Grand Shanghai Restaurant

Bleh. This place was gross. Someone please bring authentic Chinese food to Grand Avenue. Everything we had here was extremely sub par.

It may be turning around gave it another try today.
Buffet was fresh, food very good, waitress was friendly.
Will be adding it back on my list of places to stop again.
The Lobster tank is gone, so they aired the place out no smell issues anymore.

Pretty decent prices but disappointed since the chicken wings came with 5 peices. And egg rolls were not that great

I always order pork fried rice and cream cheese wontons. No delivery minimum which is nice! Best cream cheese puffs in town.

Tasty food with lots of fresh veggies. We have loved this place for years! Try the garlic string beans. Our four year old eats half the order!

I’ve never had the desire to review a restaurant before but I made the time and effort to download the Unilocal app because it’s the only recourse that I can think of to express the level of surprise I have at the disrespectful treatment I received from this restaurant. I am a bit embarrassed to say that the actions of the manager who was involved to help resolve the situation were so rude that he reduced me to tears of frustration.
I recently attempted to place a dinner delivery order there. During my phone conversation I had a growing sense of inefficiency and bad communication that by now I should recognize as a signal to say «never-​mind, no thanks» and choose another establishment. I was hungry and in a time crunch though so I gave them the benefit of the doubt since I’d never dined there before.
After confirming my phone number and address twice with the delivery taker, I waited about an hour and a half before calling back to check on my order. The same woman then informed me that the delivery driver had attempted to deliver my food and returned and that my card had been declined.
Although we’d confirmed my number and address twice, she repeated back a correct address but a phone number with a different area code. We tried my debit card number again with success and I conceded with as much patience as I could muster that we may have had a bad connection earlier. She apologized and guaranteed that my order would arrive in 25 – 40 minutes.
About an hour and a quarter later I called back again. She again stated that the driver had come and gone and blamed me for providing incorrect information.
At this point I asked for a refund. She then asked me the question «So are you asking for your food and a refund?» After a pause I responded «Yes, actually I am. I’ve been waiting nearly three hours and have already been charged».
She than asked me to hold for a manager, set the phone down, proceeded to audibly mock and laugh at me and then apparently hung up.
I immediately called back stating that perhaps we’d been disconnected.
After a brief hold I was then able to speak with a manager who immediately began interrupting me by repeating the words «what, what, what?» while stifling his laughter.
I informed him I felt he was being intentionally disrespectful to me while not providing me with the service that I had paid for in good faith. I told him that I would not remain on the line to be antagonized, that I would take it up with my bank and that the fact that his behavior was so bad that it had brought me to tears was on his conscience. I then bid him good evening.

The food and service is exactly like the décor.
I will not go into too much detail. I have lived near this location and have had similar experiences all three times I have «given it another try». It is true the food is «passable» not good by any stretch of the imagination. We walked in to order take out. We watch the one person at the counter take phone call after phone call for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes she said hello and then ran into the back to get someone else. Another woman came in from the back and we watched them BOTH answer phone calls for another 5 minutes. It wasn’t until 3 more parties came in that we had our order taken. After our order was taken it took another 40 minutes to get our order of fried rice and lo mein. As our order was handed to us, the delivery driver came barreling into the back, yelling and cursing about a delivery order.
We wont try you again, it is irresponsible for a business to be allowed to operate so poorly.

Came back after three years and very happy that the food I ordered was not a disappointment. We had the stir fry rice cake and beef brisket hotpot. They were both tasty. I think their customers order mainly American Chinese food, but if you know how to order some authentic dishes they can deliver. Service was a little slow but maybe I came in starving so my patience was already low. So glad it was a satisfying meal.

Ordered the sesame chicken and fried rice — delivery took more than an hour and it was fairly cold. There was so much red dye sauce that was much more a sweet and sour though it had a few sesame seeds on top. Tons of breading and not the best quality. Didn’t even finish it. :(Would never order again. Very overpriced as well.

My Chinese standby (Golden Chow Mein) isn’t open on Sundays, so I was looking for something else. I gave this place a try, but was disappointed. I liked that they offered delivery, but the food took more than an hour to arrive (it wasn’t peak dining time) and it was cold when it finally did arrive.
The cold food didn’t have nearly as much flavor compared to most Chinese places I’ve been to. The wontons and chicken had a microwaved consistency. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone.

It’s been over two years since this place got me sick and I’m STILL NEVER going back, not worth the risk!

I really want to like this place buts it’s hard. It’s trapped 20 years in the past, over priced and has really rough service. We liked the outdoor seating though, not a standard option at most places like this.

Very disappointing. The food here has gone from great to awful. My family and I used to get take out every few months and it was always fresh and tasty. A couple months ago I got a shrimp dish and the shrimp still had the terd in them. I gave them another shot again tonight and it was awful– soggy, goopy and stale tasting. Guess I’m done eating at Grand Shanghai.

It’s amazing how no matter where you go in America, almost all Chinese-​American dishes are exactly the same. I mean, is there some secret Chinese mafia that enforces a standardization for Hunan Chicken or Sweet & Sour Pork?
Went for lunch and had the Szechuan Chicken and the Pork Pan Fried Noodles. This is a crispy noodle dish, but only at first, then the noodles are just regular and oily (but not in an Exxon Valdez sort of way). The Szechuan Chicken tasted like any of the same dish I could have had at any respectable Chinese restaurant, especially since, although it said spicy, it tasted pretty mild to me (why are Thai curries so much hotter?). Chinese restaurants also seem to all buy their chairs from the same place.
Very friendly server!

I had lunch there today the buffet was really good, the food was fresh and tasty.

My family ate here again for the first time in about 5 years and we will never go back. This was a regular place for us for about three years, but it changed completely for the worse.
For starters, they served us on paper plates with plastic forks and knives. The napkins were like the ones you get from little dispensers at a theater. Our waitress didn’t explain why it was all paper products. I had to ask for a spoon to scoop rice from the bowl.
The food managed to be greasy and bland at the same time. The waitress brought our appetizers last instead of before the entrees.
This place used to be a fave, but some kind of bizarre change has taken place. The greeter was expressionless and zombie-​like. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much every employee needed training and a pep talk. What a shame to see what used to be a good place fall so completely downhill

Order Peking Duck, Chicken with Black Bean Sauce, and Pan Fried Dumplings! I promise you will not be disappointed.
For the vegetarian, order Mock Goose and any of the stir fried vegetables.

Unfortunately, I’ve been here three times. I had the Groupon for two $ 20 vouchers. The first time, my wife and I were served a dish we didn’t order and had a rather bland tasting meal. That made me super excited to use up my other Groupon. (not) For the second Groupon, we ordered takeout. I asked for the total over the phone and mentioned that $ 19.91 would fit my Groupon perfectly. When I arrived, I was told that the Groupon was for dine in only, which it was; I hadn’t read it thoroughly enough. However, when I’ve already ordered to-​go, I mentioned the Groupon on the phone, and I am standing in the restaurant, hard-​balling me and not allowing me to use the Groupon was not the greatest customer service.
Thus, we returned for another visit to actually use the Groupon. The service was poor, (not surprising at this point) but the food had improved somewhat in flavor. Still, we will not be visiting again. Ever.

My wife and I had a $ 30 voucher her that needed to be used up. We entered about noon and I ordered a Heineken.
Now this is something I have never seen before. The beer was 3.2% beer. I was outraged. Dear Lord. You order a beer at a restaurant and they give you soda pop beer? So angry. I told my wife, they are now starting at 1 star on Unilocal.They had nothing stating that it was soda pop beer, but I am sure they charge beer prices. I can’t explain how angry this made me, I can stand a lot, but I can’t stand this.
I ordered the hot pepper chicken and my wife got the veggie steamed dumplings. The dumplings were awesome and she ordered some miso soup and I got to try the tofu and mushrooms from them. Solid!
The hot chicken was really bland, but it was good. I added a lot of soy sauce to it, but on the spicy side, it was really weak. I didn’t sweat at all. I wanted super spicy chicken, but it was super not spicy, they were a lot more concentrated on getting the buffet ready than making our food.
I asked the waitress about the beer and she said «We serve «Light beer», which means you don’t want to spend the money on a liquor license to get good stuff or are to cheap to get real beer, or lazy.
We did get some free wontons from the meal and they were pretty tasty, but the overall getting 3.2% with no warning really ate at me. Real hack job/

How is this place still open? It’s a mystery.
Everyone I know who has been here hates it, but you might be one of the people who likes it that keeps this awful, awful, awful place open.
I ordered the sesame chicken and egg rolls.
The egg rolls are good if your one of those people who like tasteless overcooked vegetables and incredibly rubbery and overcooked ham and shrimp that you’ll chew like gum for awhile.
The sesame chicken is good if you are one of those people who like soggy fried chicken pieces absolutely soaked for hours in some weird radioactive orange-​colored and inedible sweet and sour sauce that tasted like a combination of old vinegar, cheap orange scented cleaning liquid, and 3 pounds of sugar, But trust me it’s definitely sesame because it’s garnished with maybe 20 sesame seeds.
Or alternatively, if you like the sauce, but want a few bruised rotten sweet peppers added to the dish instead of sesame seeds, order the sweet and sour chicken, because that’s what da fiancée got. Same thing just with crappy peppers instead of a dash of sesame seeds.
And hey if you are one of those people who likes both the egg rolls and the sesame/​sweet and sour/​liquid soap chicken as I described them than the Grand Shanghai Express is the place for you, why go anywhere else?
But If you prefer Chinese Food where you don’t stop eating the dish after the second bite, than try somewhere else. There are many other places in Saint Paul.