A8 China is located near my building and I've gone there several times for carry out. The first visit went relatively well - I ordered my food, waited for roughly 10 minutes and was served quite an average plate of General Tso's Chicken. The chicken was lacking in flavor and texturally unimpressive but my egg roll and fried rice were decent.
NOW, a few months pass and I decide to return on a lazy sunday evening, and I experience some of the worst service and food of my time in Madison. The restaurant was not ridiculously busy and seemed well-staffed for a Sunday night, but it took 25 minutes for my one serving of Lo Mein to arrive. During the waiting period, I asked the cashier when I should expect it and she looked confused and seemed to shout back to the cook, correcting the original order. Not good! Although she repeated my order back to me at checkout, I figured that they probably started making something else and had to restart. Worse things have happened, and I figured, if the food was good, I'd be alright with it. On a side note, another bad sign was the lady in the store who was waiting to return a full bag of food she'd ordered earlier!
Anyways, my food finally came and, upon returning home, I encountered a horrendously bland, over-oiled Lo Mein with dry, flaky fried rice. The only redeeming feature of the dish was the crab rangoon, which was pleasantly sweet and tasty!
Needless to say, I will not be returning to A8 China anytime soon due to my experience with both poor service and food. For better Chinese in Madison, I'd recommend Asian Kitchen or QQ. I don't mind walking a bit further for an equally priced Chinese dish that's infinitely better than what A8 serves!