Work wife was in the mood for mapo tofu, and that was how we found this place. It was close to work so field trip time!
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| Open kitchen |
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| Side dishes, not sure if it changes daily |
Located by a college campus, you bet it will always be busy. We got super lucky and found a parking spot in the small lot behind the restaurant. Lunch line was all the way to the door from the ordering counter but it was moving fast.
The operation concept in this restaurant was very unique. It was a combination of fast food and traditional dinning. We ordered and paid for our food at the counter first. After that, we got a number and found our own table. Everything was self serve from getting water to pack our leftovers. The servers did only two things, brought the dishes to our table and cleaned the table after we were done. We could no longer say the service was bad because, hey, it didn't exist to start with.
The menu however had plenty of traditional dishes to offer ranging from a bowl of noodles to family style stir fried dishes. Since we had a group of 4, we shared green onion pancakes, beef pie, soupy dumplings (xlb), chicken fried rice, beef rolls, string beans, and cumin lamb. We also ordered shredded potato salad and pickled cucumber as our appetizers.
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| Shredded potato salad |
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| Pickled cucumber |
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| Green onion pancakes |
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| Beef rolls |
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| Cumin lamb |
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| String beans |
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| Chicken fried rice |
Of all the dishes we got, my favorite was the soupy dumplings. It wasn't the best in the world, but it didn't taste wrong unlike some places I have been to. It didn't come with sliced ginger, but the kitchen had no problems to give me some when I asked for it.
The least favorite was the beef pie. When I was ordering, I had the Taiwanese beef pie in mind and I was pretty shocked to see what came to our table. It was deep fried, thin, and oily. The meat filling was bland and it just wasn't good.
The rest of the dishes were not bad but nothing stood out. Overall I was more amazed at how the restaurant ran than the food itself. Be aware though, the food was MSG heavy.
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