Chin’s Asia Fresh

Chins definitely give you your money’s worth. I ordered a pad Thai, spring rolls, and cream cheese puffs for under 15 dollars. They give you enough pad Thai for 2 meals, and for 6 dollars that’s definitely worth it. I didn’t think it was super authentic, but everything was tasty. I normally don’t order anything like cream cheese puffs because there’s never enough filling, but chins did a good job of providing enough filling and not too much of the outside part. The spring rolls were really filling but fell apart really easily.

My go to take out place. Always consistent. Always good. I recommend the Mongolian beef stir fry and spring rolls.

We have been searching for a good Chinese restaurant that won’t break the bank. We found it! Chin’s is amazing! 3 of us went out to eat and all got a different dish and upgraded to the vegetable rice. Add 3 drinks and 6 cream cheese wontons and our bill was $ 33. The food was spectacular!

Solid asian food. Not super fancy. Most entrees are around 7.50−8 dollars you will be full after they give you lots of food. Very nice employees too

This is a great spot to get a mix between sit down and fast food type of chinese food! They take your order and then make your food fresh and you have it in no time. I’ve had their version of general tso’s chicken and both times it was great. The chicken is crispy and just perfect the way they do it. I’ve also had their spring roles here as well and they are amazing too. Looking forward to coming here more and trying more of the menu! I love that they also give you a big cup for water!

Good place to stop when you’re really hungry. More food than its next door neighbor chipotle for the same price. Friendly staff and the place is very clean.

Good Asian food at an unbeatable price! Their Chicken Pad Thai is second to none, with heaping portions and great glass noodles. My fiancé ordered the Sichuan Chicken Stir Fry and couldn’t find a single thing she didn’t like about it! Service was quick and friendly. Definitely making this place a regular visit

The employees are always so pleasant and helpful! Excellent food, very clean establishment. It’s hard not to leave with a smile on your face!

I should have read the reviews before stopping in. Greeted by tall Asian looking kid in a White «Beast Mode» T-​Shirt with backwards baseball cap. Not very friendly to start. When asked if I could get a «cold» bottled drink (instead of the warm bottles at the cashier’s stand) he seemed annoyed and said he had to go all the way in back to get it. No one was behind me so not sure of his intentions to let me know he was inconvenienced.
While waiting for my order noticed 3 visibly dirty tables in an empty dining room. T-​Shirt kid went through the dining room after bringing my food to me and walked past each dirty table as least once. 30 mins later tables still dirty but now there are 5 sets of patrons eating in the dining area. How embarrassing. I now notice that the uniform that everyone else is wearing appears to be a black shirt with khakis.
Not very consistent with service or procedures. At least the food was hot when it was brought out. That keeps this from being a 1 star review.
Sorry but this is a perfect example of a manager who doesn’t care what’s happening in the restaurant and has no control.
Doesn’t matter if the food is good, if your restaurant is filthy and the service sucks, I’m sure there are other issues waiting to happen. I will not be back.

Came here for the first time … Ordered sesame chicken which apparently is very spicy though the cashier (after first delivering the wrong food) never mentioned it. I went up to tell them I wasn’t happy that my mouth was burning because it was so spicy and he said okay that will be $ 7.50 for another order without the sauce. I stated that he should tell people that it is spicy and he said «I thought you read the sign.» I decided it was time to leave … I wasn’t paying for a meal twice and getting attitude from this guy. Terrible customer service!

Remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine is on a frozen yogurt kick because she thinks that it’s really healthy but when her pants get too tight has Kramer run a calorie analysis on it only to discover that there are way more calories in it than she thought? I wish I knew Kramer so he could do the same for the Thai curry noodles I just ate from Chins. The website says there are 251 calories in this thing, but there’s no way that’s true. Is it? It tasted like at least 550 calories. Maybe I misread the nutritional statement. After all, at one point in my life I was eating at Taco Bell every week believing the bean burrito had 180 calories only to discover many months later that it was really 180 grams and like 400 calories.
But whatever, who cares. It was pretty decent regardless of the # of calories. The veggies were fresh and crisp and though the two little peppers next to it on the menu board made me believe it was going to be spicier than it was, it was fine; about what you’d expect from a fast casual fusion restaurant. The Thai spring roll though, that was disgusting (and 194 calories if you care).

Husband and I love this place and have never been let down! Food is always delicious, tastes fresh, and is served hot-​never disappoints! The employees have always been nice and polite, so no complaints there either. Our favorite go-​to in Madison!

I don’t where to start. First off, this is a chinese fusion fast food place so any comments that said it is not authentic chinese is accurate but irrelevant. I had the stif fry dish of tofu and vegetable with Shanghai sesame sauce with brown rice. I said with and not over because that is how it was served. The portion was generous & the vege was definitely fresh. So fresh, the carrots were still hard. The pea pods were done right, still has a crunch and no «green» taste to it. The sauce has 2 chiils next to it but it is hardly spicy. More sweet than spicy. So in terms of freshness, I say Chin’s Asia Fresh lived up to its name.
In terms of how good the dish is, there are lots to improve.
1) The tofu used is probably the wrong type. I would have used a softer tofu and flash fried to burn the outside. Keeping the tofu soft will complement the crunchy vege better.
2) the carrots could have been sliced long like the rest of the vege instead of just round discs. If could also be better it was cooked a rat longer or parboiled before frying.
3) ideal vege for the tofu would be black mushrooms or black fungus in place of the carrots and keep everything else.
4) the sauce is not sticking or coating the vegetables and so a thickener would be great.
5) I would serve the stir fry over the rice instead of on the side to make tge presentation nicer.

Unilocaled this place while in Madison for business. Ordered the chicken Szechuan stir fry and the 3 wing (Hunan) app.
Now let me preface this review with the fact that I am from flushing queens and that means I know Chinese food!
The food here was surprisingly fresh the veggies were crisp and tasty. They didnt drown the food in sauce and The rice was good too. I didn’t expect the food to be as good as it was because I didn’t think a franchise could deliver good tasting Chinese cuisine. They did a good job.
I have definitely had better stir fry but this spot came through with a good dish. I would go back if I find myself in this hood again. I’d recommend to give it a try

This is poor quality ingredients in a fast food, order at counter from the wall and they’ll give you a number and bring it to you. Staff was sullen. Noodles were greasy and flavorless as were the spring rolls. Won’t go back. I will say that the place looked clean.

We come here a lot and the food is never consistent. Sometimes it’s really salty. Other times it’s too spicy or not spicy enough. There must be several different cooks because the sauce is never the same either. We still like the adventure of what we may get today. Stop for quick bite on the way home. If you tried it and didn’t like it you may want to try again, you may be surprised at how much better or different the next time may be.
The servers here are friendly enough but some times they difficult to read. Place is not always clean but it’s clean enough. I don’t like the fact that some of the tables are falling apart but there is always customers here so they must be doing something right.

I think the Chin’s story is of the franchise that couldn’t remain consistent in it’s food prep. Hubs and I used to live at the Chin’s on State St. LIVED there our entire undergrad years due to our hole in the wall efficiency apt. being directly across the street from Chin’s, and the fact that they served healthy, fresh, fast food with rice. This was probably the only place doing that back then. The chicken and veggie teriyaki was always my default, as the Szechuan chicken was for hubs — mine was chock full with crisp pea pods, carrots, red and green cabbage, scallion, and light teriyaki sauce. We also loved the Thai peanut lo mein. We were always happy it was actually spicy and the sauce used to coat the noodles was just genuinely good.
We moved to Milwaukee after our rendezvous with the campus life and during our first weeks getting to know the city we saw there was a Chin’s on Oakland Ave and got excited. Yet eating there was like an entirely different experience. The food was horrible! The noodles were overcooked, the peanut sauce used in the peanut lo mein was like an entirely different recipe — the Szechuan was not spiced well at all and my teriyaki no longer had the delicate flavor and the crisp vegetables I so appreciated. We tried again just to make sure, and it was the same story. We had conversations walking out of there questioning if Chin’s changed it’s recipes. A couple months later they closed down. I think a Five Guys now takes it’s place on Oakland.
Not long afterward the State St. location went the same way. Some karaōke spot stands there now and in my bitterness at seeing Chin’s go I’ve refused to check out what they have to offer in it’s place.
Fast forward five years and somehow we’d found ourselves back on campus for varying reasons, with an ache for Chin’s as soon as we touched foot on good ol’ State. Finding out there was still a Chin’s in Madison was a spectacular find for us. Having eaten at this location in Middleton now multiple times in the past couple years I can safely say I remain a fan.
People here have a lot of complaints and I’m feeling quite protective. This is my spot! This place is not «gross,» it’s not dirty, the service has always been absolutely fine, and I’m not reducing stars for them being who they are: NOT AUTHENTIC!
I appreciate Chin’s as I appreciate Noodles N’ Company and Chipotle. It’s fast casual food that won’t bust your gut if you’re into the healthier side of things and look for those options at restaurants.

A fast-​casual spin-​off of a Minnesota-​based, fast-​food Chinese-​American chain that likewise serves nothing special, Chin’s gets one star for being the only Asian-​American place I know of in Dane County that serves fried cream cheese wontons without crabmeat. I require a side dish of epinephrine if I eat crab, so I appreciate this omission. Now that I have established that I go here just for the cream cheese puffs, it should be clear that I’m far from an expert on Asian food. So take the rest of my review with a grain of salt; there should be plenty to spare in your entrée.
I used to think this place was ok – it still has plenty of variety, a very friendly staff, good chili-​garlic sauce, decent potstickers, above-​average lettuce wraps, no grisly or fatty pieces of meat — but lately the preparation has been sloppy and the presentation just as bad. I suspect the quality of the ingredients has come down a notch.
After cream cheese wontons, Pad Thai is one of my favorite Asian entrees. My last order looked like Goldilocks’s porridge in the «Three Little Bears» Golden Book I had as a kid. Dull gray, soupy, greasy, salty and watery, yet somehow sticky. The chopped peanuts added no crunch at all, which is too bad because other than the chicken pieces I picked through the mess to find, I was hoping to find something else edible. Epic fail on this entrée.
On my next visit, I ordered the Firecracker noodles with chicken, as a side to my beloved wontons. Slight improvement from last time but still salty as the Dead Sea and enough grease to de-​squeak every door hinge on the west side. The bag was so heavy I skipped my biceps workout for a week. The red peppers had no life left. Again, I hunted and pecked for the chicken, which is consistently decent-​quality, well-​prepared white meat. My wife’s veggie fried rice would have been ok – they ease up on the salt and Valvoline for this entrée — but the vegetables were overcooked and charred in places. Fresh veggies should present as a bright spectrum of colors — orange from the carrots, bright green from the scallions, broccoli and pea pods, yellow from the corncobettes. Instead, however, they were the same brown color as the fried rice.
My last fortune cookie said I’ll probably return to Chin’s. It’s on the way home from work, the food comes out fast and I can’t resist those damn cream cheese wontons. Maybe I’ll throw in some potstickers or wraps and call it dinner.

Gross. I thought this place was semi-​decent years ago. Decided to try it again. Agree with other reviewer, ‘charbroiling’ adds flavor and then you can «enjoy» that flavor over and over again all afternoon. Ick!
I was mid-​meal when I looked up to closer examine the soy sauce bottle I was using. It was caked with what appeared to be years of crud both around the spout and the cap. I think they fill but never wipe or sanitize the bottles. Many of the dining room tables have peeling tops. If you serve good food in a clean place, you should be able to afford the occasional replacement table or repair.
I brought the bottle to the manager’s attention upon leaving and he looked at me like I was a lunatic and could not see the scunge on the bottle.
Gross gross gross!

We did takeout from here and both thought our dinners were awesome. We ordered:
— Chicken wings with Sesame Szechuan sauce (you can get them with any stir fry sauce choice)
— Hot and sour soup
— Thai spring rolls
— Sesame chicken
— Sweet and sour chicken.
Then we got stuck in rush hour/​post blizzard traffic and had a 40 minute commute home. We were both impressed how well the food held up after that amount of time! The flavor of the wings was good, but they were obviously no longer hot. Next time we will try those when we dine in. Everything else had lots of heat and flavor. The hot and sour soup looked different than any other I have eaten, but it was still good and plenty hot. I did not detect much sour in it, my only small complaint. We both felt we had more than enough food for $ 23, and the quality was great. We will definitely go back. I am actually a little shocked at all the bad reviews on this place after our dining experience. Not sure if they have improved things or we just hit it on a good night. Service was fast, friendly and accurate… no complaints there.