Finding good Chinese food on a Friday night can be a gamble, as pizza is often my sacred standard. But, on this grand pursuit of phenomenal Midwest Asian food, I made a stop at the House of Mei in Sun Prairie for some hot & sour soup, vegetable fried rice, vegetable lo mein, double pan fired noodles with chicken, beef with broccoli, mushroom chicken and house chicken (I know this is a monstrous amount of food. Don't judge...I had friends coming over).
FOOD TASTE/QUALITY: I did not like the soup at all (cold, bland and way too thick). Both the fried rice and lo mein were very tasty, with fresh vegetables and just enough seasoning/salt. I'm always interested in the kinds of noodles Chinese restaurants choose; House of Mei chose more a linguine-style (not my fave; but it works). We all liked the double fried noodles, too. Slightly different than the lo mein in that the noodles were...well, double fried with a nice crispy edge. Beef was good, and mushroom chicken was fine.
I ordered the House Chicken (think General Tso's Chicken) because I'm always interested in what flavors/twist they thought was so delicious, they would call it their "house" chicken. The breaded/fried white meat chicken pieces came with broccoli in a brown sauce. Not bad, but certainly not worthy of being called special. Would have liked more spice and a little twist to make it worthy.
PRESENTATION: Other than the soup and small white rice portions (which came in small white boxes), everything came in plastic containers that were typical for take-out. I ordered the sauce on the side, as there is nothing worse than getting soggy take-out food; this worked very nicely, and all of it was number coordinated (i.e, sauce # 42 went with dish # 42). Everything was nicely packed into a box, which was much easier to carry out.
PORTION: These were typical-size portions in comparison to the price (see below). Each dish was enough for 1-2 people.
PRICES: Moderate. $2.50 for the hot & sour soup. Vegetable fried rice and vegetable lo mein were each $7.95. Double pan fired noodles with chicken, mushroom chicken and house chicken were each $8.95. And, finally, the beef with broccoli was $9.95. Three bucks for tax and the evening meal cost a little over $58. In my opinion, this is about $2 to $3 too expensive for each main dish, given the portion sizes. Also, not one coupon online or in print; for a smaller-town Chinese restaurant with other competition, that's not good.
DINING EXPERIENCE: I would have loved to have this delivered, but no dice! I ordered online (which was great and an easy experience). After about 45 min to 1 hour, it was ready for pick-up.
FINAL NOTES/IMPRESSIONS (3 to 3.5 stars): House of Mei is a mom-and-pop restaurant. I really wanted them to be extraordinary with stand-out tastes and fresh ingredients. That got some of those points, but not many. This was average Chinese food, in my opinion. If they took some time to refine it a bit, they could be very good. For example, they need to find a signature dish and really rock it, lower their prices slightly to be more competitive, get online coupons, and -- for the love of Pete -- get a delivery kid! In the meantime, it was unfortunately not much better than a typical Chinese buffet.