Tea House

Tasty food, not greasy like at some Chinese restaurants. Simple, clean, well lit atmosphere. Friendly service. Comfortable seating for dining, which some area Chinese restaurants lack. Ample parking. Wheelchair accessible. Our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area.

When we’re craving Chinese food we alternate between Tea House and Tea Garden, just to mix things up.
Tea House has good scorpion bowls, so that is always a plus. There is usually plenty of seating available in the restaurant, but they have a tiny area that I guess you would call the bar. If you like sitting at the bar watching TV, you might not be comfortable here.
I have a pad thai obsession so I usually order it, but alas, Chinese restaurants don’t often make pad thai the way they do in Thai restaurants. (Sawa in Gardner is an exception to that rule.) I laughed when my son saw his first dish of real pad thai and said, «Why isn’t it pink?» Well son, it’s only pink at the Chinese restaurant! Nevertheless, their pad thai is edible but not really pad thai like.
My son is a General Gau’s fanatic, so he gets that. It tends to have a thick, goopy sauce but he keeps ordering it, so it must be edible. Their crab rangoons are tasty, and the fried rice is so so.
If you’re closer to Gardner, go to Sawa. If you don’t feel like driving, Tea House will suffice.

I concur with the updated from 09 perspective. Y’know when some places have a dependency on oyster sauce while others do not? This was what l found in the shift since the new cook last year. At least on the gong po as reviewed also, very little spice and as l said above the gross overwhelming oyster sauce, yuk I mean what even is that stuff owch.

Food-​Satisfying if what you are looking for is sweet/​syrupy Chinese food. Heavy on the grease and sugar, light on the spice
Service: Generally it is slightly below average. Sometimes the servers explicitly ask for a tip-​this stuff always makes me annoyed.
Atmosphere-​Decent but kinda tacky
Price-​Reasonable

Tea House is a competent restaurant, but has nothing to distinguish it from any other Chinese eatery. While the menu is extensive, the flavor was not anything extraordinary. I ate the Szechuan chicken (with peanuts) and found it lacking in embedded spice or flavor. As the server didn’t ask if I wanted a particular spice level and the dish is typically hot, I didn’t ask for anything special. I also had egg rolls. They were not piping hot, so I don’t think they were cooked to coincide with the plating of my main course. Meal was approx $ 14 before tip. Service was prompt and friendly. The fortune cookies were not stale!

Singapore Noodles… Curry… excellent!

I am always looking for new places to eat Chinese food. This place is great! They have Hunon Crispy beef that falls apart in your mouth, Scorpion bowls that keep you’re spirits bright. The staff is very nice and polite and make us feel welcome each time. The cooks work quickly and get your food to you as soon as possible. All the food they make is delectable! We enjoy eating here, it is definitely on our Top 3 favorite places to eat Chinese food.

Oh my… Did someone say the best Chinese in 50 miles?!? Perhaps it wins that honor because it’s the ONLY Chinese restaurant in 50 miles!
Service was very, very good. A+
It was clean. A
The food was horrific. Slimy meat, rice that tasted like it was cooked circa 1992 but the egg roll was tasty. Nice sauces on the meat, however.
My ‘word to learn in Chinese’, on my fortune cookie, was ‘medicine’. Let’s hope that’s not foreshadowing…

If this is the best Chinese food in the area, then I’ll need to cross Chinese food off of my list of food to eat while visiting Orange.
My wife and I both ordered the Chicken Lo Mein. It arrived cold, lack luster in the flavor dept. and I don’t know what noodle they used (Linguini perhaps), but it wasn’t Lo Mein — or at least not a quality brand.
Oh! And the fortune cookies were stale!
All in all, disappointment was ours to behold for the dining experience.
The server didn’t even ask us how our meal was — maybe she already knew. :(

The food here is excellent, but I have issues with the staff. I was there for lunch with my sisters and had put the tip on the credit card, but one of my sisters added some cash on the table. They must have thought the only tip was on the table beacause the waitress came over and argued with my sister that it wasn’t enough and kept arguing all the way out the door! Isn’t a tip supposedly discrectionary? Even though we left 20% between the cash and credit. Very Bad Form and extremely rude!!! I will not eat in the Restaurant again!

Easily the best Chinese food in the area, and at a great price. Their dinner plates are the best — I usually order C11, which is General Tso’s with pork fried rice and a choice of two sides (I usually go with boneless spare ribs and crab rangoons which are both delicious). All that for around $ 10!

The best Chinese food in the Athol/​Orange area!
House pad thai wasn’t on the menu, but they happily whipped some up for us and it was excellent! Everything is always tasty, and the service is always friendly and superb!

Best Chinese restaurant within miles and miles of Orange! Good, tasty food!

Update December 2014: I feel it is time for an updated review. This place used to be the best Chinese place in the area when I first moved out here in 2009, but I am not sure if they changed management or the way they do things. It just doesn’t seem as fresh as it used to be.
The food, I would say is about average at best. The chicken wings used to be perfect tasting, and a nice crisp but not overdone. They just don’t look like a good chinese style wing should. Not horrible, but not great either. Some of their house specialty plates are ok, such as the sesame beef, and hunan crispy beef. It is decent for local chinese food, and I am glad they do a fairly good business, but I wouldn’t drive out of the way to go here.

This is the best Chinese restaurant in a 50 mile radius. The soups are great. The lunch and dinner specials are huge (2 people could share one dish) and very reasonably priced.
The shredded beef Szechuan style is a favorite. We like it extra spicy, order it mild if you prefer. If you are adventurous try the Singapore Rice Noodles, very good and filled with chicken, pork and shrimp and a delicious curry seasoning.
Of course they have the standard fried appetizers, but they must change their grease daily — all of the apps are very good and not greasy.
The Chow Young fried rice is also very good. It’s actually what the Chinese make in their homes. (Only in the US is fried rice brown.) This special rice dish has lots of vegetables, shrimp, pork and chicken in it.
The staff at the Tea House are wonderful. The girls are very friendly and remember their customers after just a few visits.
The Tea House is a gem in the culinary-​deprived North Quabbin region.