Sampan Inn

I especially enjoy the fresh rolls every time I go. Some of my favorites include the futomaki and the crab tempura rolls.
On my last visit I tried the special — Kimchi fried rice with chicken. It was superb! And I am someone who is very picky about fried rice. The kimchi was very tender and flavorful, but did not overpower the dish with spiciness.
Our server, Melissa, was attentive and efficient.
Winston, the manager, stopped by our table to ask how everything was. He is a most cordial fellow.
Altogether a very enjoyable experience.
I have confidence in their cooking, and the menu is large. Enjoy!

This used to be the best Chinese fare in the area, but in past couple years has gone downhill. We have stopped ordering from there after repeatedly being served curry with stale (maybe old frozen) peas, common dishes that lack flavor and spice, bad broccoli, and just getting food that doesn’t remotely resemble the fantastic cuisine that initially earned them a solid reputation.
Hopefully, things turn around and someone tells me about it, but we’re tired of ordering and being disappointed time and time again.

Veggie tempura, Mexican maki and Vietnamese roll were delicious! Definitely going back for more.

Our go to place for sushi. ‘Can’t beat it. Excellent for Japanese, but also has Chinese, which is great if you go with someone who doesn’t like sushi.

One of the few Chinese restaurants I will go to. The one man who always seems to be there, maybe the owner, is nice. I’ve never been disappointed and have been there at least ten times.

The wait staff seemed miserable. The price for two came to around $ 30 and included soup, appetizers, entrees, and dessert all of which were 3 stars. But the server seemed disinterested and annoyed by each interaction which made the experience unpleasant. Willing to give this place another try with the wall of awards when you walk in. Seems like maybe there is inconsistent service or perhaps the employees were having a rough day.

Love their general tso chicken and wonton soup. I haven’t ventured to other items off the menu… So not the most thorough review, but those two items are delicious.

Will never eat here again! Found a cooked insect in the Singapore Noodles. YUCK! The manager was indifferent to my concern and disgust. Would post pictures if I could. Only eat there if you like bugs in your food.

Good meal, good price, the owners we credited with healthier cooking. I’ve been eating here for years. Go to staple for a good meal.

I wrote a pretty bad review a few years ago for Sampan, which had once been a great local Chinese restaurant. It has remained fair for the last few years, and we would try it off and on hoping for the best. I’m writing this update because we ordered carry-​out Monday night and I have to say the food rated among the best Chinese dinners we’ve had in a long time. Excellent fresh ingredients, shrimp, chicken, plentiful, crisp vegetables in the House Wonton. The best House Fried rice ever, smoky, delicious, and plentiful (the last time we got this it was tasteless mush). Everything else we got was cooked to perfection.
So, congrats Sampan. Did ownership change again, did you get a new chef, are you less frazzled on a Monday night? Whatever it is, please please keep it up.
Thanks!

I went to Sampan Inn with a large group for a birthday dinner a few weeks back. Their menu is quite extensive, for both cooked Chinese dishes and also sushi dishes. They actually have two separate menus, and gave our table of 9 mostly Chinese menus and only 2 sushi menus. After looking through the menus, completely confused for a good 10 minutes, my friend that had been to Sampan before realized we were looking at the wrong menu. We all swapped them out with the server and made our selections.
I wasn’t crazy about the sushi menu. Maybe I am spoiled with the Center City sushi restaurants that a suburban joint just can’t compare.
I do not remember all of our final selections, but I do remember almost everyone at the table got a roll with lump crab on top. Maybe this was a special, because I can’t find it on their menu. It was pretty good, but had a lot of sauce involved, so it was much more of a designer roll than a standard Japanese maki. We also had the mango caviar, this did not leave a lasting impression on me, so I think it is fair to say it was nothing special.
Overall, I guess this is a good place to go if you live near by and need a sushi fix, but there are much better sushi restaurants out there.

Call me crazy, but I think this is my new local favorite. The service is fine and the food is consistent. I have zero complaints. I come here to eat, not to be wowed by something special or unexpected. It’s a nice little gem in a quiet town.

Heavenly.
My fiancé and I walked in half and hour before closing on a Wednesday night, and they received us like royalty. (We were, of course, the only ones there.) Our food was ready 5 minutes after ordering. Despite our coming in so late, they didn’t push us to leave.
My favorite dish from that evening was the calamari. I don’t know what ambrosia they sprinkled on it or what the yellow sauce was that I couldn’t help dipping it in… but it was absolutely amazing.
The atmosphere and décor were lovely too. I could have done without the big-​screen TV, though.

Came here for a Book Club meeting in June. Some of us ordered Chinese and others ordered the sushi/​sashimi. The menu was confusing and they were different from each other. I was not impressed at all. I was happy to see a lot of customers in there on a Wednesday night… good sign of a good restaurant. But it just wasn’t. Service was not friendly at all. Rushed and dismissive.
I ordered the Seafood War Bar. Wasn’t sizzling when it came out. It was supposed to have shrimp, scallops, and lobster. Good amount of shrimp, but they may have been frozen, tiny scallops, and two minuscule pieces of lobster that were probably also not fresh. Good amount of veggies. Sauce was bland. Portion was generous.
The teriyaki looked good (don’t know how it tasted) and my friend said the sushi left much to be desired.
I won’t be back because the prices don’t match the quality.

I used to live on Brooke Line Blvd and it is safe to say I sure had my fair share of Sampan. When my buddy and I first moved there, we were stunned with how amazing the food was. The Chow Mein was delicious, the portions were large and even the sushi wasn’t that bad.
Through the years though, things started getting worse… and I mean A LOT worse.
Something happened to all of their food. It started off when we noticed they were becoming a little bit inconsistent, which is fine… but then they just decided to stay BAD. I have eaten at this place more times than I would like to admit and I can say for sure that someone made an executive decision to downgrade all of their ingredients.
NOTHING is how it used to be. When friends would visit me they would immediately want to order some Sampan. I had to try my best to explain to them what was going on with the restaurant but they couldn’t understand.
Trust me, they understood once when tasted the food and were shocked. No one could believe that this was the same place that we used to always order Chinese from.
The people of Havertown need to realize that there are many more Chinese establishments in the area that still put a little bit of care into their food.

The lovely wife enjoys sushi and I like Chinese so we look for combo places like these folks. Our usual haunt for this type of food is Harusame in Ardmore but last night we choose here and it turned out to be a big mistake.
We rolled in at prime time on a Friday Night and the place was empty. Not a good sign. For drinks I ordered a Mai Tai and the wife a Mango Margarita. Each was $ 5.95 and they weren’t worth .99 cents. It was embarrassing to even see them sitting on our table. They were both watered down junk.
I ordered Egg Drop soup and it was adequate. I followed that with an Egg Roll and it was boring and flavorless. My entrée was Beef with Black Pepper Sauce. It was a very small portion and was meh.
My sushi loving wife ordered Brookline Maki ($ 8.50) and Spicy Uni Maki ($ 7.25). After one bit of each the look on her face was not good. She said the quality of the seafood was very poor and pronounced both dishes to be just barely edible. When we walked out, much of her food was still on the table.
Our waitress for the night was fine.
I’m going to be generous and give them two stars for this disappointing experience.

Impressive, not your average asian joint but average prices! I’d say a hidden gem.
My visit was for takeout but the layout inside appeared interesting and architecturally busy.
Quality: Good fried stuff (calamari, coconut shrimp), i could tell what it was. Taste was fresh, and creatively paired with sauces. Wanton soup was basic and clean.
Service: Prompt, friendly and organized.
Value: Worth every penny, especially the coconut shrimp.
Conclusion: Will return for more, and recommend to others.

Food was very good. I would be happy to eat it again, and again.
The service, however, was poor, on Friday nov. 30. If Unilocal helps give the restaurant feedback, then here it is: we don’t want to have to ask for things two or three times. We’d like some tea with our Chinese food. We don’t want our plates cleared while the last bite is in our mouths. We don’t, in general, want to feel that we are imposing by being in your restaurant.
I realize this is just one waiter, on one day, but that’s when we were there.

I had a doctor’s appointment nearby and decided I’d treat myself to lunch out afterwards. Unilocal reviews led me to Sampan Inn, and they did not steer me wrong. I had the shrimp and veggie tempura bento box lunch special. It cost $ 10 and was enough food for two people, easily! I sadly wasn’t able to finish it all, and you should know that I was starving when I got there.
The meal started with a bowl of miso soup. This was some of the most flavorful miso soup I’ve tasted in quite some time. I usually am pretty «meh» about miso soup but I actually overturned my bowl to get the last drop onto my soup spoon. It was that good.
After the miso, came the bento itself. The food came out fast and was beautifully presented. The tempura was light and – this is a word I have never used in a Unilocal review before – *ethereal*. Not greasy, just crunchy and delicate. It came with four decent-​sized shrimp and a selection of eggplant, sweet potato, green beans, and mushroom tempura. Delightful!
The bento comes with house salad and California roll. Both were truly taken to the next level. The carrot-​ginger dressing on the salad was scrumptious. And the California roll, which is usually such a pedestrian little morsel, boasted toothsome, well-​seasoned sushi rice, melt-​in-​your-​mouth avocado, and perfect nori. I would love to come back here just for a sushi dinner.
The service was just a little disorganized (I had to ask for chopsticks and for a soy sauce dish), but very warm. If you go here, make sure to sit in the much more beautiful part that is up a short flight of stairs and to the left.

You know, by far this might wind up being the weirdest place I have ever reviewed. Part of me doesn’t really know which way to go with it. I’ll explain.
I’ll just get the downside out of the way right now. Don’t come here expecting great service. They just don’t seem to care if you’re there or not. Now, they’re not openly mean or anything, and maybe it was because they were busy. I don’t know. But they just don’t seem to be on the ball. From walking into the room and not being shown a seat (which is no big deal but it’s awkward if you are a first timer), to waiting a good while to get a menu, to waiting even longer to get our order taken, to getting our soup before we even had silverware, to not getting any complimentary crispy noodles with duck sauce while other tables did, to actually getting an eye roll from the waitress when I asked for a water refill (after waiting quite a while just to get their attention), something just overall isn’t right.
Also, as many have mentioned, the layout is just odd. You walk into a very average decorated Chinese restaurant, and if you choose, you can go up the steps and eat in a far nicer Japanese themed room. It’s almost like they’ve created a have and have not atmosphere. If you wind up sitting on the boring side, you might feel cheated.
On top of all this, another weird quirk, my wife and I got two completely different menus. I got the all Japanese menu with no Chinese options whatsoever, while my wife got the Chinese menu. We had to switch just to see the other choices.
Just a lot of awkward things going on here.
Now, time to get past all of this. Because I think I know what’s going on here. They don’t have to have great service apparently. Because they know. Oh yes, they know.
They know that once you have the food, you’ll come back no matter what.
The Coconut Shrimp appetizer is nothing short of fantastic! I wanted to order 4 more… and I mean 4 more full plates of it, not just 4 more shrimp after we finished.
The wife decided to try the General Tso’s Chicken after seeing great Unilocal reviews on it, and even though she doesn’t always like General Tso’s, she loved it here. My taste of it confirmed that it is quite tasty.
I went for three special sushi rolls. The Amazing Tuna Maki had three types of tuna in it, topped with a pepper tuna. The Pink Lady came out wrapped in crab leg meat. And they had a special Lobster Salad roll that had Shrimp Tempura inside, and lobster salad on top. Each one of these rolls had a special flavor, and was something creative I never had anywhere else. As some have said, they’re not always rolled as tight as they should, which provides a challenge. But the rice seems softer and better steamed than most places. It’s a trade off.
The food was good enough that I decided to keep them at 4 stars on that basis alone. Just don’t come here expecting anything more than good food.