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| - A fast-casual spin-off of a Minnesota-based, fast-food Chinese-American chain that likewise serves nothing special, Chin's gets one star for being the only Asian-American place I know of in Dane County that serves fried cream cheese wontons without crabmeat. I require a side dish of epinephrine if I eat crab, so I appreciate this omission. Now that I have established that I go here just for the cream cheese puffs, it should be clear that I'm far from an expert on Asian food. So take the rest of my review with a grain of salt; there should be plenty to spare in your entree.
I used to think this place was ok -- it still has plenty of variety, a very friendly staff, good chili-garlic sauce, decent potstickers, above-average lettuce wraps, no grisly or fatty pieces of meat -- but lately the preparation has been sloppy and the presentation just as bad. I suspect the quality of the ingredients has come down a notch.
After cream cheese wontons, Pad Thai is one of my favorite Asian entrees. My last order looked like Goldilocks's porridge in the "Three Little Bears" Golden Book I had as a kid. Dull gray, soupy, greasy, salty and watery, yet somehow sticky. The chopped peanuts added no crunch at all, which is too bad because other than the chicken pieces I picked through the mess to find, I was hoping to find something else edible. Epic fail on this entree.
On my next visit, I ordered the Firecracker noodles with chicken, as a side to my beloved wontons. Slight improvement from last time but still salty as the Dead Sea and enough grease to de-squeak every door hinge on the west side. The bag was so heavy I skipped my biceps workout for a week. The red peppers had no life left. Again, I hunted and pecked for the chicken, which is consistently decent-quality, well-prepared white meat. My wife's veggie fried rice would have been ok -- they ease up on the salt and Valvoline for this entree -- but the vegetables were overcooked and charred in places. Fresh veggies should present as a bright spectrum of colors -- orange from the carrots, bright green from the scallions, broccoli and pea pods, yellow from the corncobettes. Instead, however, they were the same brown color as the fried rice.
My last fortune cookie said I'll probably return to Chin's. It's on the way home from work, the food comes out fast and I can't resist those damn cream cheese wontons. Maybe I'll throw in some potstickers or wraps and call it dinner.
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