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| - My wife & I were very excited to try Wong's based on reviews here and when we arrived at the restaurant. It has the kind of "dive" vibe we get very excited about. I can't see what the hubbub is about. The food was pretty terrible overall. I am willing to consider that we ordered wrong, but we got Kung Pao Chicken, Dry-Fried Shredded Beef, Wong's Special Chicken, and Pot Stickers.
Going item-by-item, the pot stickers were frozen and can be purchased at any Asian grocery store, so, essentially, they were something I can and do make at home. The beef was not shredded but sliced (which makes dry-fried dishes very hard to eat) and tasted like old fry oil and ketchup, disgusting. The special chicken was initially pretty excellent. It is fried chicken in a sweet-and-sour sauce, very similar in style and presentation to Springfield, MO-style cashew chicken. As we ate more of the dish, however, it became apparent that this chicken was breaded in Chinese donut batter and also tasted of old fry oil. Disappointing.
I saved my discussion of kung pao chicken for last. This is one of my favorite Chinese dishes in the world, and we ordered it because one of the regulars waiting for take-out recommended it. This is, without a doubt, one of the saddest dishes I have ever eaten. It had no flavor: no salt, no soy sauce, no ginger, no Szechuan peppercorn, nothing. It tasted of celery, if anything at all. Additionally, the dish was swimming in a watery, brown-grey sauce that was the result of the zucchini in the dish. I'm okay with overly sauced Chinese food, but without any flavor and not thickened with cornstarch, this was just a mess. Additionally, the chicken tasted like it had been par-boiled before being stir-fried, so it was tough, flavorless, and an unappetizing grey color. Completely disgusting.
As I said at the beginning, I am willing to wager that we should have ordered the fried rice, which people seem to recommend, but I don't believe we will be trying Wong's again, as this food just isn't up to snuff.
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