Uncle Chen’s

This used to be the BEST Chinese restaurant in State College. Back when Joe was running the show, NO ONE could do Lo Mein like them. Now, I’ve gotten it a few times when I’m in to visit family and I’m disappointed every time. It’s overlooked and DRY. Uncle Chens used to be the BEST, I even had them cater my wedding back in 2005! Yes, I was 19 and crazy but it was so good. Now I am terribly disappointed in the new owners/​management and the food.

If you order from Uncle Chen’s you know what you’re getting. Its fast food Chinese at its finest and don’t expect anything more than that. They deliver on weekends late and the food is delicious for what it is. Portions are huge, delivery is quick, and prices are fairly tame.

Huge portions, good tasting food, and it’s cheap! What can get better than that? My only wish is that their delivery was a little quicker but I get it, they are very busy! :)

Second time getting Uncle Chen’s and i gotta say i love it! Last time i tried regular Pork Lo Mein, came with fried rice and an egg roll. I used Order up delivery and it took like 40 minutes.
This time, i got Sesame Chicken with steamed rice and Wonton in Egg Drop soup. I used pick up and it was ready in 5 minutes.
BOTH these meals were STUFFED with so much food for only $ 8.95. And they were both delicious. The Sesame chicken and white rice tasted considerably more healthy than the Lo Mein. The Lo Mein was slightly greasy and God damned impossable to possibly NOT stuff my face until my trusty man girdle could restrain my loving food-​baby any longer. So I’m out $ 38 and trapped in my room until my new Support Brief Girdle arrives, but right now my euphoric delerium is too good for me to care.
Uncle Chen’s gets a 5’s from me and i cant wait to go back!

This place is surprisingly good! Seriously, it’s really good!
When you pull up to this place, you may wonder if you’re making a mistake. but you’re not!
I’ve had their wonton soup, egg rolls, General Tso’s chicken and their «Gui Zhou Spicy Chicken» The latter is definitely my favorite!
My boyfriend also says this place is his favorite Chinese restaurant at PSU. For me personally, I would call this a tie with Golden Wok, which I also really like.
The biggest downside, and its not really even a downside, is their fried rice really just seems like white rice with some butter and soy sauce mixed in; it’s still good, but not what you typically expect from Chinese restaurant fried rice.
But if you like spicy, not overly battered chicken, try their «Gui Zhou Spicy Chicken» Its not battered and it comes with celery and carrots. You still get mostly chicken though and it seems to be white meat chicken, or at least not cartilagey chicken like you get at some cheap Chinese places.

I would give them zero stars if I could. While they are friendly, their food is just not the same as other places. Too much sugar, its like a do you want chicken with that sugar?
I also was sick off of it once.
Not recommended.

The food is averagely ok but the reason why I’m giving it a 2 star is that the rice is unforgivable. As a Chinese, I eat rice everyday and I know horribly prepared white rice when I taste it.
The rice was unwashed and its cooked so it’s so starchy and grainy. I might even say the rice tasted «dirty» because I know they didn’t rinsed it. Worse of all, I can’t eat any Chinese food unless I have my side of rice. So the rice ruined my experience.
Overall, the food is not bad. I mean, I had steamed Chicken with Mixed Vegetable and that’s hard to mess up.
However, the service was kind of terrible. I had a misunderstanding. My friend and I ordered our food separately and the front person gave us the bag that we thought have both of our food. When we came back to my house, the bag only have my friend’s order, which the hot & sour soup tasted too sour for normal standards. So we have to drive many blocks back to get the rest of our order. I shuddered to think what I’ll do if I had to walk back in the rain.

Was sort of forced to give this place a second try because it was late and I wanted Chinese. I got a barely edible, overpriced disgusting heap of garbage. I don’t think there was any beef in the beef I ordered. Not to say it’s cat or dog– I don’t think there is any meat in it at all. If I was to guess, I would say it was lard, breadcrumbs and cheap Chinese sauce put in a fryer. My self respect and probably my life expectancy was lowered when I put this shit into my body.

This may not be some people’s favorite Chinese food, but I think they do a fantasy job with the traditional «American» Chinese food items. If you stray too far through the menu, you might be disappointed, but they have great general tso’s, lo mein, sweet & sour chicken and shrimp, and fried rice of course. It’s pretty cheap and they have fast delivery.

Going around State College looking for that hole-​in-​the wall that made great food and I thought this was the place, especially if they claim to have «The Best General Tso’s in town!» So I thought I would give this place a try. I came here a couple of time to try the following:
Fried Chicken Wing: Gross! It was dry, overcooked, and overfried. It was so overfried that the chicken took on flavors from the cooking oil. It also lack any creative flavor, unless they count «old oil» as a flavoring.
Sweet & Sour Pork: I am always on my search for that perfect Sweet & Sour Pork. This place did not have it. What was served to me was dried, battered pork pieces with no discernible seasoning that was drenched in the sweet & sour sauce. And that’s it. No carrots. No green bell peppers. No onions. No pineapples. Not even sliced tomatoes! Just the battered pork «jerky» and sauce. Disaster.
The Best General Tso’s Chicken in town!: Against my better judgement, I returned to Uncle Chen’s to give their General Tso’s Chicken a try. After all, it is «the best General Tso’s Chicken in TOWN!» Mind you, this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever order this dish from any chinese restaurant so I had nothing to compare this dish to. So I ordered this with the hope that this was their signature dish that has kept this business going. Got home and took a few bites and come to realize that this dish was no different from the Sweet & Sour Pork I ordered the other day. The only exception was it was a different protein and a different sweetened sauce. So I am not sure why this was considered the «best in town». My only explanation is that you need to be drunk in order to appreciate this dish? But who knows and who cares as I have no desire to come back to this place.
So overall my experience wasn’t good. Another restaurant that has reinforce my notion that most Chinese Restaurants in State College sucks, as least the ones near the Penn State campus.
I realize this is cheap food and that you do get more bang for your buck, and that it can feed 2 to 3 people, and that you can have leftovers, but for me this isn’t the kind of food I desire to spend my money on, share with friends, or have leftovers for the next day. Maybe when I get drunk and I happen to be in the area, I might… nah.
So that’s my take on it.

Lots of food for low prices! Delivery is always very fast! Best General Tso! Typical Americanized Chinese food.

Very fast delivery and you get A LOT of food for SO cheap.

Hair in food. Not Safe! Avoid! Trash Employees!

I’m sad to say this is the worst Chinese food I have ever had. I decided to order Uncle Chen’s since it was significantly cheaper than Golden Ladle or Fuji & Jade (where I get my usual fix). However cheaper definitely isn’t better. I ordered Ma Po tofu, which is my go to dish, and it was just so bland! Tofu tastes like whatever you cook it in, so if it is not in a good sauce, it basically tastes like nothing. So tofu + white rice with a boring sauce = not very satisfying. The portion was huge, and the delivery was fast, so if you want a lot of fast cheap food, this is the place. However if you’re looking for a delicious meal. Do not go here.
Sorry Uncle Chen’s.

In town for Setsucon at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, who instead of having menus for delivery uses
. Took advantage of the 10% off for first time customers. First issue, orderup menu layout sucks, but we got in a large order of around $ 80. Then things went down from here.
Upon the arrival of the order, it’s messed up. We’re missing at least two main dishes and four egg rolls. Due to the large order it took a while to figure out what was missing and it took two of us on the phone to even convey this information to the employee who was working the phone at Uncle Chen’s that night. They did eventually send us most of our missing items, but the time and stress of this messup can’t justify the large amounts of food we were provided.
Overall a poor experience that left several people very frustrated. What’s surprising is out of all the conventions we attend, State College has some of the worst Chinese food experiences we’ve had.

VEGAN REVIEW
Don’t let this place’s hilarious but questionable web address fool you, vegan-​foods eater: this is a wonderful place to eat some tofu-​containing meals late, late, late at night. Food is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars… but, man, where else are you going to get your maybe-​not-​sober self some vegan fast foods with tofu in ‘em?
We showed up because I was a meal behind and it was about 11 pm. I will tell you about the food in a minute, don’t fret, but first I am going to set the stage for our visit:
This take-​out haven was, on the evening of our meal, inhabited by the owners’ five-​year-​old son and 18-​month-​old daughter, in addition to a well-​used and well-​utilized train playset. Our conversation was _​delightful_​. Joseph, in case you were wondering, is pretty excited about kindergarten and has recently learned to spin dice like tops. His sister’s main interests at this point are disassembling her brother’s train creations and shaking objects that rattle.
If I were a college student, I would be pretty stoked to see anybody who wasn’t a university employee or between the ages of 17 and 23. Even as an adult-​type person, it was pretty good.
Okay, yes, the food: we got a carton so full of Bean Curd with Chinese Pickled Pepper that we could hardly pry the thing open. We watched the cook prepare it, too, and it was a very fancy thing. Full of oil, yes, and deeelicious. The broccoli dish we got was okay, but this dish blew it out of the water, in the middle of Drinkytime in good old Happy Valley.

This is touted by others as cheap and greasy. Well they got the greasy part right. The food was gross, but not any cheaper than other equally greasy but way more delicious Chinese fare in the State College and Bellefonte area.
I ordered from Uncle Chen’s using
. According to their restaurant info, they were voted best General Tso’s. I figured it would probably be a safe bet right? Wrong. The chicken was dry and sauce was think and congealed and tasted too much of sesame oil, with no hints of garlic, ginger, or any other spices other than MSG and sodium. I also ordered the sweet and sour chicken dinner (complete with fried rice and an egg roll), crab rangoons, and fried donuts. The crab rangoons had hardly any filling, the sweet and sour chicken was dry and tasteless, and the sweet and sour sauce tasted like a medicinal cough syrup laced jelly, that left a pink stain on my arm where I spilled it accidentally. The fried rice and egg roll though not the greatest weren’t that bad, my dog enjoyed the rice very much.
The best part of the entire dinner was the fried donuts, but really how bad could a sugary lump of fried dough be?
I feel bad saying all this though, because the guy that I talked to when I called (I had to call them back after they called me to see if I would still be there when they delivered, nice of them to ask), seemed really nice. I know some people absolutely love Uncle Chen’s, but for my $ 26, I’d rather go somewhere else.

Let’s be realistic about Uncle Chen’s: it’s cheap, greasy Chinese food. Don’t try to compare it to some Chinese restaurant with tablecloths and linen napkins because that’s not what it is. It is fill-​you-​up-​for-​pennies, lazy man’s grub. And I love it.
When I was a student at Penn State I walked to class uphill both ways for 16 miles in the snow… Wait, no… I would order Uncle Chen’s every Sunday evening with my boyfriend and his roommates and veg out watching TV. It was great. I loved the cheap dinner specials and pigging out on tons of food before facing a new school week. There was nothing fancy about what we ordered, but it served its purpose.
On a recent visit back to PSU we ordered up some Uncle Chen’s. Being vegetarian now, our orders were a little modified but similar to what we used to get. I got the sautéed vegetables and my husband (the boyfriend from my college days) ordered orange tofu. It was pretty much as I remembered it: greasy, filling Chinese food. I really liked mine… the husband thought his was ok. In all, I still think it’s a solid place for a cheap, bad-​for-​you meal.
After seeing all the reviews for fast delivery, I wonder why they didn’t like me and made me wait 45 minutes for mine. Oh well, it was worth it.

This is the place to order General Tso’s chicken. Very big portions & cheap price.
There’s nothing fancy about this place. It’s all take-​out or delivery, no dine-​in option.

Unilocal! After my a-​bit-​brutal last Uncle Chen review (see below), I received a call from the owner (on my cellphone) who told me he had read my review on this site, and matched my nickname to their online orders. That startled me a bit, but okay.
He apologized for the behavior of the employee, and explained that she could not discriminate between my building (where drivers generally come up to individuals apartments) and others downtown (where they cannot come up because they don’t have anywhere to park). After explaining that he was sorry for her behavior and that they would continue to deliver to my door in the future, he apologized again and offered me some meals «on the house».
This is textbook management of dissatisfied customers. Offer an honest apology, affirm that the mistake isn’t going to be repeated, and offer repairs. Well done. I got the free food, and it was good :-)
Would I have received the same treatment if this review hadn’t been written? Probably not. But so many businesses in town treat students (or young looking folks, like me) like crap; I sure appreciated getting the call and seeing that a business in town honestly cares enough to make an effort to correct their mistakes. Competition among restaurants is tough in town, and I wish them all the best and will most likely order from them again.