Chung King Restaurant

I had fraudulent activity charged three times from this place for my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. I have never been to this restaurant. Wherever their staff/​management is going. BE WARE!

Stay away!!! Not the same place that has the great reviews!!! Found out as we ordered and kept reading reviews… Got our first dish and it was awful, the rice was old almost did a Gordon Ramsay and threw up on the plate but luckily made it outside.

Service ⁵⁄₅: Excellent Service; the waitresses there are very friendly. We ordered spicy fish and beef; there’re some glass noodle on the bottom of the bowl, she helped us stir it through and served us.
Food 3.5÷5: Not bad. But not as authentic and delicious as I expected.
Spicy fish and beef: the fish was delicious, but the beef was not. The beef was dry and hard to chew. Usually they serve this dish with sliced beef, but they served as a diced beef, and the texture was just not that great.
Sour and Spicy glass noodle: delicious, recommend.
Stir fry sliced pork: great, but a bit too salty.
Note: they are doing dinner promotion right now, so everything is 10% off. Not a bad deal!

Love this restaurant, the service here is perfect. And if u like spicy food this will be the right place for u. Highly recommended!

This is NOT CHUNG KING. Someone else has taken over the restaurant and is operating under the same signage but different menus.
The menus say «Huolala Chinese Restaurant».
When shown a photo of Chung King’s spicy chicken from my husbands previous visits the waitress nodded and brought a dish that was nothing like it.
We didn’t appreciate the bait-​and-​switch.
The front, back and even a homemade zagat sign still proudly say Chung King but this is a completely different restaurant.

This place has change ownership. Not as good as it used to be.
This used to be one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, not any more. The taste is completely different, and its defintely not as spicy. I don’t plan on coming back. My search for delicious spicy chinese food has begun anew. Good bye, Chung King we had many great times. :(

I came here twice.
The first time was fantastic! We got the Fried Chicken Cube with Hot Peppers, dan dan noodles, and sliced lamb dish. It was by far one of our favorite restaurants in Monterey Park.
The second time was not the same.
We found A WORM in our dish.
It was not a maggot thank god, I’m pretty sure it was a vegetable worm that revealed itself under the leafy parts of a beef dish we ordered. The worm was very much alive. So much so that is crawled out of the greens, to the rim of the plate, under the plate, onto the table, and back onto the plate again.
Gross. I may have yelled a few profanities (or several) the servers were unfazed when we showed them the worm. We honestly should have gotten our meal for free. They were «kind» enough to only remove that dish from our receipt, we were still charged for the rest of our meal.
This restaurant has changed management from the first time we went (awesome!) to the last time we went. I’m pretty sure finding even a vegetable worm in our food is a health code violation. My boyfriend also got a case of msg poisoning from our second visit to top everything off.
I’m serious when I warn people not to eat at this restaurant.

My friend thought I had gone here. and I really wanted Szechwan food. it just wasn’t all that. Despite the Zagat sign at their door. but it was pretty empty on a Sunday lunch. which is surprising if it really is that good.
Service was strange. They kept being pushy and coming by. the numbers on the original menu they gave us (a take away) had numbers that did NOT correspond to the ones on the wall. Then they wanted us to order a lot (we ordered three dishes)… I hate pushy. And lastly. they weren’t even sure if they had lotus roots in stock until 5 minutes after we ordered. The place was EMPTY.
We ordered the cumin fish. deep fried fish on a bed of chili peppers and garlic. It was okay… fried things always taste good. The batter tastes different.
The cold noodles were very vinegary… it was okay.
The hard tofu with chives was good. but not really done that well.
This doesn’t deserve four stars. esp not from an Asian person.
And spiciness really wasn’t here. Thumbs down.

Meh. so so. Not bad. but also not memorable. Maybe I didn’t know what to order (even tho I’ve spent a few months in Sichuan).
Cumin fish was interesting. But the garlic was under cooked. Leng mian was… very very strange. Can’t saw what was going on as it almost tasted bitter. One dish I did like: sliced tofu and vegetables.
Service was also pretty lackluster. Staff was more interested in the Chinese talent show on their tv then helping us…

Awesome find for some spicy Szechuan food! Come here to get the hot pots. The other dishes were just ok. The side cold dishes like the cucumber and seaweed were awesome.
Get ready to let the sinus flow!

Chung King is one of Jonathan Gold’s favorite Szechuan restaurants. I’ve wanted to try it for a while. I’m Chinese, and while I enjoy hot, spicy food, I’m not a total «heat seeker.» As a reference, there are several hot and spicy Korean foods (and a few jalapenos off a taco truck) that cause me to drink quarts and quarts of cold water!
With all their hot red peppers and hot red chili oils, Chung King’s dishes have an appearance suggesting they will cause steam to come out of your ears. The heat, while pronounced, is actually quite manageable. You can control how many hot peppers and how much hot chili oil you consume (or how much you pick out and put on the side of your plate) as you eat your proteins. Don’t be scared off by the promised high level of heat and spiciness!
Per the waitress’s recommendation, I ordered 3 of their most popular dishes for take-​out:
–fried chicken cubes with hot pepper
–boiled fish slices in hot sauce
–dried bean curd with leeks (not hot and spicy)
Only the hot sauce in which the boiled fish slices swim was reasonably hot for me, requiring some cool water following every few bites. If you don’t eat a lot of the hot sauce with your fish, the heat level is completely manageable.
The fried chicken cubes are indeed hot, but manageable. I didn’t have to cry «uncle.»
The waitress was very nice. The restaurant looks clean and tidy. And the serving sizes are very generous, which I really appreciate!

My husband and I discovered Chung King last week when an acquaintance recommended that we try it out. We love spicy Sichuan and this place did NOT disappoint. I particularly loved the home-​y feel of the place; it’s small, no-​frills but clean. The staff is authentically Sichuanese and their demeanor is charming in that they aren’t professionally trained wait staff taking or barking orders. That being said, I strongly recommend going with a native Chinese speaker unless you’re very familiar with Sichuan cuisine. They speak little to no English so if you’ve got questions on the menu, they won’t have the answer.
We ordered 2 spicy items and one non-​spicy item to even out our taste buds:
Boiled Sliced Fish
Fried Spicy Chicken
Garlic Stir-​fried Morning Glory Vegetable
The waitress highly recommended their soups and even though we didn’t order any, I would probably do so the next time I go.
Despite the fact that they charge $ 1.60 for white rice, the plates were generously portioned and was large enough for 4 people.
The only warning I have about Chung King are the other patrons; be prepared for very loud conversations and some unruly young children who scream. But that’s very little to put up with considering how everything was phenomenal. I would definitely go back!

A good restaurant for some yummy spicy Chinese food! This is a small hole-​in-​the-​wall restaurant that serves Szechuan food.
The waitress/​hostess speaks Mandarin and a little bit of English. But thankfully, the menu is in both English and Chinese (but no pictures).
You can ask for hot tea, iced water, and rice.
Food:
–Fried chicken cubes with hot pepper: This was a popular dish recommended on Unilocal.Basically you get a huge dish with lots of little pieces of boneless, fried chicken that’s buried in mounds of dried red chili peppers. Pretty spicy and a tad salty. But good!
–Eggplant with garlic sauce: Love eggplant! I love the thick sauce, big pieces of eggplant, with lots of garlic! This dish is probably mild-​medium spicy. Great over rice!
PROS: Generous portions! Reasonable prices! Most dishes around $ 8-​$ 12 dollars, unless you order seafood (which would be more).
CONS: If you can’t handle spicy, this place is not for you. Cash only.
Parking:
You can park on the street in front of the restaurant, or you can park in the lot behind the restaurant.
Overall, I would definitely come back and try one of their boiled dishes.

I am totally, and completely in love with this place.
First off, the service is incredible, our waiter was incredibly polite, friendly and efficient (this is almost unheard of for Chinese restaurants).
Second, the food is everything and more! I love anything spicy, but they definitely know how to do it right. The food is not so spicy that you loose your sense of taste, but it builds and builds until you regret it the next day but then want to go back for more. I loved every single dish we ordered and between my fiancé and myself I think we ordered about 6 dishes (the waiter probably thought we were nuts), my favorite dish of the day was probably the Dan Dan Mien or the Fried Intestine… my mouth is watering just thinking of it all!

I am usually weary of Chinese food, but Chung King has completely changed my mind. The food is DELICIOUS and seems very authentic.
Some points:
— Do not be alarmed by the appearance of this place. It is nothing fancy, and when we arrived no one else was in the restaurant. By the time we left however there were two other parties.
— The spicy dishes are EXTREMELY spicy. We had the boiled fish in hot sauce, fried chicken cubes with hot peppers, and green peppers in special sauce. All three were VERY hot. I like hot, but next time I would order maybe two spicy dishes and two non-​spicy dishes. That said, all three spicy dishes were excellent. I especially loved the fish.
— The non-​spicy dish that we had was fried bacon with garlic sprouts. UNBELIEVABLY good. This will be a must-​have when we return.
— All of the dishes are very cheap, especially for how much food you get. Rice is served for free.
— It’s BYOB! And there is a liquor store a few doors down that sells beer.
— Cash only!
Can’t wait to go back.

This place is one of those casual Chinese restaurants that don’t put much emphasis on décor, but serves delicious (and I think authentic?) food for cheap — so no complaints!
We got the Boiled Fish Slices in Hot Sauce (9.99), Fried Chicken Cubes with Hot Pepper (9.99), Hot Sauced Won Tons (6.99), and the Dried Sauteed Beans (7.99) between the four of us, and it was plenty of food. The boiled fish was my choice, since it’s pretty much my favorite dish at Szechuan places, and while this place didn’t taste like the place I used to eat at in NorCal, it was almost just as good. The spices seemed less complex and not quite there (other than the spiciness), but the fish was just as soft and flavorful, and the sauce just as numbing. For $ 10, it was a lot of fish!
The chicken dish was something I’d never had, and ended up being my favorite dish. For one, it’s fried, and who doesn’t like freshly fried chicken? The chilis were a spiciness that I could handle (not as spicy as the fish), and the shallots, sesame, and pepper melded perfectly with the chicken into a dish I just couldn’t stop eating! The spicy won tons weren’t too spicy, and weren’t flavored with the typical spices either, but I really liked the texture of the won ton skin. I’m glad we got the dried sauteed beans, as the dish was a relief to our tongues from all the spiciness. The beans were also not over-​fried nor overly salty, which I liked. Overall, I was really pleased with the food and the prices (though they may have different pricing from what I have listed now), and the waitresses were also friendly.

This is my favorite Szechuan place in LA. Okay it might be the only one (its a chain so only brand? may be a better word) but who cares. You put enough of the lip numbing spice on something and who can tell the difference between good food and bad food.
The thing that makes Chung King so good is that there are different flavors and levels of spicy.
House Special #2 The thing I always order here is the cold chicken. I know it sounds horrible. cold chicken. but its delicious. The sauce is like a spicy I’ve never had. Sesame paste? with spicy seasoning and spicy oil on top of some cold slice chicken. I’m a total fan of this. I’ve ordered the same dish at a Szechuan place in Irvine and Chung King does it right.
The Mabo tofu is also very good. Not too spicy but good. Great with rice.
The cubed chicken is good as well, although I wish the chicken pieces were bigger. But I guess they make it small to maximize the surface area that can be covered with hot peppers/​chilies per square inch of chicken.
House Special #1 There are a crazy amount of chilies in here. The fish is like rubber pieces that are slightly edible but it works in this dish. The Szechuan place I go to in Irvine does this dish better than Chung King but it’s still a good 2^nd. (2^nd in the case is last place since I’ve only been to two Szechuan places).
The string bean is a nice reprieve from the spicy.
The dan dan mien is also very good. It’s warm and spicy, warming your stomach up two ways.
I’ve had two different noodle dishes here and they were both good.
I haven’t really had too much of a miss at this restaurant. Everything we order it totally edible. Or is it?
***WARNING!!! This is very important, do not go to this restaurant the night before big meetings, presentations, job interviews, test days, etc.

I have been to Chung King quite a few times, but I think I never appreciate it enough until I tried another Szechuan place down the street which seriously disappointed. So here it is… I need to show some love!
My favorite dish is Shredded pork stir fried with bell peppers (don’t remember the exact name, but look under the pork section, you should be able to find it). We always get this dish.
Spicy fried chicken cubes that everyone is talking about is also pretty good.
Dan dan noodle is kind of a hit or miss. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s just OK…
There is also a simple soup of tofu and baby bok choy. I love this soup.
I have tried several other dishes and have never been really disappointed. Try the pork dish, you will not be disappointed! The servers only understand minimal English (hubby asked a question in English and she looked at me and said something in Chinese. Funny because I’m Asian, but I’m not Chinese!). Average service, which you would expect from a Chinese restaurant.
Oh, and I think it’s cash only. We tried to pay with a card once and were told they don’t take cards. So we had to go hit an ATM and come back. They are pretty trusting though. They did not ask us to leave anything behind (such as drivers license).

THIS PLACE IS GROSS! I DON’T GET WHY PEOPLE LIKE IT. WELL I KNOW WHY! IT’S ALL AMERICANS WHO RATE THIS PLACE! No offense, but they don’t know what REAL chinese food is.
The service was okay at first until he got into an argument with me and my friend! HORRIBLE SERVICE, who does that?! He served us the wrong dish and blamed us for giving him the wrong order, we seriously fought back and forth for a good 5 minutes. I can’t believe he BLAMED us for giving him the wrong order when we didn’t. and I even spoke to him in chinese, what a dumb piece of douche! after bickering for another five minutes, he finally asked the owner to return it… WAS THAT SO HARD TO DO?! but I kind of felt bad after cus it looked like he was about to cry… but that’s what he gets for trying to mess with my food! he better check himself before he wrecks himself the next time he does that to another customer
I got the Ant Up The Tree and it was very watery and disgusting. The little side dishes looked very unappetizing too. It looked like left overs and there were only like five pieces of meat in each. gross. who would want to eat that…
Any way, this place is gross. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, even my korean friend that loves all chinese food (like happy wok and panda express) thought this place was gross. that says a lot…

I know I am supposed to love this place, but I don’t.
First of all… I’m on to the employees. I KNOW YOU SPEAK DECENT ENGLISH. I HEARD YOU SPEAKING IT AT ANOTHER TABLE. Please don’t suddenly pretend you don’t understand me. I am just trying to give you business and enjoy what you have to offer.
Other than that… the food was fine. Nothing spectacular. To be fair I didn’t get very adventurous, I think I got some shrimp noodle dish. The shrimp was really good but overall I don’t think this place lives up to the hype.