Peking China Chinese Restaurant

Restaurant closed

Just have to say., rating a chain Asian restaurant against a family owned place. really? It’s silly, come’on.
During my first experience here it was cold inside I must have been their first customer of the day. My first thought was to run out, I dislike eating in rooms without temperature relative to outside temperature. The restaurant is small, but they filled it with Chinese inspired décor. The room is wrapped with a dragon laced border in red, gold, blues and green. Walls in a beige white Victorian like wallpaper, the insignias are felt to the touch. Plenty of fake trees and shrubs to give the room a softened feeling, a more homely eating experience than in a typical fast food place. Chairs are your typical Chinese restaurant style (wooden) with a stencil of birds at play, burgundy colored chairs; I pulled myself a seat and the top portion of the chair splat comes off in my hand. Yikes!
Moving along I ordered off the Korean — Chinese menu. That was the draw for me, I was driving through the neighborhood looking for something different, when my eyes caught the Korean writing on the front of the restaurant. It read «jja jang myun», typically if you find a place serving black noodle, more than likely they would also offer (hot and spicy chicken) aka Gan pong ki or Gan pong chicken. Their Jja jang myun was okay, you mix it up on your own and I noticed there were a couple large bites of butterflied shrimp in the sauce; that was a nice surprise. A detail not often found in «black noodle». Although, I was thinking the whole time I could’ve made this at home, why am I paying for it here? Are you wondering about the hot and spicy chicken? It was terrible, best description would be chicken wings in a honey sauce. I bagged it and gave to friends whom I know would eat it, they’ll eat anything actually and they loved it. The place offers Mandarin and Szechwan styles of food. Never realized how much of a problem this is when a customer walks in without knowledge of the differences of the three cuisines Cantonese, Mandarin and Szechwan. Like this afternoon the problems the server had with explaining to these elderly customers that Cantonese food was not served here. Hence the dish they asked for is not offered. It was something these customers could not understand, replying. «It’s all Chinese food anyway? Just make it.»
For the local that hasn’t got a clue what really good Asian food is, they might dig it. If you are like me and willing to drive to get what your taste buds desire. it’s not here.

Very decent place for Chinese food — not the greatest décor, but staff seems friendly enough and food quality is quite good: sweet & sour chicken is good, especially since they separated the chicken and the sauce in separate containers (I got take out); fried rice was okay, as it was standard fare stuff, though it didn’t have enough vegetables, but then again it was beef fried rice; and the Mongolian beef was quite decent, though its nothing like PF Chang’s, and the noodles for the MB was on the bottom and not in a separate container (my little peeve). This definitely warrants at least another visit since the food I ordered was very well cooked especially since I was the last order of the night, and it didn’t get me sick, unlike a certain nearby greasy spoon which their pizza gave me «gangreen of the stomach» in Des Plaines (ahem).
Anyhoo, place is no PF Chang’s, but way better than your friendly neighborhood Chinese food franchise; worth a stop.
One more thing — its in a small strip mall, so parking is a bit limited, but you can park in the street too. Parking in the lot across the street is not advisable due to crossing-​the-​street dangers.
Update — place is closed… probably health violations more so than economic hardship. Won’t be missed.