Mandarin Cove

Mandarin Cove is always a good choice for dinner. Great food, fast and friendly service, nice surroundings, and free convenient validated parking in their building always add up to a pleasant experience. Tonight, we ordered three entrees: Mandarin style eggplant, Country style bean curd, and Pan fried chow mein with vegetables. All three dishes were delicious in their own way, and I especially enjoyed the eggplant. Pieces of eggplant were dipped in batter and deep fried and then served with a tangy sauce. I had not seen eggplant prepared this way before, and I thought it was very flavorful. Country style bean curd was a combination of tofu, mushrooms and vegetables stir fried in a savory brown sauce. The chow mein consisted of pan fried soft noodles and was well prepared and tasty. OK, I will mention that I’ve been to Mandarin Cove several times and I’ve always been impressed with how FAST the food comes out of the kitchen. Tonight was no exception.. .not only were all three of our entrees fresh and delicious, they also were served to us pretty quickly. Overall, another great meal tonight reinforces my opinion of Mandarin Cove as one of my go-​to places for dinner.

easily the best Chinese you can get in downtown. The lunch specials are great and well priced. They also get you in pretty fast but the food always tastes fresh and good quality. They are spicy though so I would drop your usual spice ranking down when coming here. They will burn your mouth off.

Ordered broccoli chicken to go, but ended up at home with a VERY spicy chicken vegetable dish. Not at all what we ordered. The food here may be ok, but the service theme at this place continues to be poor.

suckset chinese food i have eat！fucking stupid cooker.

I came here with my parents and a family friend for dinner after an event downtown. Mind you, my standards for noodles are exceptionally high because my dad makes great hand-​pulled noodles, so my rating for this place is probably a full star lower than most other people would give it.
Okay, on to the nitty-​gritty!
Two of our party ordered the zhajiangmian, which is hand-​pulled noodles served with a black bean and ground beef sauce. I was surprised to see that the zhajiangmian here is served with shrimp, too; which is honestly a little weird. With that said, though, the people in our party who ordered this noodle dish were pretty happy with their choices.
Another of our party ordered the dan-​dan mian, which is a spicier version of the hand-​pulled noodles dish. This was also serviceable, and much more authentic (read: didn’t have any weird add-​ins).
I got the duck noodle soup, which also came with hand-​pulled noodles. My soup was pretty great, and it came with a generous serving of Bok Choy along with huge pieces of duck and a generous portion of noodles.
Overall, I’d say food hovered around an A-​, with a bit of a ding for the strange addition of shrimp in the zhajiangmian. I’d rate this joint higher here, but I get better hand-​pulled noodles at home thanks to my dad…
Service was pretty efficient, and our waitress was knowledgable about the menu options. Seeing that our party was Chinese, she gave us the Chinese menu, with extra noodle options — that was what we ordered all our dishes off of. If you’re in here and want the most authentic food they have here, I’d recommend asking for this menu.

Decent food, good service. You pay what you get. We ordered eggplant and tofu (veg). Tofu was good but eggplant was little sweet.

As the waitress was spinning around to put the tray of food down, she almost dumped an entire tray of food on the far side of my table. It was close enough that I started to warn them. My chow mein was a contender for worst chow mein ever. I’ve had mall Chinese food that tasted better.
We had to ask for the check three times.

This is a mixed review
By and large the food was decent. Not the best chinese food I’ve had, but certainly not the worst either. My beef and snow peas was pretty good, as was the other dishes I tried. Hot and Sour Soup wasn’t bad.
What drags this review down is simply that the service was HORRIBLE. The waitress was slow, rude, and didn’t bring items that were requested. They also joked about dumping food on the patrons. People got charged for drinks and items that were never brought out or served. The entire attitude was that they felt that customers were actually an intrusion into whatever they were doing socially at the time.
I cannot recommend this place at all. Maybe they should try hiring staff that actually want to work, rather than cop attitude and mess up people’s meals.

The. Noodle is great. The quantity is really good. Order one bow of noodle and u can pack it for dinner as well.

I ordered take out last week (Orange chicken and fried rice) and was very disappointed with the quality of the food and my order. Once I got home and got ready to devour my take-​out I realized they had replaced my order of fried rice with white rice, I didn’t think it was too big of a deal given that I still had my orange chicken, but once I had a taste of the chicken and saw how insipid it was, I got bummed out. Enough, to not finish eating it.
And to top it off it was a little expensive, 14.95 for an order of Orange Chicken is a little too much.

I love their lunch express. It was so quick and different entrée daily (available only on Monday to Friday). For $ 7 you get rice, vegetable, and entrée of the day. They have hand pulled noodle available, I will try one next time.

Came here for hand-​pulled noodle soups three weeks in a row. Mandarin Cove has the best beef noodle soup in town!

I strongly recommend this place especially they updated their menu recently. MUST try the kong-​fu noodle, you can see the amazing kong-​fu noodle show if you go there at the right time, call them before.
I tried the duck noodle and beef noodle today. The duck is crispy and fresh and the beef is juicy. I also tried the Xiao Long Bao today, it’s handmade for sure, better than the dragon well. Also the place is quiet and elegant. If you like Chinese food, check this place out, it won’t let you down.

Every time foods are very fine.
but a little better svc needs.

Solid Chinese food for Portland. Only Chinese restaurant my husband will eat at. He thinks they’re usually lacking in ambiance so will only do takeouts. Free parking in the evenings. Good and very speedy service. Reservations accepted. Check out Unilocal coupon.

The Mandarin Scallops are a Must Have!
Eric was a great waiter!!! Everything is sooo delicious.

The Chinese Kung fu noodle (hand-​made noodle) and the Xiao Long Bao (steamed dumplings with soup inside) are super good! The steamed dumplings really remind me of home/​Shanghai… Will definitely go there again!!!

Recently Mandarin Cove Invited a new noodle chef to join the restaurant, he demonstrated during lunch and dinner to make handmade noodle. The noodles were so so good.

Food was okay, service was ridiculously HORRIBLE.
Aside from having to ask the waitress MULTIPLE times (at least 3) for a extra plate, child cup, and straws, she NEVER once checked on how we were doing. In addition, I again had to ask multiple times for a refill, and after asking and waiting, I decided to get it myself. As we received our check, gratuity of about $ 12 was written in. FOR WHAT? A party of 2 and a baby, absolutely no service what so ever, and it not being states anywhere on the menu or within the restaurant that gratuity is included– the lady at the counter justified that «it’s the waitresses style» and that «she decides which tables gratuity is included in» HAHA! COMPLETE JOKE. Oh please! If that was the case, we definitely would NOT have «requested» that specific waitress.
Regardless if the food was okay, or the best Chinese food ever (which it definitely wasn’t), I would not recommend nor return to a restaurant to give them any sort of business with such poor service.

Our family moved to Portland about 1 ½ years ago after living in Chengdu, China for 8 years. I went to culinary school and fell in love with the cuisine of Sichuan. I have only heard negative things from people here about the Chinese food scene. I asked a Chinese student friend of mine where her «go to» place was in Portland and she suggested with try the Mandarin Cove which is under new ownership.
The owner was warm and friendly and sat down at our table with us. The waiter was really great and completely understood that we wanted authentic tasting cuisine and guided us in our ordering. It was Chinese New Year’s eve, but the food came out quickly, but the waiter never came back to our table.
We order the fish fragrant eggplant which just like we were used to in Chengdu, boiled dumplings which my son devoured, authentic kung pao chicken, and twice cooked pork which even had suan miao (garlic scapes) in it!
I highly recommend if you are craving some authentic tasting Chinese food. Just ask for the Chinese menu and tell them you want it authentic in taste. It also helps if you can speak a little bit of Mandarin.