Gui Lin

Plates and cups were very sticky and obviously not clean. I also think I ate a raw scallop. Got a order of fried seafood and only 3 shrimps. The price was definitely not worth it. Food isn’t great either. Overall experience is ew, but much respect for trying

Was there last friday with my mom for lunch. Got the lunch special. For $ 23, chose 2 dishes (deep fried salt & pepper pork chops, salt fish & chicken fried rice), 1 veggie (spinach sauté with garlic), and a soup (tofu & seaweed soup). All dishes sized for lunch portion, so not too big. But these 4 items are enough to fill up 2 people. Pork chops are not crispy, but the meat is very tender, not fatty but not dry, quite juicy. Salt fish & chicken fried rice is really good, this is a traditional cantonese fried rice. Wait, FISH fried rice? Don’t get turned off by the salt fish, tiny bits of fish won’t make the rice smell fishy at all, just enough to provide a very tasty saltiness. Cubes of white chicken are tender. Try this dish, people, if you want to experience cantonese food. Garlic sauted spinach ok, not runny at all, tofu seaweed soup ok. I also ordered off the regular menu deep fried salt & pepper squid and shrimp dumpling soup (suicao soup). The squid is not over cooked so they’re tender, not chewy. Shrimp dumpling soup has a chlorine off taste. It must be the shrimp that they use, cheap quality shrimp usually smell chlorine. Broth was bland. I had better pork chop, squid and dumpling soup at other cantonese restaurants in virginia. The bill came to a hefty $ 46 for 2. This restaurant is way too expensive for the food quality.
Even though the restaurant was half filled at lunch, the waitress was very attentive. We got excellent service. Make sure that you ask for the chinese menu written in english, in addition to the expansive regular menu.

The food here is good. Their soups and especially their fish and Chinese vegetable dish is great. There are some dishes that are better than others. The service is great.

I tried their mutton in hot pot and fish fillet with vegetable, which were pretty good. This is the only Cantonese style restaurant in Shady Grove Travilah area. But surprisingly it is not bad.

After we were seated, we were asked what kind of hot tea we’d like. Tonight, we ordered West Lake Style Soup, Fish Fillet with Vegetables, and Eggplant in Garlic Sauce. The West Lake Style Soup consisted of minced beef, parsley, white egg, and water chestnut. The soup had a soup consistency but was kind of bland. The steamed fish filet was served over shanghai bok choy, carrot, and ginger slices. It was a light and healthy choice. The Eggplant in Garlic Sauce consisted sauteed eggplant, shredded bamboo, green scallion, and peppers in dark brown garlic sauce. We asked for the Eggplant in Garlic Sauce to be not spicy but the dish had red pepper flakes and jalapeño slices. It seemed like the cok used sugar to balance out the spices. The entrees came with a big bowl of white rice. They used to give orange slices. Now, they only give fortune cookies.

I came to this restaurant twice because it is really close to my home.
The first time was dinning in, some of the dish were very good, like the stewed chicken.
The second time was carry out, it was really bad, if not using the word «disgusting».
For Chinese dishes: if you charged around 7 $ per dish, it is just a carry-​out level flavor, just convenient for a simple lunch, nobody will be picky about the flavors; but if you charged over 14 $ per dish and you still got no impressive flavor, that is too bad. I would not recommend this place to other friends.

Returned here for a quick bowl of wonton noodle soup. While this place does not shine for banquet purposes (the base of my previous review), you will find everyday eating here to be pleasant and satisfying without pretense. The shrimp in the wonton was fresh and the broth was still not particularly flavorful — but it was pleasantly mellow and refreshing. Business was a little slow around late lunch time, so service was friendly and very attentive. The atmosphere was also pleasant and quiet.
A fair three out of five stars from my previous two. Would recommend for the casual lunch-​time outing.

I’ve been to too many bad Chinese restaurant. This one is one of those bad ones.
I always get a wonton soup, but the one here might be the worst wonton soup I ever had. The skins were too thick with just a small piece of beef inside. One wonton didn’t even have any meat inside! Most place at least give you fried wonton to put in the broth, here no. Plus the broth just taste like water, no flavor.
Next I got there triple delight combo with crisp rice. And let me tell you it was no delight. The sauce was watered down & bland.
I really wanted to like this place, since it’s on my way home. It might have been an off night. Will give it a try at lease one more time.

Authentic Chinese food in Gaithersburg? Anyone who lives in Gaithersburg is already going to question that first sentence. If you live in this area and are lazy to drive farther than about 5 miles for some Chinese food, this is suitable at its best.
I ordered 2 dishes: Deep Fried Spicy Squid & a stir-​fried vegetable. The squid was oily batter and squid with absolutely no flavor. The vegetables (looked like bok choy and yu choy mix) was done well — wait, you can’t really mess up stir frying vegetables, can you? Total cost was $ 29. Needless to say the sticker price compared to the quality was just not good, but its edible.

Why do you go to a Cantonese restaurant? To eat Cantonese food… duh! To be honest, there are a lot of better Chinese restaurants, but you have to drive more than 10 minutes to get to them. We come here for soup and for the combination meats on rice. The veggies are pretty good here too.
My usuals:
Wonton noodle soup
Shrimp dumpling noodle soup
Salted Fish, Chicken & eggplant in Hot Pot (for those who like salt and eggplant)
Dao mil — dunno the english for it, but it’s better than sauteed spinach!
Roast Pork
Crispy Skin Roast Pork
Soy Sauce Chicken
Roast Duck
Seriously…don’t go here for the American Chinese food… if you have to eat that stuff, go somewhere else, or in my opinion don’t eat it at all. Get the hot pots (casseroles) here, most of them are pretty good. But seriously, I mostly come here for soup or meat.

We have been going here for last couple years and must say the food here is quite good. The lobster special is always a hit and their clams are so tasty. I just ate boiled chicken with scallion oil. That oil made that dish and was so good! Their sizzling beef dish is a winner and so is their pork dish (like pork belly and only available during the weekend). Give it a try.

Aside from the odd odor of mop/​fried food that takes a few minutes to get accustomed to, the décor is set up like any other Chinese restaurant in the area but with some dangling gangly streamers. Not the newest or well maintained. Our family likes to go places that give good portions and is Chinese food, so we decided to book here for a large party.
Gui Lin’s hostess is very friendly about making sure the wait staff tend to your needs, such as getting the right plates and beverages to the tables ASAP, which we appreciated very much. We also picked a set of food ahead of time, so as soon as our entire party was here the food started coming out within minutes. Water was refilled quickly before any glass ran empty. Overall, the food tastes standard, but quality wise it’s just really greasy and everythings just kind of cooked and chopped hastily. It’s just Chinese food served for the masses.
+
grounded beef and parsley chowder — its a pretty good, gooey egg drop soup that tastes clean, and veggies are fresh to the bite.
cubes of duck were tasty – not sure what this was on the menu, crispy fragrant duck? but I loved biting the meat and crispy spin. It came with 2 other types of bbq meat, but this was the favorite.
crispy honey chicken was something new for us! slices of crispy skin and succulent meat. some of the white meat was really dry and tough to chew though, so avoid that and keep with the dark meat.
one of their special noodles (haman?) was very unique. silky and smooth to the bite, and almost had a buttery taste to it. It was vegetarian and very tasty.
Standard
duck is good in flavor, but DRIPPING in oil and grease. We even had leftovers come home with us and it was still super greasy. It’s no Peking Gourmet Inn.
lobster is good, but not much meat on it. chopped up a lot of useless shells that we weren’t going to pick through for minuscule meat.
deep fried pork chop is same you’ll get anywhere else.
whole fish is very fresh, but be sure to spoon the sauce it sits on or else it will be too mild in falvor.
-
8 treasure hot pot felt like a conglomeration of anything they could find; leftover bbq pork, some tofu, seafood. It was pretty heavy and greasy. Standard in flavor, but didn’t find this to be worth it.
bbq pork (cha shao) was over-​roasted, got a lot of slices that were near-​black and hard to chew.
If you are looking for a place to get standard Chinese fare that tends to large families well, this is the place to be. They will accommodate you. Just be prepared to not be blown away by the food.

My family and I call Gui Lin the «Oyster Steak» restaurant. Why? Well, mostly, I’m horrible at remembering the names of restaurants (especially as my parents call it by the Chinese name, and Unilocal has them by the American name… and well, all the names just start to bleed into each other after a while). But also because seriously, their oysters are RIDICULOUS.
But let’s back up and start from the beginning. This restaurant in the weird and lonely strip mall off of Travilla, is a small little Cantonese restaurant. If you come, and you see balloons/​decorations in the back… sit down and hurry and order, because it means that they have a party later that night, which means that the kitchen can get backed up pretty fast.
But all of that is not important, because let me get to those oysters. Now, my family loves Cantonese food, but there is such a glut of Cantonese restaurants that they do tend to bleed into each other for me. But this one stands out because of their oysters. There is this one dish — steamed oysters in black bean sauce which has been a personal favorite of my family’s for years. But we can never find a place in the DC area that does it *quite* right. Until we found Gui Lin. To start with, the oysters are monsterous. These are NOT the normal sized oysters that you get at the raw bar in Baltimore. Heck, these aren’t even the nice plump oysters that you can find down in New Orleans. These oysters — even after being steamed on the half-​shell, are huge! Even with my big mouth, I couldn’t get the whole thing down in one bite (it took me 3 bites. It took my husband 5 bites to eat his). I’m not even exaggerating… I’ve had steak filets that were smaller then this puppy. And it’s not just once. We’ve been back several times and each time they’ve been just as big! The oysters also weren’t over cooked — steamed so that it was medium rare, topped with a delicious black bean sauce (not too much, so it doesn’t over power the oyster’s natural deliciousness), and a pinch of raw scallions for bite and crispness. Oh my! LOVE LOVE LOVE these oysters (can you tell)?
Perhaps it’s because we only order off of the Chinese menu… and ask our servers what the day’s specials are… but each dish has always been a marvel and a delight. Too often, Cantonese restaurants tend to muddle their flavors so that each dish has the same ginger and scallion flavor. But not here, each dish has it’s own taste and complexity and is just… yum!
Just remember to order quickly if it looks like there will be a party going on. One time, we came in, my dad saw that they were decorating for a party and hurridly ordered our dishes. Another table came in just moments after us and took their sweet time ordering. Soon after, the party showed up. Guess who got their food fast and steaming? Yup, we did. Guess who still hadn’t even gotten their appitizers by the time we were done eating and paying the check? Yup, the table that slacked and took their sweet time. Learn the lessons that this glutton is teaching you and you will be fine. Heh.

I’ve been going here for years. We only order couple of dishes every time we come here. My favorites are the ground beef and parsley chowder, twin lobster special with ginger and scallion, steak with black pepper sauce and crispy skin pig roast. I am surprised there are a lot of negative reviews, however, I haven’t ate many of those dishes people are complaining about.