Friday, December 25, 2015

Chinese food dinner delivery in Medford

Ginger Exchange
July 2018

Overall: Faster delivery than estimated. Portions are small, but prices are not crazy.

Orange Chicken: 4/5. Sweet, not spicy. All white meat chicken (rare around here), no gristle at all, good flavor. Not much sauce, which was great. Broccoli was fresh and undercooked (as many people prefer). If only they could deliver it with any crispness to the coating. Came with a choice of white or brown rice. Brown rice was fine.

Sweet Garlic Udon with Chicken: 3/5. Slight gumminess to the noodles. Somewhat different vegetables than usual mixed in. Decent flavor.

Chow n Joy
July 2018

General Gao’s Chicken: 2/5. Tasted like mall food, and not in a good way.

Chicken Udon: 2/5. The noodles were gummy, there was too much sauce, and almost no flavor. Reasonable vegetable selection.

White rice and brown rice: Both fine.

The Great Chow, Malden

Overall: Wow, dinner was delivered very hot. Packaged well. Standard entrees do not come with rice. Easy enough to order via grubhub, though dishes do not have useful descriptions or ingredients.

Chicken Lo Mein: 3/5. You know how typical Americanized lo mein has that certain lo mein flavor? I have no idea what that flavor is, but it’s not here. The noodles are ok, the vegetables are ok, the flavor is not quite what I expect, and the chicken is perfectly tender.

General Gao’s Chicken Rice Plate: 3/5. The rice plate is a nice quantity of dinner for 1. The rice is kept separate in the container. There was no real heat level, the chicken was thighs, the pieces were large, and the dish wasn’t quite as steamed to death from being delivered as I’d expected.

Cheng-Du Spicy Chicken: 4/5. Too spicy for me, but I knew that when I ordered it. The texture was very good for delivery, and both the texture and the flavor reminded me of a Tibetan dish I used to order many years ago. Flavor was a bit too intense for my boring palate even with a lot of rice. Smaller pieces of chicken than the General Gao’s.

Shanghai Moon, Medford

Overall: This was pickup rather than delivery. Packaged well. Bonus package of dumplings was unexpected.

Chicken Lo Mein: 4/5. Good flavor, not a lot of vegetables or chicken, not exciting but met expectations.

Egg roll: 2/5. Wrapper was not quite right, drifting a little from proper bumpy egg roll wrapper towards a smooth spring roll wrapper. Contains small amounts of pork. Flavor was odd, a little sweet in a weird way. Duck sauce fixed that, but shouldn’t be necessary.

Vegetable dumplings: 3/5 towards 4/5. A proper dumpling wrapper in texture and flavor. The contents were similar to a vegetarian egg roll, and are not a great substitute in a dumpling. But better than not having dumplings.

Pork dumplings: 4/5. A proper dumpling wrapper in texture and flavor. The contents had some odd lumps, which may have been an incomplete grind or may have been mixing in edamame or something. Flavor was convincingly pork-like. Since I had ordered vegetable dumplings and not pork dumplings, I was at first quite impressed at how they had managed to mix together mushrooms and edamame and who knows what else to make a decent substitute for a dumpling filling. Sigh.

Sesame chicken with rice dinner: 3/5. Not enough flavor. A bit too much sauce. A generous quantity of dinner for 1. The rice is kept separate in the container. On the bright side, it was white meat chicken.

House Chinese mustard: Not the mustard I was looking for.

Rose’s, Medford

Update: Metal shaving in the food, and they didn’t even care.

Overall: Fast delivery, packaged well, piping hot. Rice is not included with entrees. No fortune cookie? Grrrr.

General Gao’s Chicken: 4/5. Chicken was thighs, with some gristle. But the batter was perfect, with some crunch that actually survived delivery, and the flavor was very good. Broccoli was quite undercooked.

Chicken Lo Mein: 1/5. No flavor, flat noodles instead of round, completely uninspiring.

New Hong Kong Village, Medford

Overall: No online ordering, but phone ordering worked smoothly.

Chicken Lo Mein: 4/5. Good flavor, lots of chicken, but the chicken was a bit dry.

General Gao’s Chicken: 1/5. Chicken was quite dry, coating was mushy, sauce had no flavor.

Chicken Wonton Soup: 2/5. Turns out this is pork wontons with chicken pieces in the soup. Soup had no real flavor, wonton wrappers were mushy. Packed well, though.