Rice Bowl

I was a bit concerned after having seen some of the negative reviews here, but my husband and I love all things vintage and really wanted to try the Rice Bowl. We went on a Saturday for lunch. The restaurant was vintage 1940’s perfection and was very clean. The service was great and the food was excellent! We had the mushroom chow mein and vegetable fried rice. Both were very fresh and tasted homemade. We took tons of photos and our server told us some of the history of the place. It was amazing! If you love and care about preserving our history, by all means go and find this wonderful little gem and give them some business. If this place was in L.A. there would no doubt be a line around the block just to get in. It would also be an amazing filming or photo shoot location. It is a beautiful piece of the past, perfectly preserved. We loved it.

Best Chinese food in Lompoc. Some of the best fried rice I’ve ever had. There’s more meat and vegetables than rice, which is remarkable. I’ve never seen that before. Lovely environment and friendly staff.

Let me just start off by saying, I cannot get enough of this place! I moved to Lompoc about three months ago and I was craving some Chinese food. I thought okay I’m in little Lompoc I’m not going to find some good Chinese food like in San Jose. Boy was I wrong! I didn’t find good, I found GREAT Chinese food! Home cooking kind of Chinese food. I was in shock by their egg rolls, their size of their food for only $ 10. After eating there a couple of times now, I have come to know the family who owns it. The thing is they are amazing too! And what’s not to love walking into a place and thinking you have stepped into a time warp?! If only their jukeboxes worked :(for all of those 1 stars the place might have changed, because food was not greasy, no gelatinous food here. I will definitely keep on coming back here! To bad I can’t give ten stars!

Go for the amazing décor, the friendly and informative chef, but alas not for the food. I got giant greasy boring eggrolls and egg foo yung and my friend got orange chicken. We agreed it was the worst food we had ever eaten.

The Chinese food here is excellent. The décor is 1950’s. We have also tried their steak, which is good, but no Hitching Post. Their egg rolls are good and Unique– unlike other egg rolls I have ever had. The service is congenial, but can be slow. The Chinese Food is scrumptious, and deserved 5 stars. At our last visit, we encountered a family having … burgers and fries. They said that they’re the best in town. Grind their meat fresh each morning, and make the fries from potatoes, not out of a bag of frozen.

WOW! So horrible… Quantity was huge… Was incorrect on what we ordered… Flavor was sub par… Expect to pay twice as much as you should. Will not ever go again or recommend to others! Thumbs down!

I don’t know how some people can give to this place more than 2 starts. The food is horrible. It taste funny. I was afraid to get sick. I just ate little bit and I left the plate.
The dish presentation it also disgusting. Greasy food. Don’t waste your time and money.

Came to Lompoc for work and found this place by accident! Serendipity! The décor, the food. all great like the other reviews say, but what sets it above everywhere else is the service. Friendly, attentive, and accomodating (we had a time crunch). Also, this restaurant is old but CLEAN! My family is in the restaurant biz so I know what to look for… and this owner cares for his place! I will be back!

This was our first visit and we really enjoyed it. The servings are gigantic :) and delicious. The service was good and the décor was authentic. The only thing bad about this place was the guy that smelled like he had not showered in a month that sat in the booth behind us. Give this place a try:)

We are new to the area and looked up another place near the Rice Bowl that turned out to be closed down already. We saw the signs and thought «Chinese and American food? Let’s give it a try». I should have know the minute we walked in on a Saturday night @7, there was no customers, but we decided to go ahead and try it. The décor is horrific, the Koa fish pond and tank were green and slimy and the hostess/​waitress/​busser/​counter girl seem disinterested.
She said to seat yourself and came over to us almost right away. (kudo’s for one part being prompt) We got our menus and ordered our drinks. we ordered our food and then waited. The Pepto Bismal color through out the place was nauseating. Once the food came, the real nausea began.
I ordered beef broccoli, fried rice and egg roll. The only good thing was there was a lot of food… OMG. The fried rice was dark brown, the eggroll was the size of a tamale and the beef broccoli was greasy. My son’smedium rare steak was well done and the waitress drop my husband eggroll. All the food had an old oil taste to it. On top of that, we paid with a credit card and got charged 4 dollars for it. This is the worst experience i have ever had. If anyone out there wants to try this place out to see for yourself… DON’T…It’s not worth the stomach ache

Not what you might be expecting: if you’re lookin for great street style Chinese food like Chinese people make this is the place for you but if you want panda go there. The egg rolls are huge and made in a fry bread rather than a wrapper. So good! I love to have one with the fried rice.

We actually LIKE the décor. It’s retro and friendly… not slick and modern and cold. It would be nice however, if they cleaned the fish tank and remodeled the bathrooms, but the rest of the place was pretty cool.
The portions are huge, the fried rice was unlike anything I’ve ever had before… not the usual rice and scrambled eggs you get in other places, but this had bean sprouts and all sorts of yummy things in it.
Yes, the food IS a bit on the greasy side, as others have mentioned, but it wasn’t that bad overall, and was tasty and made to order.
It’s also a bit on the pricey side.
What everyone needs to be aware of is the addition of a fee of about $ 2.00 and up, depending on the price of the check. If you pay with a debit or credit card, there is this extra fee levied. We were not told about it until we got ready to pay the bill, and the waitress informed us of it, and she seemed deeply embarrassed about the whole thing. Evidently this is restaurant policy, and you don’t know until AFTER you’ve eaten and are getting ready to pay.
So be aware of this!

The owners of this restaurant are wonderful and friendly. I give them 5 stars! The food, however, is greasy and the restaurant is dingy. The egg rolls and vegetarian rice bowl dripped with grease. The fried rice is quite non traditional (sweet and smoky) and very good, which is why I give the restaurant 3 stars, rather than 2.

Ok. So I got the LD on this place from the original owner’s grand son. Grand daddy opened it in 1946 after coming back from being a 2 star general’s aid in the old WWII — after he heroically saved the generals life, but that is a longer story. The current location is the third and contains pieces from the two previous locations. The family still runs the place and they live upstairs.
The food. The menus are confusing as hell, but they take care of you. A «small» is two meals for a normal person — but if you are a fatty mc fatty, order a large and eat for four before you cry yourself to sleep at night. I did not order a steak, but dude (grandson) told me they were 16 oz. Apparently, they opened up back in Camp Cook days and used to have people lined up around the street when there were 3 restaurants in town. Now most people to take away — although I don’t see why cause inside is tiiiiight. Anyway, tons of fresh vegetables, not MSG loaded fast food crap. They make it right then and there too. I went standard with Gen Tso, and it was great — not like that mall crap, and Kate got Kung Pao shrimp that was loaded with vegetables and delicious. I am going rouge next time and just going for it. It might seem expensive, but it is a lot of food. Two people, split a small and talk to owner man about the history of Lompoc.

It’s a friendly dive. Every time we go here, the owner delights us with stories about his family while his parents work hard in the kitchen. I love walking into a 1960s time warp and eating off of vintage diner plates. There are Chinesey decorations, too. I don’t think this place would nearly be so fun if they updated it. The neon sign outside is exciting, if you ask me.
Don’t expect perfection. It’s not Chinese haute cuisine. They’ve been cooking the same stuff since 1946 in various locations around Lompoc. They are happy to customize your order. Rice on the side, less sauce, extra spicy. The fortune cookies are always fresh. The service is fast. The wontons are made fresh there. The side of stories is free for the asking. Think I might hit this place up for lunch. (If you don’t get a story, it’s because you didn’t ask the guy to tell you anything. I’m often surprised that people do not treat restaurant workers as people. This guy is a gem.)
The LA Times featured a Chinese restaurant (Paul’s Kitchen) in the old Chinatown by the former Santa Fe railroad station that still serves the early version of Americanized Chinese food that seems to be in the same vein as this place. See that article here:

This is by far one of the worst Chinese places I have been to in my 23 years of life. My fiancé and I decided to give it a try despite the outdated look. We shouldn’t have. We ordered simple dishes and received plates that were totally unsatisfactory in regards to plating and taste. PICK ANOTHER PLACE! Soggy fried shrimp, burnt fried rice and terrible chow mein.

The cook was very nice. Store smelled funny when u first walked in. This place was supposedly famous for fried rice. I ordered the rice bowl house special fried rice. The portion was a lot for fried rice but for 14 dollars. Also I ordered the Kung pao chicken. Here comes the bad part. Kung Pao chicken tasted pretty plain. Lots of grease for the fried rice. The meat tasted funny (beef, chicken, shrimp). Those meat did not taste fresh and had funny smell. Sorry to write this but for 30 dollars worth of food I expected more.

This is the worst Chinese food I have ever had!!! Everything was fried and greasy! The fried shrimp was a small piece of a shrimp covered in dough! It was over priced and we threw it out! The owner was rude and when we handed him a credit card to pay $ 45 for ‘dinner for three’ — he told us he had to tack on $ 4 for the bank processing of the credit card! $ 49 for horrible food!

I love this place. We’ve been going for 40 years. Lunch specials are not to be believed! My absolute favorite is the B Bowl (order a small for 3 people!). Orange chicken is not your everyday Panda Express fried mess, here’s it’s made with real oranges and diced chicken pieces. Amazing. Why this place isn’t packed everyday is beyond me. Service is kinda slow which might explain it but EVERYTHING is totally made from scratch so I understand. Love the Rice Bowl!

We wanted to grab lunch in Lompoc and drove by the Rice Bowl. It had a great retro look to it and I figured it was the kind of chow mein house that I grew up with. Americanized Chinese food that was not authentic, but still full of flavor and has it’s own unique menu items and good tastes.
It was retro and the inside could have been a movie set from 1960. It made me a little nervous to see how empty it was at noon on a Saturday. I noticed all the fish tanks had not been cleaned and they all had dirty, dirty water and full of green slime.
I ordered a sweet and sour pork. Seemed like a safe and easy bet. Both the pork and my eggs rolls had a bitter taste to them. I then recognized that they fried both items in old and dirty oil that left a filmy taste in your mouth.
I did not finish my meal as it tasted so oily and filmy. They still charged me and did not apologize or seem to care.
We left and stopped for fast food on the way out of town. I need something to get the horrible taste out of my mouth!