Mandarin

food tastes horrible. Although there are a lot of meat in dishes, but no one piece of them can not be chew.

Simplemente delicioso! We have worked around this area for three weeks now. We all like their food very much. Good size, good price and nice staffs.

Simply good! Big portion, fair price. Our family has been ordering food from them for 15 years. Their authentic Chinese food, such as shredded pork with dry bean curd, beef chow foon, salt and pepper pork chop… are best around this area. The girls working at front are always very nice to us. I recommend every one to give them a try. It’s unbelievable to see such kind of reviews about their food.

Disgusting! Ordered chicken fried rice and general Tso chicken about 1 week ago. The chicken fried rice looked like it had an entire bottle of soy sauce added to it, and the chicken was fatty and chewy. The general Tso chicken was downright inedible and I’m not even sure it was chicken to be 100% honest. They will not be getting my business ever again. I usually do not write reviews, but if you’re reading this… please do not waste your money here!

Probably the worst General Tso’s in Reston… Wasn’t even sure it was chicken I was eating. I let me trash can finish the meal. Never again…

I just had a terrible experience.
I called for a to go order and informed the lady on the phone that my husband would pick up the order. I provided her with my husband’s name and repeated his name twice.
When my husband arrived he stated his name, & paid and left.
Once he arrived home the order was totally wrong.
They gave him someone else’s order.
When I called to let them know. the Actual OWNER who barely spoke English was totally RUDE and without allowing me to explain or come up with a solution he said it was our fault and that he wasn’t going to do anything.(we were not looking for free food, or even our $ back-​we just wanted the correct order and all we wanted was to have restaurant deliver the food to us, since we were already home.)
Any ways, we decided to keep the WRONG order, bc we were afraid that if they provided us with the correct order they might spit on it or something like that!
I told him he was rude and that I would write a review.
He said he didn’t care because no one will read it!
The food quality is not the best! And I think they purposely gave us the wrong order bc someone cancelled it!
The food was old and it was cold. But most importantly the customer service was awful!
By the owner providing terrible customer service, he will loose the potential of gaining wonderful free advertisement of word of mouth, bc I will make sure I tell every person I know my horrible experience including all the people I interact on daily basis in my business.
Thank you for those who gave me the opportunity to read this review.

I am so surprised that my favorite Chinese take-​out place in Reston was so underrated. I am from China and work in Reston. In the past 10-​years I have been visiting them, especially during my single years, I almost paid daily visits. The previous owner was an old man from Taiwan. Then he sold the store and passed all his recipes to a Chinese owner. The Spanish Chefs were there since my first visit. The flavor and the food quality did not change when the restaurant changed hand. The prices are good, food portions are reasonable and the gradients are quite fresh.
This place offer authentic Chinese style stir-​fried food than any other take-​out places in the entire US that I have been too. And some of their dishes are prepared quite old-​schooled. For example, the Mu-​shoo Pork is offered with pancake other than rice.
Some of their dishes are Americanized, i.e. cooked with the sweet/​sour or white/​brown sauces, and they taste horrible just like all other Americanized Chinese food. If you go to a Chinese restaurant and order General-Tao’s chicken, then you may have problem with this place, because General-Tao’s Chicken does not exist in China, just like the fortune cookies. I do not blame them if they could not cook it well.
My all time favorites and their most authentic Chinese dishes:
(A little salty from my point-​of-​view, but I always ask for less salt. And most of their dishes are a bit spicy, ask for no spice if you do not want it)
Salt/​Pepper Chicken wings
Shredded Pork with Bamboo shoots
Shredded Pork with Diced tofu cubes
Shredded Pork/​Chicken with string beans, potato, or bean spouts
Pork tripe with pickled Mustard
Chengdu beef
Shrimp tofu
Mu-​shoo pork

I went HH drinking with coworkers — never a good idea. So naturally I was craving Chinese food to calm my stomach. There’s a reason why a Cali girl has avoided eating chinese food on the east coast for 2 years and this restaurant epitomizes why.
1) Egg drop soup was their only redeeming dish that I ordered. really good and flavorful but did not have peas or corn or carrot or anything else that i’m used to seeing in here besides egg. this soup was my saving grace from HH
2) chow mein with «crunchy noodles». So I was craving chow mein noodles with veggies so naturally i ordered this dish. My stomach was too upset to closely check the order at the restaurant. When I got home i was pissed because all i got was a small takeout lunch size order of rice + sliced onion, carrot, celery, and chicken. Where the F are the chow mein NOODLES?! Also for some reason they gave me sliced crunchy wontons on the side.
By the time I got home to devour my food and saw their mistake, they were closed. Also I ordered the small order of chowmein and was expecting (based on their sizes on the wall) a full styrofoam container. Instead I received the small lunch size portion of food.
I was so pissed that I called the next day from work because I wanted a refund. I didn’t spend money on chow mein without the CHOW MEIN. They said that this is the «old school» chow mein. And I said where are the «crunchy noodles». Turns out they said the «crunchy noodles are the one that you put in the soup». Lost in translation I figured out later that he meant that the «crunchy noodles» are in reality the side of wontons that they gave me.
I’m azn from Cali so I’m like wtf am i in the twilight zone?! I sent a pic to my chinese gf who speaks cantonese and she said Mein means NOODLES and said that was just sliced veggies. Well, this whole thing touched off a firestorm at work about what chow mein should look like. Everyone except one person agreed with me tha the chow mein dish should have CHOW MEIN NOODLES.
If I wanted sliced vegetables for $ 8 I would have ordered that. I wanted CHOW MEIN!!! Btw, apparently everyone else’s idea of chow mein (ie noodles) is what they call LO MEIN. Guys, there is a difference between Chow mein and Lo mein and it shouldn’t be that one has noodles vs no noodles. The difference should be the TYPE of noodle. BOOOOOOOOO To this place

The food taste good for a «decent» price.
I wish I could give them more than one star but the lack of a good customer service won’t let me.
1* The Asian lady that’s always with her starburst t shirt is very rude.
2* If your are trying to eat your food there, the tables are always dirty and if you ask to please clean them, they give you an attitude problem.
3* They charge you $.25 cents for hot sauce?
that’s crazy! I’ve been in most Chinese restaurant in Reston and this is the only one that has «extra charge» for a hot sauce.

Most of what I can say is aligned with Ben R’s review. For tasty inexpensive take-​out with friendly service… you can’t go wrong. Is it Peking Gourmet or Chinatown? No… but my family is pleased each time we order!

Inexpensive & quick carry-​out, with friendly service.
Local family owned business, that has long term, full-​time employees that are happy.
Have gotten food from here 2 – 3 times per month for many years.
The food is consistent from day to day.
Definitely *american*-chinese, not traditional.
The menu caters to the hungry masses, not the gourmet.
It isn’t a culinary statement, but it is decent food at a decent price.
And if you order a battered, deep-​fried dish with sugary sauce, then that is what you get. But you can order dishes with veggies, light sauce, and white rice if you have self-​control. Look at the pictures on the walls and ask the people behind the counter about what you are ordering. They can accommodate requests for more veggies and less meat, or requests for less sauce.

Garbage. Got General Tao tofu and asked then to make the tofu extra chewy. They didn’t even know how to do that. Sounds like they need a new cook.
The toft was crispy on the outside and not even cooked on the inside. Yes is not easy to make tofu, but that’s no excuse.
The flavor was subpar, didn’t even taste like General Taos. Tasted like syrup water.

I have business travel a lot. I am Chinese. I like burger, steak, noodles, but my favorite diet is Chinese food. This restaurant is very good for me, though not all of dishes are authentic Chinese (I agree they have to cook some American Chinese food for western people), yet some dishes are very authentic home cooking. I recommend: shredded pork with chili pepper, shredded pork tripe with pickled mustard green.
I stayed here only for 2 days, if I come back, I will go to this restaurant again.

I was visiting Reston on a business trip. Being from New York City I am used to eating Chinese take out all the time. I had a craving for Chinese take out so I decided to walk about a mile from my hotel at the Reston Town Center for some food. I wish I never did.
I knew something was wrong when it was 7pm there was only 1 customer eating and my food was being prepared by 2 latino men. I got nothing against latinos I am latino myself but never in my life have I seen latino men cooking chinese take out food. Traditional chinese food yes but chinese take out never, now keep in mind I am from NYC so I have eaten lots and lots of chinese take out (I know is not healthy blah blah blah but hey it taste good)
I ordered a small wonton soup & general tsao chicken. My ordered was ready in 2 minutes the fastest I have seen for general tsao chicken. I was already feeling skeptical, when I got to my hotel and opened my food– the most scariest thing I have seen and possibly an insult to chinese take out food.
my wonton soup looked like dirty water literally dirty water with only 2 wonton floating around. The taste was horrible looked like it was done a year ago.
my entrée the general tsao chicken, when I opened it I was disgusted by looking at it No vegetables, it was burned pieces of chicken floating on a very strange sauce, the taste was horrible. It looked more like general tsao chicken soup. It tasted fishy and not like chicken. Very scary!
I was really disgusted by it, I threw all of it away. I would not recommend this place to anyone. I will give it no stars at all.

The bad:
— Delivery takes FOREVER (was told it would take over an hour so why don’t I pick up instead?)
— The Dragon & Phoenix was the saltiest dish I have ever eaten. Like when you get out of the ocean and walk on the beach and all the sand sticks to you, except instead of sand it is salt. And then you drink the entire salty ocean. That is the Dragon & Phoenix on the scale of saltiness.
— General Tso didn’t have a single veggie in it. Not one. Their sister restaurant House of Mandarin at least puts a few faux broccolis in theirs. Look, I know chinese food isn’t healthy for you but goddamnit LET’S PRETEND.
The good:
— It was cheap
— Dragon & Phoenix had tons of broccoli, and they weren’t covered in that super mega salty sauce
— They posted pics of almost their entire menu on Unilocal
With that said, I don’t think I’ll be coming back and will drive over to House of Mandarin instead.

Cheap, but oily and gross. I’ve given it a few tries since a bunch of my co-​workers eat here once a week (mainly because lunch is $ 5). Although I’ve never gotten sick from the food, the meat makes me wonder what I’m actually eating. I’m not implying it’s not real meat, just not a decent grade of meat or the most fresh.

I’ve been waiting to write this review for a while now. Since I moved to Reston in 2001, Mandarin has inexplicably been my primary source of Chinese food. The quality of food here is beyond the pale: the general’s chicken is over-​breaded, over-​fried, and grisly. The Crispy Shredded beef has the texture of those dried meat dog treats. Any vegetable in any dish is either so over-​cooked that it can be reduced to mush with the touch of a chopstick, or is so under-​cooked that it’s absolutely inedible. If you order the Lo Mein, be prepared for wormy-​noodle marathon; it’s a portion the size of a bag of mulch, and tastes about the same. But there is a silver lining; the white rice tastes the way it should, so credit where credit is due.

I have not been to this place in many years. My family decided to order take out for Chinese New Year. My mother’s friends love ordering from here because they have a Chinese menu. All in all, there were 6 dishes ordered. Beef chow fun, dried tofu and pork, chicken and snow peas, some type of pork chops, a spicy beef dish, and one other dish, and some hot and sour soup. All in all, it was decent. I can’t say anything stood out. If I had to pick a favorite dish, it would have been the spicy beef dish and the dried tofu and pork dish. They tend to make things on the spicy side. So if you like spicy, then this is the place for you.
This place is pretty fast. There are some tables to eat in, but this is mostly a take out joint. If I’m in the area, I’d go back again. From what I see on their menu, the have beef noodle soup. That I have to check out.

Ordered twice. I liked the fact that I can order extra spicy and they actually make it extra spicy. To often they dont actually believe you.
Solid Chinese in restaurant, which has a dearth of good Chinese. Of course it’s pure American style Chinese, with the typical fare.
Have enjoyed the Kung Pao Delight, Singapore noodles and Yuling duck. I also like the broth they use for their wonton soup, it’s got more flavor than most places.

After sampling the General Tso’s, Lo Mein, and Chow Fun (Foon) at both Mandarin and Great China, I’m going to give the 3 to Great China and the 2 to Mandarin.
Mandarin’s primary flavor is oil, whereas Great China tries to embed other flavors into their dishes as well.