Forbidden City Express

Sesame Chicken is awesome. Great veggie dumplings — Very good food. Super fast delivery. They care about quality. McLean prices for sure — worth it — you can tell by the way the food tastes — good ingredients = great Chinese.

The sesame Chicken is the best thing here!!! Lo mein and beef with broccoli are also good but the sesame chicken is amazing. Crispy but sweet, it’s what makes me come back here almost twice a month.

Just had their double cooked pork lunch special, and don’t recommend it. The pork was cut too thick, and had a weird soft unpleasant texture. The mouth feel of the pork was unpleasant to the point where I picked out the meat and just ate the vegetables. The rice was ok. I also had a side order of egg rolls, which were barely adequate — the filling was almost entirely sliced cabbage with one piece of shrimp. Despite the uninspired filling, the eggrolls were freshly and nicely fried. All in all, I don’t think I’d bother going back. If I did, I’d definitely stick to a vegetable dish.

We always enjoy our meals from Forbidden City. We’ve been eating from this business and its predecessor restaurant for more than 10 years. It’s run by a very nice gentleman and his family. He is always courteous and remembers customers. It has made our hard to please family very loyal.
Favorite dishes include: crispy shredded beef in spicy sauce, steamed dumpling, hot and sour soup, general tsao’s chicken.

Repeat customer. Best dumplings around this area in my opinion. Also has small dining room with 3 tables near window for those who wish to dine-​in but most of their business is carry out I am guessing by the «Express» in their name. Anyway, glad I found this place through a mailing.

Best Chinese place around! The family that owns it also works there, and they are all so nice! They remember me and my usual! Lol I am addicted to the veggie fried rice with tofu, it sounds simple, but it is to die for! I highly recommend this place!

Hit or Miss. There are days the food is amazing then there are days its awful. The lo mein can be a little oily, but still tasty. Its definately one of the better places in McLean.

The pineapple shrimp keeps me coming back. It is crispy fried shrimp with lots of pineapple and a delicious creamy sauce. All the other choices are high quality, but after getting the pineapple shrimp no other menu item can be my entrée.

Nothing great, nothing bad to report. Food is a bit tasteless, but I’ve never ordered Chinese food and had it delivered as quickly as this place. The jasmine tea bags were such a great touch!
We ordered combo lo mein and hunan chicken-​when you see «spicy», think maybe a few dashes of pepper? definitely not spicy at all-​however add some chinese mustard and your own soy/​spices and that mediocre dish was pretty good.
its chinese delivery. my expectations weren’t incredibly high. i’ll definitely order from them again simply due to the convenience of the fast service.

This is your typical Americanized Chinese food. This is mostly for take out, as there only a couple of tables inside.
As of now, I’m only rating this place one one dish. That dish is shredded pork and dried tofu. This dish is not served at most Chinese places. If I see this, then I must order it, as it’s tough to come by.
The dish here was prepared just right. Good flavor and plenty spicy. If I were in McLean more, I would eat here more. Parking sucks so just remember that if you are eating here. The people working here were also friendly.
As for the other dishes, I couldn’t tell you sorry.

I love this place, and the staff. My family went to their old dine-​in restaurant on Old Dominion before they moved, and we still continue to get carry-​out and delivery from these folks. Sweetest family-​owned business. The food is always great and the service is quick and pleasant. Tons of vegetarian options, too. This restaurant has its own place in my heart.

Considering the God awful health department report this place got in March of 2013, I will never eat there again. I paid their high prices bcause every now and again, Chinese food is a treat but there are standards after all.

Awful. Simply no flavor beyond oil. All the dishes tasted the same. Terrible textures. No chance I’ll eat here again.

I keep checking to be sure I ate food from the same place as all the other reviewers here, and I’m really bummed. I was expecting something phenomenal (at least better than Panda Express), and it honestly tasted like they scraped the sesame chicken and lo mein out of a buffet pan and delivered it to my door. The noodles were gummy, meat had zero flavor, and I’m 90% sure the crab rangoons were made for lunch and kept under a heat lamp. I’m seriously disappointed, and at $ 14 for the sesame chicken entrée — I at least hoped I’d want to eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. Perhaps their food was once something to write home about, but this is barely two stars in my book.
If anyone has a great local Chinese place to recommend, please let me know!

Delicious takeout ready within 10 minutes after I order it. The owner is very friendly and recognized me after my second visit – not sure if it was my order or I that was so memorable – he now anticipates that I’ll want chopsticks before I need to ask. I also regularly order the lo mein «with less oil» and it comes out perfectly so that the flavor of the spices, noodles and vegetables really shine through. The wonton soup is particularly noteworthy for being not too-​yellow-​or-​salty, clear and mild, with generous and sumptuous pillows of meat-​stuffed wontons afloat in the delicate broth. My other favorite appetizer-​deliciousness include very hearty egg rolls, lettuce-​wrapped chicken and steamed pork dumplings.
The main dishes are also quite yummy – I typically pick up the half Peking duck, Hunan beef, moo goo gai pan and shrimp with lobster sauce; «pedestrian fare» to some, but these are basic dishes that are too easily and often screwed up, so I tend to judge a place based on their execution of them. The seafood and meat are always high quality and the vegetables are fresh and flash-​cooked to retain their flavor and crunch.
The food is packed in quality plastic, reusable containers, so they’re always still hot and haven’t leaked by the time I get home. Dinner entrees aren’t inexpensive but they’re generously portioned so that we end up with leftovers. High marks all around for great food, served up fast and friendly.

This is the only decent take-​out Chinese place I’ve found near my home. It’s a hole-​in-​the-​wall in a small business park in downtown McLean. The owner, who will be the one to take your order, is very sweet and chatty. He explained that they used to have a sit-​down restaurant a few blocks away, but they had to downsize to a take-​out restaurant when their lease rates went sky high.
I’ve ordered several chicken dishes here, and they’re usually HUGE, fresh, and steaming hot. The kung pao chicken has been the best so far. Their egg rolls and egg drop soup are pretty standard. Note: the egg rolls have shrimp in them (for anyone allergic to shellfish). I’d like to give this place 4 stars, but I’m holding back for a few reasons: 1) the «spicy» dishes are way too mild. I add lots of red pepper flakes when I get home; 2) my General Tso’s chicken I ordered late last night wasn’t as fresh as my other meals have been. I added broccoli, which was little rubbery. The food also came out way too fast and wasn’t very hot, which means it wasn’t cooked to order. At least it had good flavor.
Bottom line: Forbidden City Express is great for a quick Chinese food fix!

I LOVE this chineese food place! Delivery is VERY fast! And it is absolutely the BEST Chinese food in town! Get the crispy vegetarian spring rolls! They are the best! Delivery is super fast and everything arrives still hot! Oh yeah… And they always smile :) Love them!
If you live in McLean… treat yourself to some awesome chineese!

This is the best take out delivery for Chinese in McLean
Fast delivery fresh ingredients very friendly and pleasent service
Food 4
Service 5
Cleniliness 4

I like coming here to pick up a quick Chinese lunch/​dinner. I’ve never waited more than 5 minutes for my food, and the owner is as nice as can be. I always get my food to-​go, because the interior is so tiny (3 tables).
I usually get the Sichuan Chicken Special (LS #1), because it’s so cheap ($ 6) and the portions are so huge. The food is surprisingly good. The special comes with the option of fried or white rice, which comes in a rather large tub. The chicken is not that spicy, considering that it’s called Sichuan, but it’s actual white meat chicken, AND I get enormous cuts of fresh broccoli and bamboo. The meal is very filling, and I don’t feel that gross afterwards. I think they don’t use a lot of MSG, and it’s nice to see they don’t use a ton of corn starch to thicken the sauces. I only noticed because the sauce isn’t congealed into a gelatin substance by the time I’m done eating.
My only complaint is that the food is made so freshly, that the bottom of the styrofoam box is really hot when the order is bagged in plastic. It’s so hot that once when I was carrying the bag to my car, the box burned through the plastic and fell through. Fortunately, none of the food fell out, but I’ve since taken to carrying the food from the bottom, which is a little uncomfortable.

Since moving to McLean, I’ve been on an ongoing search for a decent chinese takeout. My criteria are simple. It shouldn’t be more than $ 10, it should be freshly made and it should be at least somewhat spicy if it fits the dish and I ask for «VERY spicy».
This place is better than all I’ve seen so far. The food wasn’t spicy enough, but the chicken looked to be decent quality and the vegetables were fresh. It wasn’t too oily either. I will definitely try them again.