China One

This is definitely the best Carry-​Out spot in the area! Decided to check it out after riding around the shopping center to weigh all the dinner options. Shrimp and garlic sauce is really tasty. Tons of fresh veggies in this dish, not mushy and the seaweed is a nice touch! The garlic sauce has a kick too, actually spicy. Just what I was expecting, the photo inside on the wall looked just like the real thing. I wanted the hot and sour soup to be more sour. The flavor is okay, it’s nice and thick– just needs more acid. My boyfriend got orange beef and shrimp fried rice. Beef is doused in sauce with broccoli, good flavors and not super greasy. He says the shrimp fried rice is really good. Make sure you get spicy sauce on the way out. Next time we’ll give the Tso’s a try. Gave this place 4 stars for the taste! Way better than Chef What’s-His-Name.

I hope this helps people:
Anyone planing on eating here I invite you to walk to the back of the restaurant (or drive) you will see a fence keeping people out of a electrical substation. Right next to the china one.
Look through the fence and you can see these people (most likely) have 10+ cat shacks full of very fat cats.
Now I will let you come to your own conclusion.
But for me I will say this goes hand in hand with the other reviews of illness and grease (grease masks anything.)
For those not understanding: your eating farmed and slaughtered cats. Not chicken. Don’t believe me?
Go look for yourself. It’s right behind their store.

From what is seen from the outside, it seems like a good Chinese place to eat, but once inside (after ordering) the place takes on a whole new (and bad) persona.
Food is terribly overcooked, overpriced and the restaurant is hardly clean (something I tend to overlook if the food is good. Save your money and go to Safeway for the box (microwave) Chinese food in the frozen section.

This place is my favorite chinese take out place they are quick and neat my food is always cooked to perfection and never gets my order wrong i hope they stay this way. Staff is always friendly

If you want a stomach ache and possible food illness you definitely want to come grab you a nice hot meal from Chine One.
My experience:
As I was finished ordering my food, I usually look into kitchens at restaurants where they’re available to look into. The horror I saw as I attentively watched the sweaty dirty looking chef stick his visibly dirty grimy greasy unknown substances hand in water and splash it on the wok to steam the rice, he then went to the bathroom, with no gloves, and came back to handling the food, again with NO GLOVES, I’m almost 100% confident, that by his lack of tasteful appearance as someone who’s suppose to be around food all day, that he didn’t even bother to wash his hands thoroughly. I ordered peppersteak, first they threw it in the container sloppily, so the woman who was around at the time picked tongs up that was laying on RAW CHICKEN, to adjust smash down and fit the food in to the container. When I ask if she used tongs that was sitting on raw chicken to handle my food with, she played dumb like «huh…huh…yea.um…» I repeated «was that raw chicken» she says «yes».
All in all you’re looking for problems if you decide to eat here after reading this. Who cares if your food tastes really good if it’s being handled disgustingly. This is only what I saw, imagine what there is that you can’t see. It’s safe to say after this I walked out with my refund and enjoyed some Panera Bread.
China One should be investigated by the food board professionals. Seriously thinking about making calls to make that happen. The one star they do have is bc Unilocal hasn’t changed it to where businesses receive NO STARS.

Ratchet. This place is seriously ratchet inside and out. They should name this place Ratchet One. The tables are sticky and the bathroom is unsanitary. The walls look like they are coated in grease and I cannot step out of there without smelling or feeling like I’m covered in grease.
My mother loves this place because she use to eat there when she worked near there. I took her to China One for lunch and I regret stepping inside. I have to admit the chicken was mediocre, but it was so greasy I could not handle it. I’m just not a fan of grease, as you can tell.

This place could have easily gone to three or four stars if I had just stuck to the egg rolls and crab meat Rangoon, but I unfortunately had to ordered the chicken cashew dish which was bland and lacking in flavor. I did love their egg rolls and Rangoon, for both had a slightly sweet finish; however, my entrée was so bland that I was forced to immediately doctor it up with spices and hot sauce as soon as I got it home. In the end, even with my Steve Austin Six Million Dollar Man surgery, («We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.»), I really couldn’t save this dish.
Another bummer about this place was that they forgot to include my sodas. Luckily, I caught this before I drove off. It’s not the end of the world, but it does support the theme of mediocrity which seems to plague this spot. However, I might still stop in for an egg roll, for they did seem to get that right.

Ordered chow mein and received chop suey. There were zero noodles! How in the world do you get that wrong? Tried to eat the dish they presented as ‘chow mein’ and it tasted like soggy chunks of veggies in a bath water sticky broth. No flavor, no texture, just plain disgusting. STAY FAR AWAY!!!

Great place, i’ve been coming here for years.
Cheap, great portions.
You will not be dissapointed.
Get the number one!
For some real deep fried chicken.

Don’t let the hole in the wall appearance fool you, this is the real deal! Generous portions, reasonably priced, cooked to order! Delicious! Hot! Fresh! I highly recommend this authentic Chinese food GEM!!!

I didn’t like the food and found the restaurant incredibly dirty. ½ Chicken parts were being held in a tub, un-​refrigerated on a shelf close to the floor located under the fryer. This prompted me to look up this restaurants VA inspection reports which are available online at the VA Department of Health Website:
VA Department of Health Inspection Report:
The web also contains reports of prior critical food inspection violations:
TO FILE A COMPLAINT, CALL THE VIRGINIA HEALTH DEPARTMENT COMPLAINT LINE: Main number 703−246−2411 or file a complaint online.
This restaurant’s food safety compliance needs to be enforced.

Roommate got food poisoning here.

Gross. I wasn’t so worried until I left and saw a kid waiting to rob the place.
I watched him and he ran off. Never going back– ever.

I’ve gotten take-​out from here over a dozen times, almost never straying away from the chicken wings + rice combo. I agree with the reviewer who mentioned that the wings are stained an unusual yellow color, which was off-​putting at first, but they taste fine and stay crispy.
I got General Tsos once, and it was THE WORST I’ve ever had. The batter had gone soggy, and the sauce was super gloopy (too much cornstarch). The sauce tasted like ketchup + vinegar + sugar. Not good at all, and I ended up making the accompanying rice my dinner.
I’ve had a few of the «specialty» dishes… Can’t remember the names, but one was a mix of different meats and seafood (something with «treasures» in the name). That and whatever else I’ve tried were unmemorable, not that I expect a lot from Chinese take-​out places… But they really were «blah.» I just remember everything swimming in watery sauce.
Oh, almost forgot to mention that maybe 2 weeks ago, I ordered a pint of vegetable lo mein. It wasn’t just vegetables in my noodles– I found a nice strand of black hair as well! Yum.

China 1, in my opinion, is in the bottom rung of take out places here along Route 1 in Alexandria. What keeps this place in business has got to be the convenience and the General Tso’s chicken. Other than that, this place has no redeeming virtues and is a sorry excuse for Chinese cuisine.
Usually places like this get the easy foods like fried rice and egg rolls right. After a bout with their Chicken fried rice, I realized volume, rather than culinary merit is what keeps this place going. Good Chinese Chefs do not screw up fried rice – in fact it is near impossible. China 1 makes the impossible possible in this case.
Prices are right in line with the other take out places like Eastern and Hong Kong Kitchen. In my opinion, try the aforementioned places first before resorting to this place.
I know that this place has a great following and I am sure that the owner is grateful. But this is a lousy place for Chinese food. Take it from me and my 10+ years in the American-​Chinese restaurant business.

I had to take away a star … last time I went here I was sick for a day.

Szechuan Bean Curd is spicy and generous. Their «chow foon» isn’t flat wide noodles but angel hair thin Singapore Rice Style noodles. Most unusual fried chicken wings. I believe they mix turmeric in the thin batter, because the meat is stained almost a curry gold color. Extremely meaty as well, and fried hard and crisp, not soggy. The Ore Ida fries are cooked too low, so they’re not nearly as crisp. No mambo sauce, but a spicy szechuan sauce instead.
And if you think this place isn’t the cleanest, you’ve never been to Hong Kong Kitchen.

Got some takeout there tonight. Overall not bad. Much better than eastern takeout.

Confirming they have bangin general tsos. A little tricky to find, it’s in the back of the shopping center, behind home depot & staples near petsmart.

I used to live very close to this restaurant (less than half a mile), and I could call, place an order, and by the time I got there it would be ready. I don’t think I was ever quoted more than 10 minutes before it would be ready for pickup, and the only waiting I would do is in line behind others picking up take-​out.
By far, this chinese restaurant has the BEST General Tso’s Chicken. This is a serious review, I order General Tso’s Chicken at every single chinese restaurant I go to at least once, to see how they compare. There is no comparison, of the 15−20+ chinese restaurants I’ve tried in the DC area and in FL, this one has the best General Tso’s Chicken. It’s the perfect mix of sweet and spicy, and not bland or vinegary like many I have had. I found myself, and still do find myself now, craving this dish (I feel like an addict at times!). I live 30 minutes away now, with many chinese restaurants close to me, and I still order from them. Everyone I’ve introduced to it has agreed this dish is great (at least 6 people).
The «Chef’s specialty» General Tso is plenty for two servings, I usually would have it for dinner one day then lunch the next, and sometimes dinner the next day too. The «Combination platter» General Tso’s Chicken is a smaller portion of the chicken, comes with white rice or fried rice, and an egg roll. Sometimes that lasts two servings too.
I just can’t rave enough about this dish.
Aside from General Tso’s Chicken, I have had the beef lo mein, the egg drop soup, wonton soup, beef with brocoli, and crab rangoon. The crab rangoon is good but not the best I’ve had, beef with brocoli is alright (nothing to write home about, but my girlfriend loves it), my girlfriend says the wonton soup is better than average, and the others are generic and really are hard to mess up, it’s what you’ve had at every other chinese restaurant.
I have eaten in at this restaurant only a couple of times, primarily because I lived so close I might as well order it for takeout and eat at home, but also because the atmosphere is a bit warm (between the burners going in the kitchen which is readily visible and the poor AC), and also because there are often some shady people in there eating. This is an unfortunate consequence of location (the Route 1 area south of the beltway is just kinda shady).
Anyways, if you go here and you like a little spice (it’s never been too spicy) then try the General Tso’s chicken. If I’m wrong about this feel free to review it yourself, but if you are doing that make sure to try other chinese restaurants first, then compare it to here!