Penn Grill

So yummy!!!
My favorite lunch at work! its fresh yummy and very helpful and nice staff! I highly recommended it for lunch

Grabbed some stir fry to go while in a rush, and man am I glad that I did. I walked in with my wife and we were greeted by a friendly smile and a recommendation as well as simple instructions on how to add different things to our stir fry. All the vegetables and meat looked fresh and tasted delicious. We went with the medium spiciness and it was excellent flavor. It ended up taking a short amount of time, perhaps 5−8min and then paid before heading out. The price was incredibly reasonable for the amount of food. I will definitely be returning to try out different combinations for the stir fry and I will be interested to try some of the other food on the menu when I go back. It is in a great spot.

More accurate categories for Penn Grill would be Mongolian BBQ*, sandwiches, breakfast and maybe Korean.
Of the above, I’ve only tried the Mongolian BBQ — so far (I plan on trying the Korean spicy beef and vegetable soup next time). Everything is fresh and made-​to-​order. The owners are friendly and kind; great service. Best of all, since your food is weighed after it is cooked, you almost have to try to load up enough to get past $ 5!

By the pound Mongolian bbq may sound like an oxymoron, but basically you can get by the pound stir fry here. Items include thinly sliced beef, pork, chicken, broccoli, peppers, onions, mushrooms, bean sprouts, water chestnuts, baby corn, tofu, cabbage, green beans, vermicelli (think jap chae) and lo mein noodles. You gather your ingredients in the container, hand it over and tell them spicy or not, and when it’s done they weigh it and charge you ($ 6.59/lb). Also, they will chop up everything when they’re cooking, so don’t worry about selecting the more bite sized pieces of ingredients (I spent way too long looking for small pieces of broccoli). And your noodles will be chopped up.
Side note: For stir fry, I have no idea how they keep track of all of their customers when it gets crowded but they always seem to be able to match you to your order. Service is always really nice, even when it’s crowded. There definitely can be a bit of a wait if there are a lot of people waiting for their orders too.
Penn Grill also has a a spicy beef stew for order (yukgaejang). Tasty but you really have to work the meat off the bones. I’d say it’s good, but not as good as Sichuan Express’s beef noodle soup, although that one is greasier. Comes with rice and kimchi. They also seem to have your traditional sandwiches and such, but I haven’t tried them. Lots of little seating inside and outside.

This was a nice lunch spot for a day in the city. The employee (owner) was helpful and kind. If it’s ur first time in DC can’t go wrong here. I’ll come back next time I’m in the city

Amazing stir fry and a good price I would recommend this place. Amazing food and is the freshest in town!

What a nifty little lunch spot! I came with some coworkers and we set up camp at one of the outdoor tables. The umbrella blocked out the sun and the cool breeze felt really nice — ideal summer meal.
We got the stir fry. I asked for spicy and the guy eyeballed me and asked «Are you sure?» HEY don’t judge me based on appearance! I can handle my spice! Well apparently he still didn’t think I could handle it because it wasn’t very spicy, but there was hot sauce on a side table.
Ultimately my stir fry came to about $ 5. Highly recommend!
It was a little confusing how we knew our food was done, but the staff seemed to know whose food they were cooking. Just stand to the side and wait attentively for someone to make eye contact with you. It’s like awkwardly picking someone up at a bar, except the eye contact is just an invitation to pay for your meal.

I don’t know why this place says Chinese because it’s Korean and we’re not the same you fucking racists.
Anyways, the stir-​fry is BOMB af.
Also their yukgaejang is great for early morning hangovers.

There are places which are good because they are good and there are places that are good because they are great value. This is the latter. The stir fry is not super remarkable; the ingredients are not special and tossing ingredients into a wok to stir fry it with soy sauce is something that can be accomplished at home too (albeit at a lower temperature so probably slightly worse). Though stir fry is delicious and you-​pick-​your-​own ingredients makes it pretty cool, this would not be enough to warrant 5 stars.
What is great is that you can get full off a nice cool 6 bucks, whether in sandwich or in stir fry form, and that the variety is such that you can keep coming back. Also, fantastically nice propietors, who provide water on the free without prompting in the form of little plastic cups by the soda machine, which I always use as a benchmark of customer service (do you trust your customers enough to give them cups that can be used to steal super valuable soda)
In sum, great place for a quick lunch, not haute cuisine, nothing to rave about, but as solid a standby as you could find anywhere

If you’re a vegetarian, you may want to skip the stir fry. The tofu is so packed with water that it makes the portion heavy and this, expensive. More expensive than if you were to get meat. The egg salad sandwich was an option and was good for what it was. Good place to go for lunch in the area, but the wait is quite lengthy.

I’m doing this against my better judgement…
You can read the other reviews that described the tasty stir fry and count me among the lunchtime fans. However, this review isn’t about that.
They have a well kept breakfast secret that I have been enjoying for a couple years, mostly because I haven’t told anyone. Every morning they make a small batch of muffins and a few of those are cranberry. Any of them, and especially the Cranberry, are delicious and just the right size to be filling.
OK, there it is, exposed to the interwebs. For you it means an opportunity to enjoy a tasty treat. For me it means the next time I get to work a bit late there probably won’t be any left if anybody actually reads this review.

I thought the stir fry station is whatever you pick and they will stir fry for you. WRONG. They took my bowl of veggies and meat and apparently thought that I needed noodles. When my bowl was returned to me, it had LOTs of noodles in it. Not just a little but lots! I did not even wanted noodles! They prob think that they won’t make any money off of me because I did not load my bowl up with noodles. I could have been allergic to gluten or whatever else in the noodles. Or I could be on a carb free diet. I should have said something but the cashier was a nice smiley Chinese lady and I feel bad saying anything negative to her since she is not the one making the stir fry.
I ended up paying $ 10+ for the meal and I was so disappointed because I read good thing about this place and finally on a weekday I am in DC when it is open and this totally ruined the experience.
好失望。