Chinese Food Tasting General Tso's- By The Numbers

DATE: January 14, 2016
MENU ITEMS: General Tso's Chicken
House Special Fried Rice
Singapore Mae Fun

So, this is the first of a series posts I will do about the first Chinese food tasting.  The first tasting was attended by 5 tasters. We tasted food from 8 Pottstown restaurants.  The dishes we tried from each were General Tso's Chicken, Singapore Mae Fun and House Special Fried Rice. 

I picked up all of the dishes between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, but I will note which restaurants also deliver.  The prices for each restaurant were within a couple dollars of each other.  The restaurants were:

King Wok - Offers Delivery

1102 Town Square Rd

6107188808

http://www.kingwokpottstown.com/location.aspx

Hong Kong Wok - Offers Delivery

1491 E High St

6107188797

http://610-718-8797.chinesemenu.com/

Hunan Wok

1432 E High St

6109705646

Hing San - Offers Delivery

425 High St

6109705790

China Pan - Offers Delivery

6103273382

207 E High St

New Panda - Offers Delivery

1642 W. High St
610-705-8880

http://www.newpandastowe.com/

Sakura Asian Cuisine - Offers Delivery

214 Shoemaker Rd

6103276888

http://www.pottstownsakura.com/

No 1 Chinese Restaurant - Cash Only

1300 N Charlotte St

6103236765

The most friendly service I received for my pickups was from China Pan on High Street.  They also gave me 2 free egg rolls which made an excellent breakfast the day after our tasting.  An eggroll also came with my order from No. 1 Chinese Restaurant in the North End Shopping Center.  It may have been part of a combination platter of General Tso's and pork fried rice which is not what I ordered and they totally missed the Mae Fun.  They also do not take credit cards so I had to run to the Redner's to use the ATM.  It was my last stop so my patience was a little thin at that point, but I sucked it up and got cash to pay for my partial order.

Below is the review by the numbers.  Each taster was asked to rate the dishes and make comments.  If the rating had a plus or a minus I added or subtracted .25 so it reflected in the numbers.  I will compile the comments and post them soon with lots of pictures!

General Tso's Chicken						Average	Median
New China Pan	3	1	4.25	4.5	4.5	3.45	4.25
Hong Kong Wok	3	4	4.75	4	3.5	3.85	4
No. 1 Chinese Rest.	3	4	2.5	3.75	2	3.05	3
King Wok	3	3	4.5	4	3	3.5	3
New Panda	3	4	3	4.5	3	3.5	3
Sakura	3	2	4.5	4	2	3.1	3
Hung San	1	2	5	3	1	2.4	2
Hunan Wok	1	4	1	3.5	1	2.1	1

House Special Fried Rice						Average	Median
No. 1 Chinese Rest.	3	4	5	3.5		3.875	3.75
New Panda	4	3.75	3.25	2.5		3.375	3.5
Hung San	2	3.75	4	3		3.1875	3.375
Sakura	3	4	1.75	3.25		3	3.125
King Wok	3	3	1	3.5		2.625	3
Hong Kong Wok	3	4.5	1	2		2.625	2.5
New China Pan	3	4	1.25	1		2.3125	2.125
Hunan Wok	2	4	1	2		2.25	2

Singapore Mae Fun						Average	Median
New China Pan	4	3.5	2	4	4	3.5	4
Sakura	4.5	3	4	2	3.75	3.45	3.75
Hong Kong Wok	4.5	2.5	2	4	3.25	3.25	3.25
King Wok	4	3.5	3	3	3	3.3	3
New Panda	4.5	4	3	3	3	3.5	3
Hung San	4	3.75	2	3	2	2.95	3
Hunan Wok	3	3.25	3	1	3.5	2.75	3

                          

Beijing Gardens

Beijing Gardens' menu is online at http://www.beijinggardens.com/

Ordered delivery lunch on a Tuesday from Beijing Garden.  I ordered around 11:00 and put the purchase on my credit card.  The person that took my order was reasonably friendly, a little hard to understand.  It only took about 20 minutes for my food to arrive.  The delivery person wasn't rude, but he didn't say one word to my "hello" or through signing the check or my wish for him to have a nice day.  Could have been worse I guess.

I ordered a small #17, Wonton Soup, #38b, Shrimp Pad Thai and V1, a Vegetarian Spring Roll.  My delivery came with mustard, soy sauce and duck sauce.  I also got a bag of those wide, greasy fried noodles, I'm assuming they were included because of my soup.  They also threw in two fortune cookies.  Sometimes I can tell I've ordered too much food if I get like 5 cookies, but I think 2 is probably standard.

The wonton soup looked mostly typical.  There wasn't anything in the broth besides some scallions though.  Once I cut into the wontons, I felt they were a bit short on meat.  More on a wonton soup experiment in a future post.

A lady I know makes these amazing spring rolls in a moist, rice-paper wrapper.  Sometimes when I order a spring roll I hope for something like that.  Unfortunately, this was more like a regular, fried spring roll with a thin shell.  It wasn't very dark in color, but it was fried and the outside was crispy.  The inside had big pieces of cabbage, carrots and mushrooms.  It was pretty good, actually.  

I ordered the Pad Thai mostly because I'm trying to mix it up.  I can't write about the same meal over and over and part of my purpose with this blog was to enjoy some restaurants and some menu items I might not have otherwise.  So, I don't have a lot of recent Pad Thai experience.  I turned to the interwebs for an idea of what makes a traditional Pad Thai and that is where some of my evaluation comes from here.


The Pad Thai was packed pretty tight in the container.  Lots of noodles and bean sprouts.  One corner of the container was filled with crushed peanuts which are a typical accompaniment.  There was a lemon slice and from what I can tell, lime would have been the more traditional choice.  I did think the lemon was a nice touch though and cut the sweetness of the noodles nicely.    Once I stirred it up I found a good amount of shrimp in the bottom.  The ratio of noodles to shrimp was pretty good.  Mixed in with the noodles and shrimp were some scallions/green onions and egg.  The flavor was sweet and maybe a little sour from the tamarind, but benefited from the lemon that I squeezed over the top and I enjoyed it.   Loved the peanuts, maybe next time I'll ask for extra.



Even with my exhaustive research on Pad Thai, there were some items in the mix I couldn't identify.   I ate one or two and what is pictured here was a little giggly, but easy to bite through. Can someone tell me what that is?Looks a little like an ear, someone suggested it might be pieces of squid - not sure about that one.  There were also a couple other pieces that looked more like beef.  Maybe it's like the buffet at Ponderosa and pieces from the other dishes fall into the nearby containers?


Anyway, I liked the Pad Thai, but maybe shouldn't look at it so closely.  According to my cookies, "All is well."  I'm OK with that.

Hong Kong Wok

I ordered delivery from Hong Kong Wok.  I suppose I can admit now that I have ordered from them before.  Good thing is that they have my address/phone number combo in their system so they were able to quickly verify my address without any laborious spelling of street names.

I ordered my typical, Beef & Broccoli and an Egg Roll.  I used a card over the phone and it was easy.  Delivery arrived in 20 minutes.  The delivery guy was nice, wished me a good night and I was sure not to steal his pen.

The delivery came with two cookies, duck sauce and soy sauce packets.  I also got free white rice.  The white rice was a little drier than I would expect, but not terrible once you add it to the sauce.

The egg roll was pretty typical looking.  Nice and crunchy.  They put a little napkin in the bottom of the wax bag it was in, I assume to absorb any extra grease - good strategy.  There was very little pork in the egg roll.  Kind of disappointing.  I ate it, and I kind of enjoyed it anyway.  When you're home alone and you get solo Chinese Food delivery, fried and warm may be enough to make it enjoyable.














The Beef and Broccoli had a little higher ratio of broccoli to beef than I wanted.  The sauce was kind of sweet, but otherwise was a typical sauce like you'd expect.  I will say that I have never looked very closely at Chinese food delivery sauces, but this one was a little greasy.  If it sat for a while the grease would kind of separate and float to the top.  Not sure if this is normal.  I will order some more delivery and report back.

The beef was flat and flaccid, but exactly what you'd expect for this kind of food.  The broccoli was firm and not mushy which I love.

It was a satisfactory solo night eating out of the container the food came in.  I am curious now about all the other Chinese food establishments in Pottstown - excited to eat more.  In the meantime, like what you do.

China Bar

I didn't ask for a menu and I can't find one online so I will add it here sometime in the future.

I've seen this place lots of times in my travels but I had never been there until this past Thursday night.  Steve and I ventured out and drove past it a couple times before actually getting there.  We parked on the left side of the building and walked in.  You walk into the dining room and the bar is in another room further in. It was a little dark and no one greeted us.  We decided to head into the bar.  The place is a little shabby, but clean.  Not modernized or anything, I wouldn't take a date here until after we were already drunk.

We sat at the bar and were greeted by the bartender who I believe may have been the owner as well.  I saw quickly that only the standard beers were on tap: Bud, Miller Lite, Coors Lite, Yuengling, some kind of line up like that so I asked about bottled beers.  There was a takeout cooler on the other side of the bar and we were directed there to peruse the selection.  Steve made the trip over (I was not so optimistic) and he reported back that there was nothing more interesting than an entire shelf of 4Loco.  Wasn't that stuff banned?  I asked for white wine and the bartender said they had White Zinfandel.  Then he found a bottle of Moscato.  Neither is my cup of tea so I ordered a Stoli and club with a splash of cranberry.  Steve got a Lager.  For the record, the beer prices were pretty good with $2 mugs and $3 pints.  We were carded and the bartender used our first names when returning our cards and followed up to make sure my drink was made properly too.

We asked for food menus and they were pretty standard for a chinese place.  They have lunch specials that looked ridiculously cheap.  That's worth a look on another day.  They have all the regulars, soups and egg rolls, chicken, shrimp and beef with different sauces and veggies, bean curd and steamed options and then a back page with specialties.  Steve didn't want to go with the standard so he ordered Braised Duck with Lychee.  I ordered Beef with Spicy Garlic Sauce.  We both got Wonton Soup and an Egg Roll. The additions were a good deal at only $1.99/person.

I think it at least twice as long to get the food than it should have.  Our bartender may have been cooking it as well as getting our drinks.  There were two other guys at the bar though and it turns out they were quite good conversationalists and both had some opinions about the current state, past and future of Pottstown.  I love chitchat about Pottstown - certainly everyone has something to say.  I was sad to learn in this conversation that the bar closest to my house, Brian's, was shut down last weekend.  Too bad I didn't get to try their food yet, I hear they had goat.

Our food did eventually come out.  It was preceded by a bowl of straggly, fried Chinese noodles.  You can almost see them in the upper left hand corner of this picture.  They were super tasty.  Both Steve and I could see ordering just those after a couple of drinks.  We were also given a sweet sauce - my guess is duck sauce and a spicy mustard, one that would certainly clear your sinuses.  The bowl of soup was a nice size.  It was flavorful enough, a pretty standard Wonton.  The pork inside was maybe a little dry.  The egg roll was fried crispy with a thick shell and it was good with both sauces.

The duck came out with lots of lychee which was the reason Steve ordered it in the first place.  There were maraschino cherries too which I wasn't personally excited about.  The dish overall was very sweet, too sweet even to kill with the plate of white rice.  The duck was cooked so much that it was almost impossible to cut.  It was dry like when you overfry wings to the point that you can chew through the bone.  It was so unnatural I wondered if maybe the duck had been freezer burned and that's how it got so dry.

The beef and garlic sauce had a surprising variety of vegetables including broccoli, carrots, celery, asparagus & string beans.  I can't say for sure if they were fresh because of the sauce, but they were nice and firm.  The beef was typical of American Chinese Food, sliced thin and tender in that odd way.  The sauce was a little thick for my taste, but spicy which is what I was looking for.

So, my curiosity has been satisfied.  I know what China Bar is all about now.  The service was friendly and personal even if it was a bit slow.  I recommend sticking with the standard offerings on the menu and not ordering something from the 'specialties' menu.  If you're looking for a snack, the egg roll was good and those little Chinese noodles were totally awesome.  I may swing in there again for the nice conversation.