China Mia

This place is under new management and is now called «China AAA» instead of «China Mia». They’re cash only (even after being around for enough time to acquire a credit card reader) and their buffett food looks crazy greasy… but decent. I’d give them a 2.5 if Unilocal allowed halfsies, but I’ll push it to a 3 because they are really nice and aim to please.
The only thing I’ve eaten from here is their sesame orange chicken with white rice. Their rice is the standard, steam-​cooked white rice that you get everywhere and it wasn’t bad… neither was their chicken… it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.
The chicken was a little dry (but not bone dry, just not awesomely juicy) and weirdly stringy, what didn’t stop my from chowing down on it was the sauce. It’s tangy, citrusy and strangely sweet than the sesame orange sauce that I am used to, but it was also weirdly hard to put down, could also be because I was absolutely starving that day.
Employees here are super friendly nonetheless and service is quick, efficient and portion sizes are pretty generous. As someone noted below me, English is certainly not their first language here… but you’re in Jackson Heights and that’s the beauty of the neighborhood, lucky for me I speak fluent Español-​o, but I’m SOL with the Chinese folks here — but they are fluent enough to communicate with me when we discuss food, lol.
There is a lot of diversity and between the Latin places, Indian places and Thai places most of their employees are native to their respective parts of the world and what they all share in common is being able to cook yummy, inexpensive food.
The «cash only» thing here is a real downer for me sometimes, but I suppose it’s not the end of the world. I won’t go out of my way to come here, but on a late evening I’ll pop in for some cheap and easy noms. Wouldn’t call for delivery though, I’d call «Asia Restaurant» on 88^th and Roosevelt instead.

Oh Unilocal,why don’t you allow NEGATIVE stars???
If you ever wondered just how HORRIBLE a delivery experience could be; order from here.
To start: we have NEVER had the food from here before. Eat in, take away, or delivery. Completely clean slate to start with!
The chef special teriyaki chicken w/​white rice and the General Tso’s combination plate was all we ordered as delivery from their place on 82^nd and Roosevelt to us on 86^th and 37^th ave. five blocks folks, just five blocks away.
Ten minutes after we ordered, my phone rang to let us know they were OUT of egg rolls tonight. What? Can they send spring rolls instead? Sure I said.
3 calls from the delivery guy later and me calling the restaurant after an HOUR wait, proved this much:
The delivery guy is not hardly able to speak English. (I’m thrilled we have so many immigrants who want to live and work here, but knowing the language is a big part of doing that successfully.) He was also unable to read a map it seems since he was one ave off at the first call and still lost 20 mins later. He also couldn’t hear the door being buzzed open while I was on the phone with him saying «I’m buzzing you in now. Try the door.» over and over and over…
The guy apologized at the door, but I politely acknowledged it and shut the door.
So once the bag was opened… No white rice whatsoever for my teriyaki chicken. I had to find some in the cabinet to cook. That defeats the purpose of take out, right?
We got two spring rolls in place of the one egg roll. They taste ok, but my husband quickly saw they have mushroom in them. As I’m allergic, he got to have both. We suspect they were bought as opposed to made.
My chicken is nearly bone dry, tough to chew, and covered in what amounts to a horrific sweet paste. I’ve had better teriyaki from a jar. The fried rice was, we agree, acceptable if eaten completely by itself.
As for my husband’s General Tso’s chicken: he said it tastes like mine, but with different sauce. The texture was mostly soft, but stringy. The taste was actually spicy (which he likes), but certainly off from the majority he has had. He prefers the others by far. The sauce is nothing special and the serving size was as expected. He still wants to try the buffet options in the place itself, but based on this he thinks the buffet is the point. Delivery isn’t what they should be doing!