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| - A nice place to go for lunch and get deep fried meat in sweet sauce if you're in the area, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it.
China Cottage is a nice enough restaurant set in a somewhat anonymous strip mall. The decor is pleasant and clean. The service was solid, if not exceptional. We had crispy beef, manchurian chicken, lollipop chicken, mixed cantonese chow mein and lung fung soup.
The crispy beef was deep fried and served in a thick sweet sauce. The manchurian chicken was deep fried and served in a thick sweet sauce. The lollipop chicken was fried and served with a thick sweet plum sauce (or something like it, anyway). The chow mein noodles were thicker than average and the sauce was the sort of thickened clear sauce that's common on chow mein. The lung fung soup was minced bits of chicken, shrimp and vegetables, maybe some egg, in a thickened broth.
They were all decent, but they all reminded me of the westernized chinese food of my childhood, where most meat is deep fried and covered in a thick sweetened sauce. My favorite was probably the lollipop chicken, which was essentially chicken wings with plumb sauce, but it was still tasty.
I didn't dislike anything that I had there, and in fact, if was above average for this kind of food. But there are lots of places to get food that feels a little less westernized that I like better that are closer to me than China Cottage, so I'm not likely to go back.
They seemed to have a pretty long menu of vegetarian items, although we didn't have any vegetarians with us. The portions were all generous.
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