Gin Chinese Restaurant

Great lunch specials and price. My favorite is the kung pao shrimp and Kung pao squid with authentic flavors.

I had the chicken fried rice, egg rolls, hot and sour and lemon chicken… all I have to say us the food was on point! The food was cooked to order so it disbursements while but it was delicious. Not only do they serve you a great size portion but the prices are cheap. I always order take out, and I talk to the guy at the register. They are so friendly and always recommend new plates to try. I’m surprised other people have bad experiences here because this palace never disappoints. If you are looking to try a new Chinese spot, this is the place to go! An not only am I saying how good it is but I’m definitely gonna be returning again an again. Oh an you know I’m gonna keep on Unilocaling about it. So till time my friends on Unilocal.Take my advice go to GIN’S CHINESE RESTAURANT!!!

This restaurant has awesome service and delicious food! The food is affordable. The place does not look very appealing from outside but once you are inside the servers and the cashier person are there to greet you right away. You get your money’s worth. Me and my fiancé go and we can split a plate. I recommend this place to everyone!

Very disappointed with the food. All three plates we got were horrible, rice sucked and smelled like old oil, egg drop soup was flavorless and the eggs were green looking. Yuck.
The crispy things for the soup were dark brown and only tasted like burnt oil. The so called egg roles were so stinky and had no filling, they were oily and rubbery.
They didn’t give us our dipping sauce for lemon chicken and it sure needed it because it was so dry. Def. will never go back here again.

horrible experience! roach in food with no apologies. just pulled plate from my friend and said let me get you another one

So this was our first visit to Gin’s after reading the reviews and deciding to give it a try. BIG MISTAKE! We arrived at about 8:30 on a Saturday evening. Normal wait time for the food to arrive. But when it did it was cold. Starting with the egg drop soup. COLD! Ugh. Our server couldn’t understand what I was telling her. So I just let it go. Next the lemon chicken. It looked great! So juicy and tender looking. I couldn’t wait to try it. But it was cold, or more like room temperature. We also ordered the orange chicken. It was warm but not hot. Maybe it was an off night or too close to closing time.
Won’t be returning anytime soon!

Love there dumplings. My spot to go and they have amazing authentic food. It isn’t that expensive and they have a wonderful staff.

Great food. The dumplings are quite good. I enjoy the beef with Chinese broccoli. The service is fast and the servers are attentive. The menu is also priced right.

This used to be one of my favorite restaurants, until I recently I found a bug in my food! Never going back!!!

It’s always great to be surprised and Gin’s really surprised me tonight. I’ve read the reviews, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The reviews all run the gamut from «Man, this is fantastic — how come I didn’t now about this place?» to «Eww — there’s a short and curly in my beef and broccoli!»
My wife heard about this place from her friends and they said it was great and I, never needing more persuasion that that, agreed to come here for dinner. Glad I did. This place is old school in that it’s big, it’s old, and totally unpretentious. I mean, the frickin’ chair cushions are covered in plastic! The staff all seem to be from the same family — all Chinese by my guesstimation, and happy with their restaurant, their product, and their customer service.
We started off with their dumplings. You can definitely tell these are homemade. By that I mean, not uniform. The dough is thicker than most places but that just tells me they are making it from scratch. The minced pork and vegetables on the inside, pan fried, and dipped in their sauce, make for some good eating.
We ordered 3 entrees. We had the «salty shrimp» that wasn’t salty at all, the eggplant with beef, and the Kung Pao chicken. With those 3 entrees we received 2 servings of fried rice and one of steamed rice (fried or steamed is your choice).
The salty shrimp are shell on (no heads) shrimp, lightly battered, and fried to a crisp. You are supposed to eat the entire thing and we did. The shell becomes so crisp that it just crunches in your mouth. I didn’t find them salty at all so I used some of the remaining dumpling sauce — great! The eggplant was spectacular! Yum!
The eggplant comes sliced into some rather large chucks, covered in the same slightly sweet with heat mapo-​tofu sauce (no tofu in this dish), and in our case, some small pieces of sliced been. This dish alone was worth the price of admission. The eggplant dish comes either plain (just eggplant with sauce) for $ 7, or with your choice of chicken, pork, or beef for $ 8.
Lastly, the Kung pao chicken. It wasn’t quite a homerun but it was at least a triple — maybe a walk-​off bottom of the ninth base hit. The chicken is not battered but it is cut into smaller pieces and covered in a very slightly sweet sauce with just a hint of heat. I was expecting more heat from my king pao but sadly, it didn’t have it. The dish is cooked up with some green bell peppers. Great dish.
Along with an iced tea, the entire meal with plenty to take home came out to around $ 34 with tax. Well worth it in my opinion. I don’t know exactly how authentic the food was but it’s certainly not what you get from Americanized Chinese places. Despite the negative reviews by some, I would definitely recommend this place for those wanting something better than ordinary Americanized Chinese food.

This was the worst chinaese restaurant that I have ever been too! The food was really nothing special and the service was even worse. Forget about going to the restroom because they are disgusting.
I decided to take a coworker out to lunch one day and I looked up the reviews from other customers. This place may have been amazing back in the day, but it really is horrible.

I moved to Austin almost four years ago for college and I weep every now and then when I want to go get chinese food and can’t find a good replacement that’s as good as Gin’s.
As other reviews mention, my family has been going to Gin’s since before I was even born, over 22 years ago. Still, maybe I just haven’t gone to the right part of town here in Austin…
Anyway, oh god, I wish I could have some Gin’s right now so bad. My family would always order combination fried noodles, almond chicken, smoked chicken, and maybe some eggrolls.
I hope this place always maintains a good status. I’d be so sad if they ever closed. In fact, please, continue to get rich, expand, and put one in Austin. That would be a dream come true. haha
Gin’s till I dieeeee.

Went here after reading the reviews. My chair was sticky but I just ignored it and thought the food would give me a better impression. The egg drop soup tasted off. Almost like it had too much corn starch or that it was left out. I could not even finish a few bites of it. We ordered dumplings and a few tasted great but there were a few that tasted undercooked and doughy. Next time, I’ll try them fried. I ordered the broccoli beef and it was good. My husband enjoyed the lo mein. The wait staff was very accomadating and friendly. I may be back but only to try the beef noodle soup.

There’s nothing great about this place. It’s not how I remembered it 10 – 20 years ago! The food was either salty or flavorless! The food came out cold! The place needs some serious cleaning up and remodeling. The ceiling had many stains on them, and I’m glad I wasn’t seated by the ceiling fans, I wouldn’t want the dust on my food! Robert Irvine (Restaurant Impossible) would be appalled by this place! I’m not coming back anymore!

Had to write something about Gin’s.
My family and I have been eating here for years (kindergarten?). This place was THE ASIAN PLACE IN SA TX before Panda Express and Chinese food at the deli in Wal-​mart. Before they even had an Asian isle in HEB/​Your grocery store! We believed Gin rivaled with Golden Wok before they renovated and modernized.
Well enough with the history lesson.
The owner was a caring father and I believed passed this restaurant down to his son or daughter. Very big family restaurant. Over the years we can tell the food went a bit downhill as we saw the Owner less and less. He was there ALL THE TIME helping in the kitchen. I liked that a lot.
Place: Old school, early-90’s, Hollywood Chinese wall-​paper get up. They have not really modernized but you know it could be their theme. I think it could help them greatly since its 2014, however, I can respect the originality.
[Food]
–The Pan Fried Dumplings are the best in town. Very crisp and lots of filling. We always have them as appetizers.
–Beef noodle stir fry– the
. Great marinated beef and thick egg noodle.
–Beef fried rice was top-​notch. Not sure how it is now. We kept coming back and it was inconsistent with what we were used too.
*Whether: rain, snow, birthdays, out-​of-​town relatives; the Fried Rice here was usually ordered with an extra order for to-​go. PERIOD.
[Summary]
Less flash, more authentic food. I would still come back here over Panda Express and Golden Wok.

I’ve been coming to Gin’s since I was a baby (no really, I used to eat the dumplings by stabbing them with chopsticks when I was a kid).
Since I was back in San Antonio for the holidays, I wanted to grab some food that would bring back feelings of nostalgia from my childhood. Welp, here goes: I ordered the pan fried dumplings (15) for like $ 7.50 which isn’t a bad deal since they taste decent and 6 dumplings easily goes for like $ 5 +/​-​$ 1 in Houston at any Chinese restaurant. I wanted to also try something I’ve been eating since I was in middle school/​high school — chicken with black bean sauce. The lunch special has gone up since the good olé days I think it was 5.50 (used to be 4.25) but for an entrée, 2 scoops of rice, and 2 crab rangoons, you can’t really complain. I will say I could taste the MSG in the food (and my tongue is usually immune since Chinese joints in Houston load their food up with MSG) so it was kind of prominent in the fried rice and I think it could be toned down a bit.
Service was everything you’d expect from a Chinese restaurant. While the manners aren’t always there, the efficiency is so don’t expect a Michelin restaurant experience and you’ll be A-​OK.
All in all, prices are reasonable and the food matches the price point.

Saw some good reviews about the authentic beef noodle soup here so I had to come for lunch to try it out.
Basically, this restaurant serves Americanized Chinese food which I don’t care about. All I wanted to order was the beef noodle soup and i was hoping it’d be authentic. To my surprise, It really was! The noodle is the same kind they use for the lo mien so it is not so great. But the broth and beef are very flavorful and legit.
My companion reported that her shrimp with veggies were Americanized Chinese which didn’t seem a surprise to me. Overall, I enjoyed my soup a lot. Service was prompt and ambience was bearable. But I am not sure if I will come again just to get the soup. We will see.

I came here excited to try their beef noodle soup, but left feeling disappointed. Maybe I am spoiled with all kinds of beef noodle soups from houston, so I might have too high of an expectation for SA’s chinese restaurants. But it’s probably not something I would go back for (beef noodle soup ²⁄₅)
As for the rest of the food we ordered (from the authentic chinese menu)
braised eggplant (⁴⁄₅) delish, highly recommend!
And we ordered one more dish, forgot what it’s called but I remembered liking it (⁴⁄₅)
The service was good too, servers are really friendly.
This rating is probably lower than what they should get, but I just can’t get over how disappointed I as over the noodles.

I like their beef noodle soup which is very authentic with intense flavor. The beef was cooked to tender and juice with very good flavor. Noodles are okay. Soup base was great.
I experienced excellent service and enjoyed my experience here. The restaurant is clean with medium noise. I certainly will return and enjoy their food again.

Decent place but not great. The beef noodle soup though — from their authentic menu –was great. I would go back just for that. The other stuff was fine but forgettable.
We may go back if we are in the area and my wife has a hankering for beef noodle soup but otherwise we’ll go elsewhere. The place could be very good though, I think, if they went all in on their authentic menu, but alas the tried and true Americanized dishes clearly pay the bills so I can’t fault them for it.