Copper Penny Chinese Food & Hamburger

This place is awful … In fact kinda scary like if you ate at three places for breakfast lunch and dinner and then later felt sick you KNEW it had to be the meal you had here. You end up walking in waiting in these ripped up chairs and picking from a menu that is basically mcdonalds with no assurance of health code. Bright side is the food is really cheap!

I’ve been coming to this place since I was 5. The décor hasn’t changed much, but if you’re just looking for a basic hamburger or ice cream sundae, this is the spot. I always order their burger combo. Hamburger, fries and a drink. And the lady is still as nice as ever.
The place has been around since the 70’s, so there has to be a reason it’s still open. If you’re expecting New York flair or San Fran fab, then book a flight. All you’ll get here is old fashioned hamburger with a smile.

This place has cheap snowballs. I don’t eat here though. Just the snowballs, when they are out of season everywhere else.
The lady that runs the place is nice and friendly.

alright so the crack house comments completely true dead bodies under the register possible…
lets see the cheese is not even real, ketchup watered down i really feel like my bowels are going to explode
we had to pay for our cokes twice although the food is cheap you will find having a hobo dig some patties out of the trash and making you a burger will be more satisfying oh and to top it all off i got a fortune cookie with my burger and it was very stale… what kind of fortune am i to expect…

i’ve only had the shrimp fried rice… huuuge portion and very, very good… and served piping hot
the other reviews are making me think twice about trying anything else… even the burgers, but i’m sure one day i will try one just because it’s a little over 2 bucks… i’m giving this a 4 because i think the 1.5 stars is unfair… this shrimp fried rice is 20 times better than happy all café, which for some reason has houston press awards hanging all over the place — and the food there ranges from inedible to absolutely inedible, and i’ve just about tried everything in hopes to find something worth buying
at copper penny, the chinese guy is super nice, and since this place is the family living, then people should at least go for the fried rice if all the other food sucks… fried rice is my staple for cheap, fast (and sometimes hangover) food… i am going back for it, that’s for sure

Chinese Food and Hamburgers? Sounds like a San Francisco thing! The only thing missing is Doughnuts!
This place is rinky dinky. It’s on a corner and when you pull up to the place, it looks like a closed down mobil station. As you walk in, the ordering window/​counter is to the right. There is one table to the left and a few chairs against the wall. This is definitely a take-​out place.
The owner lady was really sweet. She talked my ear off! I was craving greasy americanized Chinese food so I ordered Shrimp Fried Rice and Sesame Chicken.
The fried rice was really good and the portion was pretty big. The Sesame Chicken was good, but the portion was small. Instead of the entrée being in its own container, Copper Penny serves the entrée in the same place as the rice. I was hoping to get steamed rice with my entrée since I already ordered the Shrimp Fried Rice… so I was disappointed that their default entrees come with the standard veggie fried rice.
This place is pretty much run down, old, small but the customer service is great and their fried rice is good. Totally conveniently located for me. Oh yea, this place even serves fresh fruit drinks… the owner lady gave me a watermelon drink on the house… she said it will help with my digestion after eating the heavy food… the juice was good and it cleaned my palette of the greasy food… maybe that’s their strategy!
I may just try their hamburgers next time… but I’m craving the fried rice right about now…

This place was the shadiest restaurant I’ve ever been to! As Sergio said the place looks like a Crack House but I was willing to look past that and give it a shot because its so close to my house.
I decided to try the Kung Pao Chicken and Cheeseburger Combo just because I kinda already knew that I would never go back. The Kung Pao Chicken was unlike any other I have had. Made mostly of cabbage with a few pieces of chicken and half the container was fried rice. Not terrible, just really not worth eating.
The cheeseburger was the cheapest most generic burger ever. Plain, cold, white bun with a tiny patty and the smallest piece of cheese ever. Fully dressed with too much mayo, pickles, raw onion, and a green unripe tomato.
A complete disappointment, the building was gross, the one guy working was very friendly but did not speak English very well.
Don’t worry, its not some secret hidden gem near the heights. it’s gross, and a waste of time and calories.

So I was hoping to add another fine establishment to my «favorite places that look like crack houses» list, but no – this is just a crack house. Or maybe a drug front? And all of the casualties from the drug war are buried underneath the ordering area where the awful smell resides? So maybe I’ve exaggerated the smell a bit, but it’s pretty damn bad. It’s not the smell of drug war death, but it does kind of smell like a shelter for the sick.
My sister and I braved it and still ordered. We got super combos. Hamburger, fries and a drink. There is also Chinese food on the menu. I won’t be coming back to try it. The whole thing is shady, but it didn’t stop me from laughing at the bizarre nature of the place while we waited a really long time for our food.
Bizarre how? There is seating available, yet there is a sign (handwritten) in English and Spanish that says take your stuff to go. The sign may be outdated, because we were asked if we were eating in. Another humorous thing is the size of the raspa we ordered and the fact that they have raspas. If the Guiness Book of World Records has a an entry for smallest raspa – Copper Penny might just steal the prize. On the upside, it’s pretty damn tasty – so quality over quantity?
Overall, the food was maybe o.k. – but this isn’t one of those hidden gems that Houston scatters about town. You can feel free to judge this book by its cover!