’s been the same since the ‘80s. And don’t come here expecting top-​flight service — as another reviewer said, Chinese restaurants are not known for their service — although if you speak Chinese, the service is just fine. But I don’t come here for décor or service; I come here for the food.
When my parents come to visit, this is the place they insist on going because the food is genuine Taiwan. (In fact, we once went for brunch. .. and then they insisted on coming again for dinner.)

Came here twice. Really unique dishes. The roast duck was great and the dimsum food was actually decent. Worth trying if your into taiwanese style dishes.

I heard good reviews from this place in the past but I also been told this place changed owners like a millions times. I decided to try this place out. The service here was god awful. Won’t come back just because of that. The only one dish that was good was there whole duck with pancake. But it was mad expensive and way over prices. 34.99 for a duck. They cut corner all they can and try to charge you .50 for extra pancakes. Way to cheap. Sigh.
There are way better places out there. I would pass on this place

When u call for delivery The owner say nonono and hang on The phone.
What a horrible service 4÷21÷13

Chinese restaurants are not known for their décor or service. But, the food can compensate for these deficiencies. You want to be so busy burying your chopsticks in the steamed cod, spinning the lazy susan for another serving of sizzling black pepper beef, and flipping the lid on the teapot for another refill, so that nothing else matters. Three cheers for MSG!
Why should Hunan Palace try to break the mold? The food items listed above were pretty good, and I think it makes for solid take-​out if you’re in the area. Namely, it’s not good enough to distract you from the bland surroundings. Many places are bustling, you enjoy the vibe of a loud environment, like a Sunday DimSum, but sadly, Hunan Palace wasn’t very vibrant this Friday night.
Maybe if they could spruced up the décor, the takeouts would become dine-​ins.

Very unassuming place, so this review is purely based on food. Came with a large group and we ordered a motley mix of entrees:
Taiwanese Hamburger: fresh, full of peanut flavor
Jellyfish: spicy and somewhat refreshing
Peking duck: most places skimp out on the duck meat or give more fat than meat, but they definitely gave generous portions
Lobster: YUM. Prepared and seasoned well!
Steamed tilapia: so good that I doubted it was tilapia
Sizzling basil beef: excellent! The basil was a nice touch
Taro cake (?): not sure what it is formally called, but this was my least favorite. Someone else ordered it anyway…