No 1 Kitchen

This went from being my favorite take out Chinese food place to the worst Chinese food I ever had. The quality of the food went down drastically. I’m pretty consistent with what I order and had always been a fan of the won ton soup. The soup I just had was awful. The broth tasted like water and the won tons were flavorless and falling apart. The chicken with broccoli had lumps of sauce in it. This meal was terrible. It wasn’t even ready for pickup when they said it would be. I’m tossing my menus and the leftovers.

A few years ago I would have easily given this a three overall and possibly a four for some dishes.
This place has looked extremely ghetto and rundown the entire decade I’ve lived in Buffalo. The service isn’t the friendliest, the area used to be considerably worse than it is now (Tops still can’t get on board with this Black Rock rennaisance thing but the rest of the area is looking a little better), and you didn’t want to TOUCH anything in the huge, vacant dining room, populated with empty steam tables that I can only assume indicate this was a buffet at one point. All that said, we ALWAYS went here in college at Buff State for food and it was worth the walk down Grant — worth getting hassled for change by bums at the bus stop, worth slicing your flip flop on the inevitable broken beer bottle, worth waiting on sticky chairs and dirty tables once inside. The kitchen was clean, the food was very good, the prices were right.
Now, the area just looks better and better, No 1 has painted their building and FINALLY switched the support beam on their overhang (the old one was struck by a car many years ago and sat their all crooked forever) but what they haven’t done is kept up on their food quality. My recent ventures have only gotten more and more disappointing. The food isn’t awful, it’s just not that good. Low quality chicken that may have grissle, bland fried rice, super greasy eggrolls, and hot’n’sour soup (once a token dish for me from here) is all hot and no sour. On top of that a lot of the more exotic menu items they never have when you ask for them, such as eggplant in garlic sauce. They still give large portions and use very fresh veggies, but aside from that I can’t say much for them. The inside of the restaurant, now made smaller by a wall put up dividing off the old seating area, is still a dump. Still dirty looking, almost no seating, filthy windows, etc.
No 1 is uniquely poised on this corner as a long-​term anchor business to help lead the way in the improvement of the Grant-​Amherst section of Black Rock. I know this is a fast food joint with a low income ratio for its product compared to more upscale restaurants but I would prefer they raise their prices a hair like other local joints and provide a better product (as they once did) and do some simple, basic updates to their dining room. Make this a fun place for college kids to come enjoy lunch like Kung Food has done on Main. Get young folks from nearby Buff State who aren’t necessarily from the area to come and see what we have to offer.