House of Chen

I still love it! The food is still as amazing as the first time I came here. That’s what I love about family run restaurants. There’s no corporate doofus trying to make things cheaper by lowering quality.
Half of me wants to learn how they make their food so I can make it myself, but the other half wants to keep this place special. I think I’ll keep it special.

I’ve been going to House of Chen for 15 years — and I’ve finally had ENOUGH of their terrible customer service. While the food is usually okay the staff and owners are terrible. Phone orders are promised to be ready in 15 minutes, but I’m often left waiting for 20 – 30 minutes longer than promised.
On several occasions we’ve been given our orders at the restaurant only to find the order completely WRONG when we get home. When we’ve called the restaurant to let them know, we told that there’s no one available to deliver the forgotten or incorrect items.
Last night was the final straw. We ordered our food by phone, then drove thru torrential rain to pick it up. Naturally we had to wait another 20 minutes to the order to be prepared. After repeating our order to the waiter to confirm it was correct, we drove home to discover that our entire order was wrong (after repeating the order twice to the waiter). I called the restaurant to complain about having this happen AGAIN only to be accused of trying to scam the restaurant. OUTRAGEOUS!
With so many excellent choices for Asian food in this city, I urge you to avoid the frustration of dealing with this mess.

Quality Chinese food. They make a lot of minor mistakes with orders — forgetting items, missing requests for substitutions, etc. — but other than that, they’re great.

Terrific place. Took me a while to try it even though it’s local because of the mixed reviews but I had a stellar experience!
Probably best hot and sour soup I’ve had in this city.
Excellent level of flavor in the Chinese vegetables and great level of garlic flavor.
Speedy and friendly delivery.
Can’t wait to try more of the menu. Likely to become my top go to for quick and easy but delicious Chinese.

I’m a huge fan of House of Chen, to the point that my boyfriend and I get takeout from there every week. I admittedly haven’t tried many things on the menu, but the prawns with broccoli are spot-​on: tasty, light sauce that doesn’t congeal like some sauces do as the food cools over the course of the meal. The broccoli gets thoroughly doused in the sauce, which makes it my favorite part of the dish. The seafood dumplings are also great; in fact, when a man who works at the restaurant (possibly the owner?) saw that I’d ordered them the other day, his face lit up, and he remarked, «They’re great, right?»
One thing I especially appreciate about House of Chen is that they’ve repeatedly made me dishes that aren’t on the menu but just sound great. For example, they have really tasty brown sauce that they use on some dishes, and they’re willing to put it over some fried tofu and broccoli, provided we can get on the same page about what I’m trying to order. (Sometimes it’s a little tough for us to communicate across the language/​accent barrier.)
I haven’t eaten in the restaurant itself, but whenever I come in to grab my take-​out, people seem to be enjoying their food. Plus, there’s inevitably a table open, so dropping in — even on a weekend night in the Castro — looks doable.

So apparently my last review was deleted by Unilocal.
Racist comments about cooking cats are allowed but the owners son shedding some some must be censored.
Since I don’t have the time nor effort at the moment to write another review, I’ll make a tl;Dr version.
1. We don’t use any msg.
2. We don’t cook nor eat cats.
3. We don’t sell cheese sticks or orange pork or whatever nonsense some of the reviewers claim. Menu can be found online.
Hopefully Unilocal doesn’t feel the need to remove this post as well.

We have been eating here for quite a few years. The food is delicious, and the owners and workers are very friendly. Reasonable prices. The location is quiet and peaceful. Every time we’ve been here it has been a good experience.

I’ve been eating at House of Chen for many (15+) years, and still find it a wonderful place, with good food. The service is great, and Lynn (the Mother) is wonderful! They take great care of their customers, and care about the quality of their food. Take out, or eat in, it’s all good.

This place has the best Chinese food in San Francisco. My boyfriend and I come here almost three times a month and it’s never disappointing. We enjoy the quiet atmosphere and quick food. I would recommend the pork chow mein, dumplings, and the mushroom chicken. Everyone who works here is friendly and we love supporting a family owned restaurant! Check this place out for cheap and delicious Chinese food. :-)

Good food, but not the best in the area. Have eaten here several times. It’s standard Chinese food. It’s good to try, but not a place I would go out of my way for.

First time here and won’t be returning! Pretty sure they use MSG and a lot of it. Didn’t feel right for 24hrs afterwards. There are many other places nearby that are better!

Great food, great people!!!
I like to start off with the wait staff, because I won’t support awful people, no matter how good their food is. Cracker Barrel comes to mind:
Every server came around to make sure we were adequately cared for. Each course we ordered was timed so not everything arrived at once, which is such a rarity! And the older lady… I mean everyone was wonderful, but she was SO sweet and kind! I was so grateful for her genuine warmth!
My friend Allister and I only had two items: The Hot and Sour Soup (which is one of my favorite things on the planet!) and the House Chow Mein. This is because we’re poor and didn’t want to risk anything since every meal counts this trip.
The hot and sour soup wasn’t so hot and sour as to be unpleasant. It had a woodsy-​meaty flavor with the hot and sour dancing around. Very delicious!
The house chow mein had beef, shrimp and chicken. I’d wish I’d have asked for pan fried noodles, but…
The ambience led me to believe it would be more expensive than it was. It ended up $ 20.00 for both entrees and two sodas, which surprised me. In Fairfield, the soup alone is $ 3.00 more and it’s not nearly as pretty a place (though the staff is great there as well!!!)
This is my go to Chinese restaurant in SF now… All restaurants should be on this level across the board.

Very good soups and main courses. This place is literally a hidden gem. It’s worth your efforts to find this place. Also, it’s better than most places around the Castro area

I came here at my hour lunch break, thinking I had enough time to enjoy some Chinese food. I ordered around 6:10pm and it is 6:40. Still no food. I ended up leaving and never going back again. Who knows if there food is any good.

Pretty good for Chinese take out. My sample size is small though. I had a craving for some broccoli beef late in the evening and they were the only Chinese restaurant open past 9:30PM. I walked in and placed an order for pick up and they had it ready in 10 minutes. Portions for the broccoli beef were on the smaller side, but overall pretty tasty in an American Chinese Food way. I was pretty happy with the rice. Instead of the normal mushy long grain rice found at these types of restaurants, they were serving up some tasty short grains with just the right amount of water. Definitely will stop by this place again and sample more of the menu.

Food is good and large portion!
Waiters are friendly!

Just got take out again from here. It’s been a while. The food is solid and I know Chinese food. This is a typical mom and pop slightly Americanized Chinese restaurant. It is good for what it is.
I’m amazed at some of these horrendous reviews. If you’ll notice most of these people all complained that the restaurant was empty. Of course to these lemmings, that means the place must be horrible and disgusting. I bet if there was a line, these same idiots would be raving. Is this the best Chinese food around — no. Does it have tasty fried rice, hot and sour soup, onion pancakes etc — absofuckinglutely. The owners are also still very nice. Yes they’re a bit slow and they aren’t super on top of it. But it’s a husband and wife duo. He cooks and she takes the orders. In between they play cards. Haters need to relax!

I went here with the boyfriend after a friend recommended it and was very disappointed. Like other reviewers noted, there are few to no diners here — we didn’t take this hint and walked in.
We had a small dinner, ordering just the assorted appetizer platter (dumplings, egg rolls, cheese stick) and moo shu pork. The dumplings tasted odd, like they were steamed in dirty water. The egg rolls and cheese sticks tasted fine but not savory. The main moo shu dish did not taste fresh and was too damp and drippy, with the dirty tasting-​type water. We ate it anyway, but felt slightly nauseous afterward.
From this experience, I’ve come to realize that Castro + Chinese do not go well together. For good Chinese, go to the Sunset, Chinatown or Clement street areas. Not here.
I feel bad saying this because the place seems family owned, but the food was awful. The ambiance is nice, the service is mediocre but the food is just plain bad.

I really enjoyed delivery from House of Chen but then worried, wondering if I’d become hooked on MSG because the flavors tasted a little flat.
I’ve yet to inquire but I suspect that House of Chen doesn’t use MSG which is a benefit to a lot of people. Ready with a salt shaker and that said, I enjoyed sampling all the food I ordered for me and my little one.
We had chicken fried rice; lemon chicken (nice and crispy, lemon sauce on the side which is a nice touch so it doesn’t get mushy); walnut prawns (solid — and generous on the shrimp although a little stingy on the honey walnuts) and their very delicious steamed dumplings (these tasted like Shanghai dumplings, plump although the vinegary sauce was substituted with another somewhat lacking).
The food arrived well within the 45 minute delivery window on a Friday night and it was *hot*. Service was very friendly, too, so I tipped 25%.
I recommend.

Now I thought I had been up and down the streets of the Castro with a fine-​toothed comb and knew every eating establishment there could possibly be. That’s why I was somewhat taken aback by the embarrassing discovery on the Unilocal app of this Chinese restaurant, which has been existing in the same nondescript spot on Noe for at least thirteen years. Sadly the evening I was there, they were further camouflaged by the construction occurring on the neighboring property. When I entered, it was as still as a tomb with a young guy furiously tapping on his mobile device. Should I turn around and walk out? No, I decided to give it a try.
Considering I had zero expectations coming into the place, I was eventually delighted by the food I ordered. First, I was intrigued by the listing of Steamed Chinese Ravioli for $ 5.95. Understand they have steamed dumplings for the same price, so what pray tell would a ravioli be — a culinary tribute to Marco Polo’s adventure to China perhaps? When it came, it turned out to be dumplings with minced pork and vegetables mixed together but with a slightly more al dente wrapper that gave it a chewier texture (see photo). I liked them since I like anything that’s stuffed with goodness, although I will be the first to admit that the dough probably added a few more guilt-​ridden calories to the appetizer. There were six of them in that steamer, and I devoured them post haste.
Hey, at least I ate the cabbage underneath, too. Perhaps as compensation, I had as my entrée the $ 8.95 Vegetarian Delight, which was a sauteed potpourri of fresh vegetables — broccoli florets, water chestnuts, mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, sugar snap peas — accompanied by a cup of nutty brown rice (see photo). That turned out to be a wise move since the ravioli was definitely enough to weigh me down that evening. I want to come back with Jamie W. and try out their other dishes. I think we can definitely work within our flexitarian diets and take advantage of their freshly prepared dishes. This was a nice discovery for me albeit thirteen years late, but I’ve always been a late bloomer after all.
FOOD — 4 stars… fresh takes on Chinese dishes with the ravioli a nice twist on a favorite appetizer
AMBIANCE — 3.5 stars… not too ethnic, really quiet when I was there
SERVICE — 4 stars… pretty attentive… who else were they going to serve?
TOTAL — 4 stars… a late-​breaking discovery in the Castro… really late