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| - If Cheers was a Chinese restaurant instead of a bar, it would be the Great Wall. Barry (the owner) and his staff go out of their way to make you feel at home each and every time you come in. My family has been going here for years, and our regular waiter, Leo, doesn't even have to give us menus anymore, just starts bringing out our dishes as soon as we sit down!
First things first, make sure you start with a wonton soup and shrimp egg roll. This is hands-down the best wonton soup in the city. It's just salty enough, hot, and filled with yummy wontons. Since the green onion scare in Pittsburgh several years ago, Barry no longer has his chefs put green onions in automatically, but you can ask for a little side dish of them (which I recommend - really adds to the flavor).
The egg rolls are huge, crispy, and full of big pieces of shrimp. Along with your appetizers, you get a bowl of crispy noodles with duck and hot mustard sauce for dipping (although if you don't like the hot mustard, Leo will bring you a double order of duck sauce instead). Oh, and you get all the hot tea you can drink, thrown in for free.
In terms of entrees, I have sampled only about three of the options here because.... they're amazing. Super amazing. So why change, right? We used to get moo goo gai pan consistently until we met the amazing chicken. (Amazing chicken is General Tso's, but using only white meat chicken.) The moo goo gai pan is awesome though, lots of water chestnuts and snap peas thrown into the mix. And it's delicious cold the next day as a leftover.
The amazing chicken is so perfectly breaded, just crispy and sweet enough, but not too heavy. And the Mongolian beef.... oh my. Oh my my my. You can ask to have it made 'extra sweet', and I recommend that. It's so juicy and seasoned with sweet sauce and onions. (I am about five minutes away from just deciding to go here for lunch, now that I'm writing about this place.)
Oh, and even though you're going to *want* to eat everything in a single sitting, the plates are so huge that you probably won't be able to. And that's good, because everything at the Great Wall makes a terrific leftover.
I've been coming to this restaurant for more than 20 years, and as long as they're around, I'm going to keep coming back. Don't be afraid to drive out into the suburbs for this one - it will be well worth it!
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