Chinese Express Restaurants

This place is closed down now I assume, I came here at 1pm and lights off doors locked and looks abandoned.

This place is now closed, why? IONO! R.I.P. Chinese Express :(

This place is horrible! I should have known based off of the pictures from the menu. I mean, how can you screw up a Teriyaki Bowl!!! Somehow, they did! The chicken tasted old… I spit it out after the second bite. The rice was drenched with Teriyaki sauce and the rice was mush! This place is right across the street from where I work and I was hoping it would be good since it would be so convenient for me for the rare occasion that I crave Chinese food, but it was disgusting! I hate panda express but even their food tastes better! They need new cooks and someone at the register who can count change back. I was overcharged but they fixed it while I was at the drive-​thru window, after I said something. Frozen Chinese from the grocery store would have tasted better.

My husband and I love this place! Super duper yummy! Mushroom chicken, kung pao, egg rolls.

Aw, look at the low ratings for this place. It isn’t THAT bad. I like to get their hot and sour soup on a blustery day.
Aside from the soup they have some decent egg rolls with cellophane noodles in them. Also if you order something that is fried, like sweet and sour pork, orange chicken, crab and cream cheese won tons they cook it up fresh so it doesn’t get soggy sitting in the case (that is why it can take a bit long for fast food). It’s better food than Panda Express (yuk!).
The cons? It is a fast food place, so it isn’t as good as a sit down restaurant. Some of the foods are too saucy for me not only because they leak out of the boxes on the ride home, but I’m just not a huge fan of over-​sauced food. Also, I really don’t like their ribs (very thin cut of meat with bits of bone in it).
The pretty lady who runs the counter is very sweet and keeps her cool, even when faced with some difficult situations. I have seen really ghetto people as well as some straight nutty people give her a pretty hard time and she handled it with grace.

This place was terrible. They got our order wrong, there was a hair in my teryaki bowl, we were over charged, and the guy who took our order was chewing food while talking to us. Super grossed out, I will never go back.
He mutters as we drive away «tell your friends about us.» And I definitely have.

So I’ve driven by this place dozens of times and I finally stopped in one day because i figured it might just be that hole in the wall place that is the perfect find in Sacramento. I was wrong, so so terribly terribly wrong.
It’s basically a downscale Panda Express which is a place I eat when i am at the mall and I want chinese food as fake as the tan on a 16 year old girl.
Anyway…
So both my mother and I ordered some pretty basic items teriyaki bowls. She got a regular small and I got a large with Chow Mien instead of rice. This wasn’t even me being a jerk and making them special order me something it was a regular menu option (it’s important later). Then I debate over what size drink to get because it comes with one free refill then you get to re-​purachse the $ 1.89 drink. Because as well all know soda is painfully expensive, especially from a tap. What the hell give me a Large! I’m feeling spendy!
We go sit down and wait and as I’m thinking over the amount I paid this seems high. So I go onto my phone and total everything up. It should have been $ 1.05 less than we paid. Of course this place doesn’t do an itemized receipt so all I can do is run the math from the board and then figure tax (i figured it at 9% to be generous).
OKay, it’s a woman doing math and then just punching the total into the register, something got goofed up. It’s a mom and pop place so I go ask about it. She says she didn’t overcharge me. I go through how I did the math and ask what I missed. She then runs the math and realizes she did over charge me. So we do the math again and she says she owes me $ 0.60 cents and it was because I ordered stuff she almost never totals. You know that thing that has it’s own section of your board and includes the option for Chow Mien, it’s the big one on the right… never does that one, spooky how I chose that.
I say I think it’s $ 1.05 and show her my math for the third time. She does her math again and comes up with $ 0.69 cents (a .09 cent shift) so now I feel like I am haggling in some third world market over the price of a rug and just shake my head. Not only did they overcharge me, but rather than do something generous to make it right that they screwed up they nickel and dime me with math they refuse to explain and that changes every single time they do it. Customer Service… not a strong suit. So I get $ 0.69 cents in assorted change (like dimes and nickels not quarters) and go back to my seat to wait for the upcoming teriyaki.
The food arrives and I don;t have any goddamn chow mien, I have white goddamn rice. Not even fried rice, but white rice. I point this out and they say I didn’t order Chow Mien. I could have at this point turned into a giant green superhero and smashed this whole place to the ground. I explain that not only did I order this but they told me they never hear people order this and that I got overcharged because I ordered this mystical concoction of magic food. It is literally only that middle class white guilt that has kept me from breaking into a full on ghetto «OOOOO Uh UH» kind of scene at this point.
So they agree to get me some Chow Mien and they even asked one another if I should have to pay for the side of white rice or send back my food to get the correct item. I cannot imagine a world where this makes either human sense or even capitalistic sense.
Finally we have or correct order. The food is meh. It’s about the quality of a mall food court pre cooked dish that has been heated by steam for several eons. Kinda tasty in the «we put 3x the amount it should have so that it still tastes of it 4 hours later» kind of way. Kind of like those staple dishes at a Chinese buffet where they make a 20 gallon batch of it and pour it into a steaming dish. Even when it’s good it’s dimensionless and stale but the sauce packet had a lot of ginger in it so it’s kinda tasty.
There’s no power on earth that could make me go back there.

Food is soggy, stale, and has been sitting in the steam dishes for who knows how long. The portions are pretty generous and the people are polite but they are slower than molasses. This place shouldn’t be called express… as it’s extremely slow. Also, it would be more efficient if they just scooped your food into a dish right as you ordered it… I waited nearly twenty minutes for my food after ordering it. I wouldn’t recommend this place and will not return.

I am utterly confused with the put-​down reviews Chinese Express has managed to garner because I feel the exact opposite with this simple yet delightfully satisfying shop. I always end up ordering my favorite, the broccoli beef only because it is a way for myself to force myself to get my daily servings of veggies in a delicious entrée. The fried eggrolls are also as good as they get here.
The person serving my wife and I is always a teenage boy who consistently greets us with smiles and is very easy to talk to. He was actually funny and my wife and I ended up laughing out loud when he swung his hair which we weren’t sure was intentionally at us? But either way was funny.

Chinese Express fails to impress!
Sunday is free lunch day at the office and a coworker had recommended this Chinese restaurant that he likes. Thinking it would be a great new experience, we all put in our orders.
The orders consisted of:
General Chicken: looked weird, tasted bland 1.5÷5.0
extra spicy Kung Pao: Nice and spicy, decent chicken 3.5÷5.0
String Bean Chicken: 2.5÷5.0
Black Pepper Chicken: Terrible and sauce was like gelatin 0.0÷5.0
Broccoli Beef: Looked better than it tasted, tasted fair 2.5÷5.0
Spring rolls: Rice noodles in the rolls? 2.5÷5.0
Fried Rice: Weird texture but surprisingly OK taste. 3.0÷5.0
The food was for carry out and I didn’t get to see the restaurant for myself, but I’m sure I won’t be missing much since I don’t plan on ever going back. The presentation seemed poor and the taste just wasn’t exciting. The food was filling (I don’t like to waste my plate if tolerable) and the only thing that made it decent was because it was free…

Chinese Express is only half of its name. It sure is Chinese. It sure ain’t express.
They set out the dishes in front of you, Panda Express style, and you can choose between rice and chowmein with each dish. I got the 2-​item combo with fried rice for $ 5.99. Kung Pao chicken was meh, and the black pepper chicken was eh. I could’ve made better fried rice.
I mean, it’s not terrible, but it’s ridiculous how they don’t serve it to you on the spot, even though they literally can just scoop up the items into the box and hand it to you. You have to «place the order» and when they’re ready for you, they’ll commence with the scooping.
Oh, and they gave me the wrong item, and when I pointed it out, the lady insisted that I ordered that. Uh, c’mon lady. Just fix it. I’m being nice enough.
I only came here cause L&L down the street was closed… *tear