China Palace

Whew. Ordered at 12:30, received my delivery at 2:15 after being told it’d be 45 minutes. Received a decent portion of food for $ 20, but the chicken was sickly-​sweet flavored. I’ve had sesame chicken many other places, and teriyaki beef as well. This was either sickly-​sweet and messed up or bland as can be.
This was my first time at this place, and I won’t be coming back. This happened yesterday, and I’m still «paying for it»; No thanks.

Traveling from out of town and found this gem. Called and decided to walk the three blocks from my hotel… not realizing the wind had picked up and temperatures dropped near 20 degrees! So what does owner do? Gives me a ride to my hotel! Now that’s service!
Food? Chicken cashew. Not the best I’ve had… but huge helping! I couldn’t finish it! Piping hot, fresh and healthy… so no complaints.
Thanks again for the ride! We’ll see you again next time I’m back in town.

The food just wasn’t good. We had sweet and sour chicken, white rice (that wasn’t even good), pork fried rice, vegetable lo mein, crab Rangoon, and steamed dumplings. Everything was so bland. Definitely will not be ordering from here again.

I have never had the buffet, but we have ordered takeout from here several times. This seems to be a small family restaurant and their menu is way too extensive for their size, the amazing variety of dishes they put forth I believe really detracts from the actual quality of the food they do serve. They need to cut it down and focus on doing what they can do better.
Speaking of what they can do… the fried dumplings are heaven. They just are. They are SO good. $ 5 for 6 large ones. The wonton soup is also pretty delicous, even if the wontons filling is simple at best. I was deeply disappointed in the chow fun and cream cheese wontons, they were not good at all.
So okay, food is average ~3/3.5 out of 5. Why the 2? Because of the service. I recently called to order takeout, and the employee who took my order put me on hold to calculate the total. She left me on hold easily for five minutes, and get this: she didn’t even cover the receiver… she was having a conversation with what seemed like a friend… and saying racist things about previous customers. I absolutely could not believe it. Completely unacceptable, unprofessional, and rude. We might not be back because of that alone, even though the food is good.

Horrible buffet. The fried rice was dry. Generals chicken was tough to chew. The crab Rangoon tasted like it had been out for a long time. The only thing good was the pineapple. I would not recommend this place to anyone.

Gluttony. It’s one of those words that sounds like the thing that it is. Gluttony. What do you call it when a word does that?
I can’t deny that China Palace has made me a glutton. It is the epitome of gluttony, I’m sure, when I relax in my east side apartment on a cold February night, a couple of drinks in me, and ring up the kind folks at China Palace and request they send a man out in the rain to drive some piping hot food to my house. I’m ashamed to admit how many times I’ve done this. In fact, as I write this, there are half-​empty styrofoam containers strewn about my kitchen counter, only moments ago filled with crispy shrimp toast, delicious slippery steamed dumplings and tangy walnut shrimp. There is rice stuck to the kitchen floor (and the bottom of my black socks) which I am content to ignore for the time being while I sit here in my boxer shorts, grinning and sleepy, attempting to type.
The ingredients are fresh and clean, unlike the other establishments whose dishes tend to be too oily, gloppy or syrupy. There is no «Chinese food hangover» syndrome here. They do not over-​sweeten the sauces like most Americanized Chinese restaurants in the area, nor are they overly thick and tangy. I’ve tried a lot of their seafood dishes like The Four Seasons, Walnut Shrimp, Seafood Delight (which comes with miniature lobsters, no less), and The Happy Family (which made us very happy indeed).
Unlike dumplings from lesser establishments which are too dense and doughy, these are succulent and savory. And the shrimp toast (my favorite appetizer, which everyone should try) is a unique combination of exactly that: shrimp and toast, lightly glazed with an egg mixture, fried into a triangle of crispy goodness which I’ve never found anywhere else.
The spicy stuffed tofu (my girlfriend’s favorite) comes with a tasty shrimp surprise nestled inside each generous wedge of tofu, perfectly browned on the outside. It includes sliced pepper boats, stuffed with shrimp-​y, tofu-​y, crisp-​y, yumm-​y, [insert more words ending with «–y» here, you get the idea].
The staff are always friendly and non-​judgemental of me when I answer the door in my boxer shorts, or when my girlfriend answers in her flower-​print muumuu.
The sad part (or maybe happy part?) of tonight’s gluttony is that my old lady is coming over this weekend and she’ll most likely want China Palace delivered (she’s addicted to shrimp toast too, can you blame her?). Of course, I’ll be too embarrassed to admit that I’ve already ordered from them twice this week.
I suppose that if «too much China Palace in one week» is the worst of my problems, then maybe life isn’t so bad after all. Goodnight, America, wherever you are.