Ginger Tree

Just ordered a take out from this place for the first time. Horrible food. Never thought even fried shrimp can be that bad. Forget about the Kungpao chicken and the fried rice, no good either. Don’t waste your appetite or money for the food from this place. Not going or ordering food from here again.

The food is OK.
But delivery sucks! It’s been over an hour since I ordered. I understand that it’s a Friday night, so delivery times are slower than usual. But with that being said, hiring another driver wouldn’t hurt.

Typically shitty Chinese fast food. Sometimes you just need that fix but I would look else where to get it. Delivery is SOOO slow. I live less than 5 miles away it should not take over an hour to get dinner for three. Also the food is luke warm when it arrives. Online ordering is convient and helps avoid miscommunications/​the language barrier. Wish I could give more stars because the place is close to home and convient but it simply sucks.

Ginger Tree is slow for take-​out AND delivery, which is ridiculous because I like 2 minutes down the road. Should NOT take an hour to get food from their store front to my house. PLUS, quality/​taste is NOT great… if you want good food, go to Bamboo or Karma on the other side of town.
Surprised Ginger Tree has been around as long as it has. Gross.

This is some of the worst Chinese food I’ve ever had. The food here tastes very off.
I got a combo lunch special (Chow Mein, Pork Fried Rice, Egg Roll). I couldn’t eat much of it at all and ended up throwing the rest away. The pork fried rice was greasy and lacked any real flavor. The chow mein was horrible, both smell and taste. Egg roll was also really greasy and had that same weird flavor that permeated everything.
I can’t put my finger on the «off-​ness» — everything just had this bad quality to it that I felt like I’d be sick if I tried to eat the whole meal.

I ordered lunch takeout from Ginger Tree, located next door to Westford Ace Hardware. The place is small, which is an order at the counter place with self serve dine in seating. The kitchen is not visible from the front area.
Anyways, I ordered the L15 Kung Pao Shrimp With Peanuts ($ 7.25) served with pork fried rice and choice of appetizer (I got chicken fingers) and added Hot & Sour Soup for $ 1 more. The food was ready to go very quickly in about 5 minutes. I go outside and I open the takeout box of hot food, which is a good portion of pork fried rice, chicken fingers, and Kung Pao Chicken??? I immediately return inside the restaurant with the takeout box and the lady immediately goes, «Did we mess up?» I ordered Kung Pao Shrimp and not the L5 Kung Pao Chicken (which is $ 6.50). The lady says «sorry» and brings the takeout box back into the kitchen. 4 minutes later, Kung Pao Shrimp, checking the box before leaving this time.
The hot & sour soup was mildly spicy. The pork fried rice (tan color) had a soft texture, mix of egg, scallions, onions, and small pieces of roast pork. The main dish had a spicy taste with a mix of mostly celery, water chestnuts, peanuts, peppers, onions, and a few jumbo shrimp (cleaned). The chicken fingers were crispy outside (not too greasy) with strips of white meat chicken inside.
The food was overall pretty decent. It’s also a good thing I checked my food before even driving off for NH. A similar screw up happened at another Chinese takeout place in Amherst, NH where I got the wrong food, but I was already miles away back at home.

A sign went up for Ginger Tree months before they opened and we waited (hungrily) for the open sign to light up. We have been ordering from them ever since.
Positives:
— Jessica, who answers the phone, is always so sweet and they have my name and address memorized because we order so often. In fact, went I went in to pick up an order last week, they were surprised because we usually order in.
— For some things I definitely rate them better than other local places (I’m looking at you, Bamboo, with your always freezer-​burned-​tasting appetizers and tired buffet).
— I am not a big fan of egg rolls, since I hate celery. The egg rolls at Ginger Tree have minimal to no cele

Ordered online through Foodler. Included a tip. Delivery driver was very pushy about collecting a tip. I explained we had already tipped online and he pretended to not even know what I was talking about. Beware.

Pretty solid Chinese take out.
Very large portions for the lunch specials.
GREAT chicken wings here.

We order from Ginger Tree about half the time we get Chinese mostly because we can order online; having dinner arrive at your door, hot and paid for and without having to talk to anybody to make it happen is one of the benefits of living in the future.
Most of the time, it’s passable — easy and cheap trumped any notion of it being excellent — but this last time I ordered it was like it came from a different restaurant than we were used to. We ordered a pu-​pu platter; everything was perfectly fried (less common than it should be), the pork smoky and lean, the egg rolls loaded with vegetables and just greasy enough, the wings salty and wonderful. We got some udon dish, too, which was certainly good enough (though…odd) and the hot and sour tasted nothing like the overly thick, rewarmed, flavorless stuff we usually got out of habit.
Maybe we just got lucky and hit them up right after the oil was changed in the fryer or something, or maybe at a slow time when they had more time than usual to keep an eye on every aspect of our order, maybe they’re under new management, or maybe the stars aligned in a way beneficial to our luck. Whatever the case may be, this was the best all-​round Chinese delivery experience, beginning to end, that I’d had in a long time.

We have tried Ginger Tree twice now. The menu features many of the same standard veggie options that you’ll find at most full service pan-​Asian restaurants that riddle Nashoba Valley and southern NH.
The difference is that Ginger Tree is take-​out only, tucked away next to a Domino’s and a hardware store in a newish strip mall on Rt. 40.
We have tried:
–Scallion Pancakes ($ 4.25). Not a good version of this favorite– thin, crispy, bland. In general, Ginger Tree is thin with veggie appetizer options.
–Family Style Bean Curd ($ 7.95). Decent version of this middle-​of-​the-​road vegetarian offering sometimes known as «Homestyle Bean Curd.» Basically, stir friend tofu blocks with vegetables in a neutral brown sauce.
–Sesame Bean Curd ($ 8.95). Tofu triangles in a sweet sauce with sesame seeds. The bean curd could have been crispier on the outside and gooier on the inside, but this dish will get me by between trips to Lilac Blossom for their General Tso’s Tofu.
–Moo Shi Vegetables ($ 7.75). Earthier than normal mix of bamboo shoots, cabbage and green peppers. Comes with five wrappers, which isn’t enough unless you make burrito-​sized roll-​ups.
–Vegetable fried rice (lg. $ 6.50). Pretty dry and bland mix of lightly-​fried rice with carrots, mini-​corns, bean sprouts and peapods. You may need to add some duck sauce to this or just use it as a base layer for some of the sauced entrees.
–Vegetable Lo Mein (lg, $ 6.50). Honestly, my favorite thing from Ginger Tree. Just the way I like it– not greasy, noodles still springy, not drenched in an unidentifiable liquid, tasty.
We look forward to continue eating our way through the menu!