Lotus Garden - Chinese cuisine in Vienna, VA - revisited two weeks later

There's something special about a quick re-visit to a restaurant you only discovered two weeks ago. The second visit is always either a reaffirmation or a contradiction of first impressions. We brought our friends just to be sure.

In the interest of full disclosure, the side story is that we were planning to dine at the new Tom Yum Thai, which got pretty good reviews on Yelp.  It took over the location of the old Tara Thai in Vienna, which we visited once and chose not to return.  It happens to be located next-door to Lotus Garden, subject of our most recent review.  When we arrived in Tom  Yum Thai on a Sunday night expecting to have a leisurely dinner, we found it chaotic.  Despite only a third of the dining room being seated, the Tom Yum Thai manager was clearly overwhelmed, frazzled and seemingly unwelcoming.  We'll spare you the full story, but needless to say, as people were walking out due to lack of service, we suggested they try Lotus Garden next door. And we gladly followed them there!

On Sunday night, Lotus Garden had plenty of customers - large and small parties.  We struck up a conversation with a couple who told us that they come to Lotus Garden from DC just for terrific hand pulled noodles, which the diners can watch being made through a large kitchen window.

While the noodles are offered primarily in soups, there is one popular dish that offers the noodles dry and pan fried with ground pork - Pork Noodles with Fermented Soybean Paste.  One of the diners told us that he is addicted to it, and has it there at least once a week.

We also found out that you can have any of the Noodle Soup dishes be prepared as a dry Lo Mein for an extra $5, which is exactly what we had, pictured below.  It was absolutely delicious. We also tried their Chicken Curry with onions, carrots and green peas, which was also terrific, albeit on the mild side. We shared some regular eggrolls and spring rolls, all very good.

Another delicious visit to Lotus Garden last night with a side show of noodle-pulling entertainment, confirming our first impression of this restaurant from only two short weeks ago.

Eggrolls

Fried Lo Mein hand-pulled noodles with pork

Chicken Curry

Lotus Garden - Chinese cuisine in Vienna, VA

224 Maple Avenue WEST

Vienna, VA 22180
Tel: (703) 255-9888

In a strip mall on Vienna's main drag, Lotus Garden has been a great addition to the local dining scene over the last 3 years.  We came here for dinner on a Saturday evening and the place was packed - good thing we made reservations!

Both service and food were very good. Decor is simple and clean, with dim lighting, making for a cozy and intimate atmosphere. The restaurant is small, so with a full house, the noise level can be on the loud side.  

The house specialty is its hand pulled noodles, and they are worth the visit.  The hand pulled noodles are featured in a variety of about 25 soups in a separate menu section.  The most fun is getting a front row seat to the kitchen window, where you can watch the noodles being rolled, stretched and cut, which happens about every 20-30 minutes.

In between the noodle pulling action, you can watch the entire kitchen staff at work with occasional fire flares and the general hustle and bustle of a busy kitchen. This built-in entertainment can certainly be the focus of the dining experience at Lotus Garden.

The food we ordered, pictured below, definitely fell on the mild side, and was all delicious.  Juicy and plentiful portions, a great variety on the menu, and helpful staff... in short, there were no disappointments. We would return in a heartbeat.

 Hand pulled noodles with roasted pork

 Hand pulled noodles with roasted duck

 Sauteed vegetables in garlic sauce

 Shredded chicken with pan fried noodles

 Szechuan chicken

A show of hand pulled and sliced noodles for an audience of diners

Hong Kong Palace Chinese Restaurant - Falls Church, VA

Hong Kong Palace
Chinese Restaurant
6387 Seven Corners Shopping Center
Falls Church, VA 22044
Tel: (703) 532-0940

Is it ever possible to have enough Chinese restaurants in your neigborhood?  We'd say... No. So, when we found this small restaurant in the Shoppers Food Warehouse plaza in Falls Church, we were excited to try it.  Hong Kong Palace is only a few doors down from our new favorite Thai / Laotian restaurant Bangkok Golden.  This multiple-award winning ethnic dive is definitely worth a stop for an impressive variety of authentic Szechuan dishes, despite its Cantonese name.

Like most authentic Chinese restaurants, there are two distinctly different menus at the Hong Kong Palace: one is the Americanized menu and one is the traditional Szechuan menu.  We selected the latter. There were only two of us for lunch, so we sampled the most we could possibly eat, which was three full-size entrees. We chose dishes we thought would complement one another and would give us a good taste of the restaurant's offerings.

From the traditional soup menu, we ordered the Chicken and Pickled Vegetables Soup.  Although we intended for this to be our appetizer, it ended up arriving late, a few minutes behind our first entree. This soup had large chunks of garlic and noodles, a perfectly mild brothy chicken soup. Our two entrees were Fish and Bean Curd in Spicy Sauce and Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce.  Both dishes were likewise on the mild side.  The Fish and Tofu came in a very very thick orangy-red sauce. The Garlic Chicken came with delicate black mushrooms and cucumbers in a delicate brown sauce. 

The flavors at Hong Kong Palace were not overwhelming or strong, rather they are mild and delicate.  Had we checked their online menu, we would have asked for their "Special Gift" dishes that come free with purchase over a certain threshold:  

Free Gifts

• Free-- Chicken Broccoli
• Free-- Egg Drop Soup
• Free-- Egg Rolls (2)
• Free-- General Tso Chicken
• Free-- Hot & Sour Soup
• Free-- Soda
• Free--2 Soda
• Free--Wonton Soup
• 
  

We weren't aware of this, and the staff did not volunteer this information to us.  Perhaps it is only available for delivery? If so, do take advantage of these deals when you order from Hong Kong Palace.

Overall, our experience was pleasant and we walked out full and happy. We will return here someday and will likely sample other menu offerings, as there are many that seemed appealing. But not sure we will return soon, as there are so many other places we would rather re-visit sooner.

  

 Chicken with Hot Garlic Sauce

 Chicken with Pickled Vegetables Soup

Fish and Bean Curd with Spicy Sauce

China Star Chinese Restaurant - Fairfax, VA

9600 Main Street
Fairfax, VA 22031
(703) 323-8822

There is a great benefit to dining out with a group of people who enjoy tasting a variety of dishes and have opinions on each dish.  Undoubtely, China Star is a prime candidate to visit with as many people as can fit around your table, considering the extensive menu it offers with a wide selection of choices, nearly making you wish you could squeeze all 3 daily meals into one.  You can pick either of its two websites (yes, two?) to review the menu ahead of your visit, though narrowing your selection down is not easy because it all sounds so good.  Perhaps this is a restaurant where one can be advised to visit often to try everything in order to ultimately settle on the favorites.  

Unfortunately, of the five appetizers and about six or seven entrees, nearly all were disappointments. It is possible that our selections were simply wrong, but we cast quite a wide net, as you can see by the photos below, to get as many diverse flavors as possible. 

To begin with, those items marked as "spicy" or even "numbing" were anything but.  The fact that the Wontons, for example, were drowining in chili oil (see photo below) did not make them any less bland. Several appetizers sounded quite unique, which is why we ordered them, such as Cucumber with Mashed Garlic and Wood Ear.  The former consisted of bland and mushy cucmbers with very little garlic flavor. It was particularly mushy and slimy when combined with any of the other food on one plate. The latter turned out to be a pile of delicate thin black mushrooms, also quite bland until you reached the small stash of pickled hot peppers at the bottom of the bowl.  The Changdu Spicy Cold Noodle appetizer was also bland, and the noodles were annoyingly endless, rendering them nearly impossible to get off the serving plate without friends' help.

Now for the entrees, IF you are still hanging in there and thinking there is still a small chance you'll try Chine Star despite all you have read thus far. 

The entrees...  Well, someone on Yelp who loves spicy dishes as much as we all do, raved about the mild Fish with Pine Nuts, which, though not spicy was still all the rage. We figured with all the spicy dishes we were ordering, this would offer a nice balance.  NOT.  The fish was so mild both in flavor and texture, that, well... it was almost like eating something that was not there (if that makes sense), supplemented by more mushy cucumbers with the fish, boy, was this the wrong choice!  The Szechuan chicken - a combination of brittle fried popcorn chicken with small slices of potatoes (yes, potatoes in a Chinese restaurant!) and intermittent cilantro stems - was, in a word, DRY. The sprinkled red pepper added some heat, but definitely not any flavor.

Going into details about the remaining dishes, is not worth it because, frankly, you get the idea!

Oh, the smoked duck, was dry, and should probably have been smoked rather than eaten, although, jokes aside, it was probably the least disappointing of the entrees, though the bar, as you can see, is not high.

In a word, while Northern Virginia is not necessarily known for its great Chinese food, and this restaurant supports this perception, there are other Chinese restaurants that are much more worthwhile of a return visit, such as Peking Gourmet Inn or Mark's Duck House, than China Star.  

The good news is that the mediocre food was no barrier to a fun evening with a great group of people! 

 Dan Dan Noodle with ground pork

 Cucumber with mashed garlic

 Wontons with pork

 Changdu Spicy Cold Noodles (not spicy)

 Wood Ear (mushrooms) with Chili Oil Sauce

 Smoked duck

 Very top is Cashew Chicken

 Fish with Pine Nuts

 Shrimp with Asparagus and Kung Pao Chicken

Left is Szechuan Chicken and bottom is Beef with Snow Peas

  

Full Kee Restaurant - Authentic Chinese Cuisine - Falls Church, VA

5830 Columbia Pike
Falls Church, VA 22041
(703) 575-8232

If you don’t know it’s there, it’s easy to miss Full Kee Restaurant at the Bailey’s Crossroads Shopping Center, home to Best Buy, Trader Joe’s and Moe’s Southwestern Grill. But miss it you should not. That is if you really enjoy delicious authentic Chinese food with no fanfare, lousy service, second- (or third-) rate ambience, and a variety of dishes that can keep you coming back for years. Yes, Full Kee is a gem of an ethnic dive.

Our friends recommended that we eat at Full Kee on Christmas Day. Good thing we made reservations! Even though we had a relatively large group, the restaurant was packed with people waiting for a table even at an unusual meal time in-between lunch and dinner, we went at 2pm. Had it been only several of us in a party, considering the slow inefficient service, it would still have made sense to reserve ahead. Yelp says that they do not take reservations, so perhaps Christmas Day was an exception to this policy, we just are not sure how flexible they are, especially if there is a language barrier with whoever picks up the phone. (Note that they have a new feature on their website where you can reserve a table online.)

If you are looking for an immaculate setting, service with a smile (or even with good English), personalized explanations of the extensive menu with literally hundreds of choices consisting of items that are for the most part unfamiliar to the American Chinese diner (although a whole section that is familiar), then this is not the place for you.

If you enjoy trying a variety of flavors, you will not be disappointed if you eat here! We ordered just under 20 different dishes of appetizers and entrees to share among the 8 people in our party. There was not a single dish that was bland or unsatisfying, all were wonderful. From the dumplings to the lo mein to the variety of their popular meal-portioned soups to the beef, shrimp, pork and poultry dishes, all were delightfully savory with just the right amounts of sauces, flavors, and variations. With prices so affordable, if we had bottomless stomachs, we could have easily stayed in Full Kee until they close (at 2am!) to try as many of their choices as possible. 

To us the quality and flavors of food are worth coming back to Full Kee and recommending it to our friends, the same way we found out about it. Thanks, Joe!