Mandarin Cafe

Hands down one of my favorite Asian restaurants in Houston! This time we had the Peking dish and sweet and sour chicken and they were both delicious as always. If you get the sweet and sour, ask for the different more traditional sauce. My new favorite! Great service, great food, great prices

I just wanted a snack so I ordered the coconut shrimp and fried dumplings. The shrimp was good, but the dumplings were huge and delicious. Six very large dumplings and a wonderful spicy sauce. I found out they deliver to my boyfriend’s house, so I plan to try other dishes!

Wow! Man do I miss Houston. I have driven by this place for years and stopped to try it out for the very first time yesterday. I placed an order for pickup for the family. I had the pan fried dumplings– amazing, shiitake mushrooms bok choy and chicken– amazing, orange chicken– amazing, and egg rolls-​wow. Everything was delicious! I can’t wait to come back to Houston so I can come back to mandarin café!

Awesome! We got the pan fried dumplings, Mandarin Chicken with fried rice, and Orange Chicken with white rice. Aside from the chicken tasting a little pork-​y, everything was awesome.
The pan fried dumplings are different from what you would normally expect. Instead of having the «al dente» steamed dumpling taste with little sides of it fried, they’re fried all the way around.
The Mandarin chicken was very spicy.

All the dishes have been really good. I recommend the orange chicken. Delivery was lightening fast and the owners are really nice. Thanks!

I was not expecting much from Chinese delivery but we got the food hot and it was very good! The cheese puffs were crispy and yummy and the fried dumpling were delicious! It took a little bit for delivery but it was worth the wait!

Grew up in Memorial so Hunan Inn has a special place in my heart but I think the food is better here and they have a better dinner special.

THIS PLACE IS AMAZING, order A-​4 It’s so good !! Best I’ve had ! I’ve literally had that every day this week lol Y’all Should Try it !

This place is super yummy! Great food, large portions, friendly staff and decent prices make the one of my new «go to’s» for Asian food. Def worth a visit!

The hardest working employee I have ever seen served us tonight. Our food came out fast, fresh, and delicious! You get SO MUCH for your money’s worth! Enjoyed some soup, steamed dumplings, and General tso chicken. One of my favorite comfort! Will be coming back again and absolutely recommending it to friends.

The food was cooked fresh and was delicious. Portions were huge — service was excellent.

I had a good experience here! We ordered the pan fried dumplings, omurice, jjamppong and another Chinese dish with bok choy and shiitake mushroom and everything was really good. dumplings were huge, jjamppong was really good with house made fresh noodles! It was also spicy. The bok choy dish had great flavors and also a very large portion. The omurice was interesting — it was more like chinese fried rice with egg on top instead of Japanese style fried rice but it still had good flavors. We had left overs for days. The service was really good also. Didn’t have to ask her for anything and she was on top of everything from providing extra dishes/​chopstick to refilling water to bringing to-​go boxes! We will definitely be back with our kids!

I got the Jjambbong and found a small COCKROACH in my soup. They gave me a new one and didn’t charge me but I was so traumatized I was hesitant to eat the new one.

This place wasn’t what I thought it was. For some reason, I thought Mandarin Café is going to be a Chinese food Korean style restaurant given it’s in K-​town and there’s even Korean on the menu. However, it turns out it’s just a Chinese restaurant in the middle of Korean town. Don’t get me wrong, the food is decently good and the lunch special is your typical portion and price but I was slightly disappointed as I was hoping to get some Korean Chinese cuisine. Then again, maybe I did overlooked stuff like Jajangmyeon and Jjamppong but the menu was consist of typical Chinese American dishes.
My friends and I still had a good lunch at this place but I wouldn’t drive this far just to get Chinese food as there’s closer locations near where I live for the same price and quality.

So, my favorite food, ever, is jjajangmyun. I read a review from a fellow Unilocaler and had been wanting to try this place out and finally got my chance.
I was really hoping that I would come in, order my food, take a bite, and have a hit of nostalgia from eating an authentic bowl of jjajangmyun. but I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, their jjajangmyun is pretty good. But it just didn’t quite hit the spot. We also ordered some of their dumplings that were good as well, but nothing really too special other than the size.
Now that the food review is over, let me share a few warnings and tips:
1. Do NOT leave the dumplings in your car for more than a couple hours. We ended up leaving them in a to-​go box in the trunk since it was cold outside and we were parked in a garage, but when we came back the ENTIRE CAR smelled like Hong Kong Food Market.
2. The shopping center this restaurant is in is so scary and sketchy looking, with a lot of random people walking around and hanging out in the parking lot. I wouldn’t recommend coming here alone, especially if you’re a girl and it’s dark.
3. I don’t this restaurant is Korean-​owned, but I wouldn’t know from being here one time. A table next to us was trying to order in Korean but, since the girl wasn’t Korean, they were having a little bit of a hard time. Basically, don’t try the «maybe if I speak Korean, they’ll give me extra food» trick (admit it, we’ve all done it), because it probably won’t work here.

Everything is bigger in Texas O. O …I’ve never seen dumplings so big ! They weren’t bad at all I was just surprised.
Lets see… location is sketchy and so is the outside. Parking was fine, its a shopping center.
Food!!! Thats the only reason its a 3 star. As another Unilocaler mentioned both dishes seemed the same. Kung pao chicken and chicken sichuan, only difference was the peanuts -.-
Included pictures of the food in case someone is a visual person as I am :)

We were up for lunch. I just saw that it has been rated 4 star from over 40 people, so we think it had to be good. It is not looking so fabulous from the outside, but when we entered, we were pleased. Good seating and clean. The service was quick and friendly and we choose from the Lunch menue the black pepper beef and the Hunan Chicken. Both for 7.99 $ And this come together with a small soup (we choose Won Ton soup) and a spring roll. The quantity of the lunch was quite large and it was tasty. The chicken and the beef were tender and it was a bit spicy like you expect from the order.
So all around we had a nice lunch and together with 2 Diet Coke for $ 20.55 one cannot say anything negativ. It might not suit for a proper evening diner, to invite somebody too. But we will go back there to try the rest of the lunch list.

I’ve come here so many times since I was little. Although I had a great recent experience, I can’t give Mandarin Café more than 3 stars due to their inconsistency.
I always order the same thing every time:
Kkanpoongi (Mandarin spicy, battered chicken): ⁴⁄₅. This time, it was great! Very spicy, just how I like it. However, the portion decreased significantly and actually threw me off guard. Can’t complain too much… I was pretty full regardless.
The last time I came here, the portion was almost double in size but the taste was off. It wasn’t spicy, the batter was soggy, and it was unenjoyable. I feel like it’s always a hit or miss here since they’re always changing owners. I’m crossing my fingers for this new one…

This place sucked. The store itself looks really run down and old. When you walk in you get hit by the aroma of fishy stank due to a fish tank that hardly ever gets cleaned.
The food itself wasn’t much better. You could tell the meat was a few days old and the soup looked thick and slimy as if it had come out of a pre-​prepped package two weeks ago as well.
The waitress also rushed us out and brought us the check before we even finished our food.

I’m not sure what I’m missing here. I came here for lunch and it was pretty empty. I had a lunch special… crispy shrimp with honey walnuts for $ 8.99. I’ve had dishes called that before and was a fan. It came with an egg roll, soup (I subbed wonton for hot ‘n sour) and fried rice.
Breaking it down… well, the worst part of the dish was the shrimp. They were fried and coated in mayo. It was not complementary at all, but rather quite off-​putting. I’m told that it’s an authentic dish and they use asian mayo instead of the grocery store stuff, but it made no difference to me. The fried rice tasted like it had been cooked in old oil. The egg roll was fine… basically cabbage in a fried egg roll skin. The wonton soup was extremely bland except for the odd addition of chopped white onions (in addition to the pleasant addition of the green onions).
The only redeeming part of the whole meal was the order of steamed dumplings. I don’t know what the filling was, but those were decent. And the chair next to me had Philadelphia Eagles duct tape on it, which was pretty cool. Still not enough to overcome the rest of the meal though.