China Express

My roommate and I both got food poisoning from this place. I’m never ordering from here again.

Ugh. I hate giving bad reviews, but come on man!
The chicken and cashews was so salty it was inedible. BONUS: they loaded it with celery when I said «No celery!» It was half celery! The General Tso was bland and fatty.
Will never order here again.

My boyfriend just moved to Crystal City and we were looking for a good delivery chinese place local to the area. The China Express menu was slid under his door so we decided to check it out. I was surprised although the place was over 3 miles away, that they still delivered to us without any charge (worth calling and asking if you are wondering the same).
What really caught out eye about this place was the «everyday special for lunch and dinner» regardless of the day of the week. I got beef and broccoli for $ 6.25 with rice + eggroll and my boyfriend got the Szechuan Chicken for $ 5.95 with fried rice + eggroll. Our total after tax and delivery was $ 14.00.
The food was a really large portion, enough for us to save for later. In addition, the delivery only took about 30 minutes which we were impressed with how fast it came.
We didn’t get chopsticks with our order which we were disappointed about, but we’ll just know next time to request those. We are looking forward to getting food from here again.

Nice Chinese place for delivery and carryout.
Highly recommend this restaurant. Reasonable price, very good portions, and very nice and friendly people working there.
We’ve been ordering from here once a week for more than five years. We always get lomein noodles, which is delicious, very special tastes. General Tsos chichen, and some veggie and chicken dishes.
Their delivery time frame usually 30 to 45 minutes, always arrive on time. Sometimes I go pick up , which is quicker than delivery 10 to 15 minutes.

Where do I begin? Placed an order for hot turkey n cheese sub, the turkey looked like THICK SPAM slices instead of turkey and the sub was Ice cold. The fries were tasty and fresh. The mystery meat was thrown away! Second order consist of Singapore noodles were I clearly typed in capital letters «PLEASE NO PORK, BEEF OR CHICKEN» and asked if they could add mushrooms. Well the mushrooms were added and so was the pork, chicken, and beef. I will never order from this place again. A total waste of my time, money and hunger

I ordered delivery from here yesterday and it was decent. After reading some questionable reviews, I stuck with vegetarian options only and ordered the vegetable lo mein and the bean curd schezhuan style. The portions were huge and the veggies in the lo mein were fresh. Everything arrived ahead of their time estimate and as a bonus, this place has a lower delivery minimum than most ($ 12, I think) with a delivery fee of only $ 1.50, which is good if you are just ordering for one person. Overall, I’d probably order from here again!

I ordered delivery from here based on a friend’s recommendation and I’m starting to question whether this person is actually a friend or not. I ordered two things, the Shrimp w/​Lobster Sauce and the Kung Pao Shrimp. When delivered I threw a bit of each on a plate and sat down to eat. The Shrimp w/​Lobster Sauce looked like egg drop soup with 5 shrimp in it. The Kung Pao shrimp looked kinda useless but I decided to give it a chance. I took one bite, went back for another and saw some weird orange thing. I thought it was a weirdly shaved carrot at first but when I pulled it out it was not food. It was some sort of netting (either part of a hairnet) or string. Whatever the hell it was it wasn’t something to eat. I threw the food out immediately.
I ordered through Unilocal’s ordering platform and contacted them for a refund. They contacted the restaurant and were told that it was «hot pepper» because I ordered it extra hot. Two things here: 1) No hot pepper looks like yarn. 2) They didn’t make this crap spicy at all. They told my man Jeff at Eat24 that they think either I put the string in the food or they just don’t know how it got there and they aren’t going to do anything about it. Solid business! Eat24 refunded the money, they were great. China Express blows balls.

It’s fast food Chinese. I ordered delivery they came in 20 minutes, reasonably priced food and delivery fee and a huge portion of food. Like three meals worth for $ 15.

The food was inedible. I threw away $ 30 worth of food after ordering yesterday. There was no saving grace for any of it. I wondered if the chicken in the chicken and broccoli was actually chicken. The pork Lo mein was disgusting. The egg rolls had a weird taste. I would never order from this place again.

Too cold to be out and am too lazy to cook, so china express is usually the one I call when I feel like chinese food! It met my standards. There is another China express in lee hwy, the last time I ordered, the chicken was too dry, so I have been ordering the one in Glebe. It’s quick. Oh one time I ordered deep fried pork wonton… i’d just say, never to order that again. My usual order, sesame chicken, brocolli beef, General Tso’s chicken, they are generally pretty good. Although I wish they would separate the sauce, so that the deep fried chicken would stay crunchy, not soggy.

Me and my girlfriend go to marymount university and would order here from time to time as the go to Chinese place.
We left for the summer and came back and I can say in most certainty that their food is garbage. The quality has shot down and I felt like the experience was closer to f I cracked open some wet dog food and began to chow down.
Not too mention they messed up my order and said they would replace it with another meal at a later date. When I called they expected me to still order $ 12 worth of food To cover the delivery fee of food that I never actually received in full.
I will never order from this place again and suggest to others if you want to keep your stomach not in knots then you shouldn’t either.
If I could give this a 0 that wouldn’t even be adequate for the poor service they give.

This is my closest local Chinese takeout spot so despite the poor reviews, I decided to give it a shot. I got egg drop soup and mapo tofu. The egg drop soup was terrible. Pretty much all egg drop soup I’ve had is the same and it’s good. This was not the yolky yellow color but more like chicken broth color. It didn’t have as much flavor, I’ll never order it again. The mapo tofu used what a bunch of places do that I don’t like which is peas and carrots. But I guess that’s to stretch it out. The big issue I had with it though was that my order had a small stone in it. Like a piece of gravel. I could’ve broken a tooth if I wasn’t careful, I thought it was glass at first due to the grittiness.
And as if that would’ve kept me away my favorite local Chinese spot, Eastern Carryout, was closed last night so I went again to this little shop of horrors only to find it closed. That would be okay excpept the door said it closes on Sunday at 11 and it was 10:30p. Unacceptable. Never again.

I ordered delivery from China Express, which was a mistake. Chicken in the chicken broccoli was rubbery and tasted fishy. Eggrolls had no flavor. Never again.

I was expecting basic Chinese food but this was some of the worst I’ve tasted. I had the chicken and broccoli — the chicken had little flavor and a spongy texture. My friend described his wontons as «inedible» and his chicken dish as «rubbery.» The least expensive of the Chinese food restaurants I’ve found in the area, but there might be a reason…
I am not giving this place just one star merely based on the fact that I didn’t get food poisoning.

Currently my go-​to Americanized Chinese food place for the Pentagon City area.
Fast delivery, good food. Keep in mind I am speaking of fast food Chinese. The food is hot and tasty, but do not expect a gourmet feast.

China Express is the fastest delivery service to Crystal City and South Arlington. We’ve been getting food from this place for 6 years and we pick these guys because we now know what they’re good at and what they’re not. I’ve ordered every single item on the menu at this point and here is what to order and to avoid:
GOOD — Egg Drop Soup, Shrimp Toast, Fried Wings, Lemon Chicken, Beef/​Chicken with Broccoli, Combo Fried Rice, Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, Happy Family, Anything on their healthy menu, Salted Fried Shrimp
AVOID — Hot Sour Soup, Wonton Soup, Crispy Duck (Boney), Spring Rolls, Orange Chicken, Anything Szechuan, Lo Mein, Sweet & Sour, things that use sauces that have cornstarch which they tend to overuse and undercook

One word… wow. I don’t mean «wow» in a flattering way either.
I’ve ordered from this place quite a few times and while the taste and quality of the food itself isn’t necessarily bad, it’s the service and treatment of its customers seems to be a different story.
I ordered 3 dishes and they came out to $ 24.85 (with tax and delivery charge it came out to a little over $ 28.00). This restaurant sends out fliers with several attractive coupons such as any purchase over $ 25 and they will give you an order of General Tso’s Chicken for free. So when I mention the coupon, the person taking the order tells me it is $ 25 before tax. Fine. If my order was well short of the $ 25 requirement, I wouldn’t even be asking. However, if my order came out to $ 24.85 (a whopping 15 cent difference), I would think that they wouldn’t mind offering the free dish especially since I am a repeat customer. Instead, the person taking the order tells me, «you should order a can of coke to meet the $ 25 requirement.» Are you f***‘n kidding me??? I hope this restaurant knows there are several other Chinese restaurants in Arlington.
Well, their flier also states «we sincerely accept your opinion.» So here’s my opinion for you to sincerely accept. You just lost several customers over 15 cents.

I’m just not feeling this place. The reviews were somewhat encouraging. I like my Chinese food hot, greasy and salty. This was bland and just… off somehow. Eastern Carryout is quite good about half the time and edible the other half. I could barely make a dent in this. The only good part (which is what bumped it to two stars) was the egg roll. What’s with the lack of egg rolls in this area? In NY, we would never tolerate a spring roll with our Beef and Broccoli combination. ;)

That is a lot of food for cheap! Too bad it was barely edible even though I was drunk. It’s extremely hard to keep me from munching on food-​if it’s in front of me, I will eat it.
But the large chunks of General Tso’s chicken were soggy from all that watery sauce they cooked it in, and the fried rice was bland.
I did just find the egg roll in my car this morning and it’s still crispy and not bad! It’s plenty oily but it’s also kind of spicy. Definitely one of the better egg rolls I’ve had from a Chinese takeout place that I’ve had.

Like a reviewer below, I too took advantage of the direct mail marketing for China Express.
My obligatory kitchen drawer of take-​out menus stuffed behind Ziplock bags and aluminum foil was getting full of disappointing, slow, greasy, or sickness-​inducing Chinese places that deliver to my south Arlington address. It was time for a change — I had some friends over and we all were craving Chinese food so I thought hmmmm, why not try the new place? They literally can’t be worse than my other options…
And guess what. I was pleasantly surprised. There were 4 of us, so we ordered one of the family dinners that comes with 3 entrees, 2 egg rolls, and a mountain of rice. The lady who answered the phone spoke good, clear English and quickly took my order. I tried to use one of the coupons on the menu (Free General Tso’s chicken with a $ 25 purchase), but she said something about it not working with a Family Dinner that I didn’t quite understand. In that case, I ordered a 4^th entrée. She took my credit card info and said ok thanks bye. I hung up, but then realized she never said what my total would be or when the guy would be there. The friends and I were having a great time out on the balcony, so we said whatever, we’ll just wait and see what happens.
I did some quick math to guesstimate my total (so as not to be shocked when they arrived with the receipt to sign) and after almost exactly 45 minutes I peeked through my blinds to try to find a delivery car. No sooner did I look than a car came into my parking lot (I live in a hard-​to-​find condominium complex) and the friendly looking dude ran up to my door. He couldn’t have been more polite and had the receipt and pen ready to hand me. The bag of food he handed me very warm, always a good sign.
We opened up the food and found there to be much more than we needed — I’ve been eating leftovers for 2 additional meals, well worth the moderate prices for the dishes.
Considering I’m not sick, the food was tasty, there was lots of it, and everything went so smoothly, I would definitely try this place again.