As Chinese food meaning “traditional fare actually eaten by real Chinese people” it’s probably a 1.
As Chinese food meaning “American fare inspired by some flavors used by real Chinese people” it’s still not great, but at least a 5.
I love hole-in-the-wall Americanized Chinese places. I’m also the sort of guy who thinks McDonalds is great and won’t turn his nose at fast food. But I’ve never enjoyed anything I’ve eaten at Panda Express. No idea how they stay in business… though it might be because I’m in California where there’s plenty of mom-and-pop Chinese places to eat at instead.
Rated a 2 only because the buffet on the Pearl River Cruise in Guangzhou was so foul (only bad food we had in China).
The one time I can recall eating at PE, it was absolutely, 100% flavorless. I don’t know how you can cook food so as to remove every bit of flavor, yet somehow it was so.
I’ve eaten at independent Chinese-American restaurants that were much worse than Panda. I’ve also eaten at some that were better, and some (mostly buffets) that were about the same in terms of quality. Panda, like most fast food places - offers consistency - for $9 I can get two or three kinds of fried meat in sauce and a helping of chow mein and I know it’ll be palatable and I’ll have enough for leftovers. I gave it a 7.
The closest I’ve come to Chinese-Chinese food is Boiling Point, a chain that started in California and specializes in Taiwanese hotpot. (The clientele at their Seattle location is about 90% Chinese and the line tends to snake out the door most of the day, and the menu is printed in both English and Chinese, so I assume it’s pretty close to the real deal.) I had the curry fishball soup, which was definitely completely unlike anything you’ll find at Panda Express. It was pretty decent.
For fast food Chinese, and if you get there right when they open so everything is fresh and hasn’t been sitting out for hours, it’s pretty good. And it’s a lot better than Shitty Wok with their shitty beef and shitty chicken.
This. There are good family owned restaurants and bad ones, and it is easy to steer clear of the bad ones. There is a takeout place with really interesting non-Americanized dishes. Why would I ever want to set foot in a PE?
BTW, I know about LaChoy but I don’t think our supermarkets even carry it, because, really.
Normally I give them a 3.
Once I went in and they were out of asparagus so they had done an off the menu special of beef with leeks instead. That was freaking awesome, up there with any home made Chinese/American place. Easily an 8.
Alas it only lasted three days till their central processing asparagus bits and seasoning came in.
Eh, it’s tolerable fast-casual food. The quality depends on the menu item, I expect. I’ve only eaten there a couple of times. I don’t think of it as Chinese food, more like Chinese-inspired food. Like, you wouldn’t think of Q’Doba as “Mexican food.” If I want Chinese food, I’ll go to a Chinese restaurant. If I want a mound of bland fried rice with pieces of fried chicken in a oversweetened red sauce or tangy brown sauce, I’ll go to PE.
Never had a good meal there. Never had more than a “barely adequate for sustenance if I don’t puke” meal there. Too many family-owned Chinese places around to waste my time at PE.
I gave it a 3… decent enough mall Chinese. Nothing wrong with that.
Did you see the new-ish one in Kaimuki with the giant inflatable panda outside? That must be what draws crowds in.
Panda Express is ok for American-Chinese fast food. You can’t compare it to restaurant Chinese food, though. That said, they’re not the absolute worst; I’ve been to other food-court PE wannabes and they were even more awful.
About a mile from my house is a free-standing Panda Express (although coincidentally located next to the site what used to be a shopping mall). I had never seen that before, but apparently there are quite a few stand-alone PE’s peppered across the country.
It’s nothing exciting, but the thing is that it’s less of a gamble than any random Chinese place. The food is pretty fresh, whereas I’ve been to family owned places that have perfected the art of the warming lamp and serve dried-out meat. I imagine the e. coli rate is lower.
Of course it’s not authentic, I didn’t see the OP suggesting otherwise.
Except the lo mein. That actually is pretty authentic, according to the authentic Chinese People in Lee Q’s link.
That’s chow mein to us out west here.
I’ve heard about what you east coasters call “chow mein”. I can’t recall ever seeing it on a menu, and I don’t think I’d be inclined to try it if I did.
We’re middle coast here, and chow mein, to me, is crispy noodles; lo mein is soft noodles. Personally, I’m not fond of the crispy style of chow mein (which is also known as “Hong Kong style chow mein,” from what I gather, although here it’s just chow mein.)
I’ve Ate there one time, and as a result got food poisoning one time, so I went with a score of one.
Best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten in the US was at a family owned place in downtown Phoenix. It was buffet style, but you could get what you wanted from the buffet to go. They’d give you a carton and you could fill it up yourself, often overflowing, although the rule was “The lid must be able to close”, heh. They even had a sign up that said that.
It was around for a good 5-6 years, but then shut down and I wasn’t surprised…the inside of it was a HUGE dump. It was messy, the tables were sticky, the silverware never washed, and I once went into their bathroom and regretted it. Breeding ground for the roaches. It was the most unhygienic place I have EVER been to…and yet, it had the MOST DELICIOUS Chinese food I had ever tasted, in my life, all the way up until last year.
The best Chinese food I have EVER had, however, has to go to when I took a trip to Indonesia. I was in Jogyakarta and we ate at three or four restaurants (one of them twice, because I wanted so badly to go back to one) and all of them were AMAZINGLY delicious. The Chinese food was the best I’ve ever had and probably ever will have. It will be very hard to top how that food tasted, it was PERFECTION.
So that’s a 10, to me. The shithole place here (that closed down) was a 9.
By all of that scale, I would say Panda Express was a 4 or 5. It’s not HORRIBLE. It’s edible…and sometimes even good and tasty. It’s not that it’s bad tasting the other times either, it’s just…a bland sort of tasty. It’s the sort of food I can see someone liking if they had never had REALLY good Chinese food before and so they think “Wow, THIS stuff is great Chinese!” although judging from the replies here, I see there’s always exceptions and some people prefer it even thought they’ve had “real” Chinese before.
But yeah, it’s not terrible. It’s just not…very good. Not memorable. Not overly amazing.
Indonesian Chinese…that’s amazing.
I’m sure actual Chinese food eaten in China would be too.
The best Chinese I ever had was probably Peter Chang’s in Richmond, Panda Express it was not.