And This Is Why I Don't Eat Chinese Anymore

So waaaaaay back in the day, about 4 years ago, before I was laid off from Qwest, we used to go to a restaurant called China Inn. We were there on a fairly regular basis...at least a couple of times a month. Two of us always had the triple delight, extra spicy, and the other person always ordered sweet and sour chicken, with the sauce on the side. The service was always great, and the food come out piping hot in huge portions. The vegetables were never overcooked and it was a great value for the money.

I've gone a few times in the years since I left Qwest, and it's been decent, but it never quite tasted the same. I attributed part of that to not having the same group of people with me, but today, I picked up food for the co-worker that had introduced me to China Inn so that we could have lunch together at her place. I got each of us a triple delight and an order of sweet and sour chicken for her daughter.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was.

I could barely see the shrimp in the triple delight. They were so small as to be almost indistinguishable from the pieces of chicken. The sauce was too thin and runny. For something that I had ordered extra spicy, there was maybe a one jalapeno kick to it, and that in no way qualifies as extra spicy. And the chicken and beef had been cut up into pieces that were pitifully small. This was also a problem with the sweet and sour chicken. Rather than having big plump chicken strips, the meal came with such small chicken bites that I thought they had ripped a Chicken McNugget in half and tossed it into the fryer. There was very little chicken to be found under the breading, and what was there has been overcooked. How you manage to dry out deep fried chicken pieces is beyond me. It also had an odd aftertaste that I'm not sure how to describe.

All of the lunch specials come with fried rice and your choice of an egg roll or crab meat rangoon, plus soup. I didn't even touch my soup after I saw that my friend's egg drop soup looked like radioactive gelatin and had the consistency of such. The fried rice was decent enough. So was the crabmeat rangoon, though I did expect 2 of them per plate and not just one.

I don't think that I'll be going back here anytime soon. Chinese super buffets are popping up on every street corner, and while they might not always have the best food, I can usually find at least a couple of things that I like there, plus, I sort of know what to expect. It really makes me sad when a place that I used to love so much has gone so far downhill.