Chengdu

Best Chinese in West Hartford. Coworkers and I eat here all the time. Quick in and out during lunch times. I would suggest this to anyone who likes Asian food.

On my last internship day, we decided to come to Chengdu since they have donated food for one event we sponsored in April.
I’ve only been here once before, but it’s been so long that I didn’t remember if I liked the food or not. The parking lot is very small, only enough spaces for maybe five or six cars, but they did have a sign indicating additional parking elsewhere that was within walking distance.
Service was exceptional. Our server left a pitcher of water at the table for us, and the complimentary fried noodles with mustard and duck sauce was a nice pre-​meal treat. I ordered the firecracker chicken lunch with egg drop soup and brown rice, while the other people in my party ordered General Tso’s and sesame chicken lunches. The firecracker chicken came as thin chicken strips, breaded, fried and tossed in a sauce that wasn’t as spicy as I would like, but still very good. The only thing about the restaurant was the faint smell of «clean sewage» (if that made any sense) coming from the back of the restaurant where the bathrooms were, which made me lose my appetite when we came into the restaurant from the back entrance.
Overall good service and good food. They just need to do something about the sewage smell and then I would go back.

Excellent scallion pancakes and boneless spare ribs! I visit this place every time I’m in town.

I must revise my earlier review as I went to dinner there on March 6, 2015. It’s as if it was a different restuarant from my prior lunch experience two weeks prior. Soup was cold and had to be sent back. We ordered the same dish that I raved about from lunch it bore little resemblance in both appearance and presentation. It wasn’t very good at all. Boneless ribs were okay but it’s hard to ruin them. Only the egg roll was as good. Oh well, there are better places for good Chinese food only a bit farther away.

Chengdu really has 3 quite different services. There’s an eat-​in restaurant, a popular take-​out option and a slightly rowdy bar.
To get your take-​out fix, Chengdu is a decent, if expensive, option. The food is reliably good and the portions are generous, although slightly costly. They are quick to prepare your order, so you’ll often be able to get your food 15 or 20 minutes after calling-​in an order. The scallion pancakes are highly recommended!
The bar is surprisingly busy and has a ‘local’ kind of vibe. That’s not to say that you won’t be welcome if you stop in for a drink, but it will be loud with plenty of conversations between regulars. If that sounds appealing, then this is your place.

Very disappointing. Our experience: We made a reservation, but we had to wait more than 20 minutes for a table. Ok… It was Xmas and busy but the service was slow. Slow to get our drinks. Appetizers (egg roll, egg drop soup and hot and sour soups) were not tasty. My husband’s meal was delivered long after everyone else had their main dishes. The waiter never came back to check on us. My dinner, vegetable chow fun had too few vegetables. Very salty. The waiter never came back to fill water glasses, so I flagged the hostess and asked her for water. Overall, meh! We won’t go there again!

Loved the fire cracker chicken. Prices seemed steep but you get a ton of food. The chicken dish could easily be three meals. Cocktails are delish and very reasonably priced. Highly recommend for a nicer chinese experience than takeout.

I had high hopes for this place! I wasn’t to impressed. The Benefits of Chengdu that I found were:
— They are open late (11pm Monday-​Thursday) and later on the weekends
— The venue is nice! Large dining area, substantial bar
The pitfalls on the other hand:
— Small one way parking lot
— I waited an extra 10 minutes in the lobby for takeout after I was told 15 minutes
— Sweet and sour chicken was soggy by the time I got home
— Chicken and broccoli was served in a flavorless soup
— No combos for dinner! I had to order everything ala-​carte (a little more expensive)
The steamed pork dumplings were the best part, I could eat 100 of these lightly wrapped poppable beasts (with water chestnuts and spices). I may give it another shot, but if I do I’ll go for lunch or sit inside for dinner!

My review is completely based on food since I haven’t dined there, I had takeout.
I tried chicken corn soup and chengdu chicken.
The soup was good but chengdu chicken seemed like an americanized version (sweet and saucy). Maybe, I’ll try dining here sometime soon and update my review soon.

I came in here around 8pm on a Friday night. We sat at the bar, which was fairly crowded. It seemed unnecessarily dark in there to me and there was some strange smell I couldn’t quite place. In any event, I ordered a drink and the bartender was very attentive. After that, we decided to order a few apps — edamame and dumplings. They were both okay, but not amazing.

A proud institution that is starting to show its age, both in terms of food quality and service.
This area was never really rich with good Chinese food, so Chengdu used to be pretty well-​loved. (I’m sure it still is, in some quarters.) As others here have noted, however, it’s something of a shade of its glory days. While the food has snappy names like Firecracker Chicken and Rock ‘N Roll Beef (seriously!), the quality has deteriorated to generic take-​out level, albeit with prices closer to sit-​down range.
The service is generally chipper and the take-​out guy is unfailingly charming.
The bar at Chengdu’s is often hopping, which makes me wonder if that’s where most of the attention goes these days. (Who cares about entrees when you can make a few bucks a pop on high-​end booze?) It’s undoubtedly a fine place to knock back a few and munch on teriyaki.
Now that the area is booming and getting filled with good eateries in Chengdu’s price range, we’ll see if the old girl tries to step it up a bit to complete. It beat the hopeless Lemon Grass easily enough, but these new guys are frisky.

Really cheap drinks, that are strong and taste good! Food was also fantastic, didn’t taste like a run of the mill Chinese food place. I went there with my girlfriend and we enjoyed a few dishes, the noodles (the chow fun in particular) and fried rices were above our expectations. The bar had sports and music playing, and a lot of room to sit. The restaurant area was quieter and good for a family meal, date, or large group.

I’ve been here dozens of times and had nothing but good experiences. until today. I’ve had chinese food hundreds of times in my life. As a Jew, I decided to go here for Christmas lunch. Not only did they not allow me to order from the lunch menu at 1PM. These people drowned my food with MSG. It’s been 4 hours since I ate the food and I still have a horrible headache from the MSG they poured into my food. My last post on 11÷11÷11, I gave these guys 4 stars. I’m going to have to bump that rating down to 2 stars after my experience today. Hey, Cheng-Don’t! Chill out with the MSG!

THE KEY PROBLEM W/​THE PLACE is how the advertising is slim if not nonexistent.
You see, back in the day, there was a Cheng Du Chinese Restaurant in West Hartford Center, same brand, similar menu, possibly new ownership.
The former Cheng Du had clean, simple block lettering bearing the restaurant’s name on the exterior, always crowded inside, people loved it. The new Cheng Du is in a grittier part of town, and the exterior looks sort of tacky now w/​big, bright cursive print almost like a night club, so maybe that’s why THIS place, every time I’ve eaten there, is virtually empty. People might not even realize that it’s the same restaurant in terms of food.
As far as food, it’s pretty good. They have great chicken dishes, the Thai Basil Chicken and the Jade Chicken are my favorites, tender, spicy, and lots of veggies accompanying it. The dim sum platter, however, tasted really weird, to the point where the meat was unidentifiable.
The interior is nice and clean, too, and the help is, well, the help is there, that’s about it.
Parking is pretty bad, though.
Whether for take-​out or to dine-​in, this place is worth a try.

Stopped in for an early lunch and was not disappointed. Decent wonton soup, great eggroll, good fried rice and very nice Shrimp in Lobster sauce. These were real prawns. .. like it’s supposed to be. It was a bit odd that the place was empty on a Thursday at 12:30, but they had plenty of take-​out orders. Very nice ladies at the front of the House. They made it fun.
Nicely appointed with tablecloths, easy rear parking and a clean restroom

I was turned off by Chinese food after purchasing fried chicken and dim sum here one Saturday. I waited for the place to open all Saturday morning. When I opened my box of fried chicken I literally wanted to break down into tears! The chicken must have been fried in three week old oil or they gave me chicken from two days ago! The texture was off! How can you have fried chicken that isn’t crunchy? The chicken reeked of Chinese five spice! I wanted to gag, I wanted to vomit everything out!
Now the rice that accompanied the chicken must have been bad as well bc it smelled musty! I wasn’t ordering off the lunch special I was paying full price! I expect edible mediocre grade rice, I knew I wasn’t getting Korean grade rice but goodness the pile of **** served to me was pure disappointment!
My dim sum was okay but I could have had a better batch if I went to Five Star Farm Market!
I won’t ever be back even if I’m starving after 10pm!

I will say I really enjoyed my meal at Chengdu this past week.
I have become more and more unimpressed with the local Chineese restaurants by way of there offerings and how I do not feel good after eating from them.
I enjoy general Tao chicken and have found that places like Green Tea, Butterfly and Chengdu all like to use fillers with the chicken. It’s deep fried and then sauced so u have no idea how much is filler and how much is chicken.
So, with that being said, I already knew how the Chendu General Tao was prepared, I ordered the sesame chicken (all white chicken strips) and asked for the General Tao sauce. This was fantastic!!!
It had a awesome crunch, was tasty and had the heat of the Tao sauce. I highly recommend it if you also do not like the filler (see picture).
The hot and sour soup was definitely the best I have tried in the area.
Everything else that the three of us ordered was very good.
So far, Chengdu and Saigon Kitchen is the best Chinese I have experienced in our area for not feeling like garbage an blotted after eating.
I am craving to go back!

I wanted to give this a four, but the smell of the urinal pucks they use in the bathroom permeates all the way to the dining area. They smoke out back too, but must leave the door open because it also reeked of cigarettes. The service was iffy; we received a warmer goodbye than greeting.
Parking was tight… I have no helpful advice. Make your sacrifice to the parking gods before you leave and hope it’s not busy.
Their pan fried dumplings were awesome. The sauce they serve them with tastes like soy sauce, vinegar and cherries. I tried to ask what it was but the waiter didn’t really understand what I was asking. This was the highlight of our meal here.
The Rock-​n-​Roll beef was watery and not so Rock-​n-​Roll. The fried rice was a little bitter and tasted like it was fried in a dirty pan. The General Tso’s chicken was crispy, and by all rights should have been really good, but something was lacking and I couldn’t quite bring myself to be excited about it.
There were also a lot of flies flitting about.

I have visited Chengdu for evening meals, the food and service have always been fine. I have camped out in the lounge and watched a couple baseball games as well. I did not realize they had a lunch special. I noticed that Josh S. Mentioned this in his review. I uploaded an image of the lunch special menu. The pricing here is lunch special pricing. That said, for $ 1. more (plus tax and tip) you can have soup, great service and sit down dining.
I was seated by a host, and almost immediately I placed order with a server. General Tso’s Chicken with Brown Rice and Won-​ton Soup. I was served complimentary water and fried noodles, while my order was being prepared. My soup was served ahead of the entrée, after the entrée was served, a waiter checked in to see if everything was OK. As I finished eating, I was offered tea. I was surprised to see this high level of service.
There were 40 High School students there on a Chinese New Year class trip! The staff still attended to me and a few other diners while this was going on.
I took a picture of the General Tso’s Chicken, I hope it is uploaded. It really was wonderful. A truly huge portion of well prepared delicious food. Lots of Broccoli and the rice was very good as well. All in all, I have to say… even though I was recently impressed by a local take out restaurant. This place is an exceptional value.
I spent $ 10.50 including tax and tip. If I just wanted to order take out, the total would be $ 6.95 plus tax. Look at the food!!! Wow. Very nicely prepared, a great value and the service was really a nice change of pace for lunch.

Tea right away; always a good sign. General Tsao Tofu is excellent.