Gim Wah Restaurant

The Mongolian beef is one of the best dishes I’ve eaten in a long time. The ginger /​onion chicken is also great. Always a fun crowd at the Gim and some of the regulars play great music on the jukebox. It has cheap drinks, it’s open late and is one of the best dive bars around.

I love this place… Awesome… Awesome… Awesome!!!

I love the Gimmer! I had my first tofu here as a child and it’s still my favorite thing on the menu «fried bean curd». As an adult, obviously getting to experience the bar is a treat, oh to have been able to visit when smoking was still allowed inside, gotta love a perfect dive bar! This place is a time warp, a Magnolia institution that I hope doesn’t go away anytime soon.

I’ve lived in the neighborhood for a long time, and there are not many places to find Cantonese style Chinese food in Seattle. I like the food, I’m happy it’s here.

Classic dive bar! Stiff drinks, cheap prices, friendly bar tender and prob same 5 people at the bar every night. Looking to escape the sea of baby strollers, dog walkers, and Starbucks in Magnolia this is your spot.

To call Gim Wah a Chinese restaurant is giving all the other Chinese restaurants a bad name. Let’s be honest here: it’s really just a dive bar. There are neighborhood drunks hanging out in the bar every day starting about 11am. They don’t eat there. You shouldn’t either. It’s obvious they make ALL their money on booze, and the food is very much an afterthought. Probably only necessary to keep their liquor license.

Ick! I asked for General Tso chicken and they didn’t seem to know what I meant, so I described it, but the sauce we received had no sweetness at all, and just seemed like a red peppery sauce. The beef from beef and broccoli tasted BAD; like the meat was old. And the sauce was a clear tasteless nothingness. We put the leftovers in the fridge for a day or so and are still getting the stink out 2 weeks later. Please don’t eat here!

Go to the Gim Wah if you like really good Chinese food and the best dive bar in town. Really a hidden gem! Nina is absolutely the BEST! I’ve tried multiple dishes and they are always really good. My favorites are kung po shrimp and scallop, moo goo gai pan, and Mongolian beef, which is the best I’ve ever had anywhere…

great food and service. Perfect for the family. the owner is the acutal chef which created a family style restaurant ambience.
I will defintly return for the great food.

I randomly tried this place when I was visiting a friend that just moved into the neighborhood. It looks like an old school restaurant from the outside and it is. It reminds me of the classic Chinese American places that had a bar with tiki glasses and the like. They actually have a dedicated side that would be a perfect hipster bar if it were in Brooklyn. The food isn’t authentic Chinese but it is authentic American Chinese food so give it a try!

Just moved into the area and I love good Chinese food. Tried this place out even though the reviews seemed to be mixed. Many mentioned the Mongolian Beef, so I had that, potstickers and fried rice. The beef was awful. Thank goodness for the dry noodles they included so they can soak up some of the grease. Potstickers were ok, but also greasy. The rice wasn’t as greasy and was fair. It isn’t only that the food was greasy, but that it smelled rancid, like the grease they use went bad. I barely could eat ¼ of each item.
Do love a nice stiff drink, so I will go back for one sometime, but never again will I eat from this place.

My food here was not suitable for human consumption. Also, the cigarette smoke seeped in from the bar (they shouldn’t allow smoking in there) to the restaurant area.

I really wanted to like Gim Wah. I grew up on places like this. So: ambience, good. It’s your basic Chinese American restaurant décor — looks like you’re walking into 1965. For me, this is a plus. Prices, good. Cheaper than Pandasia in Interbay. Comparable to the place on Thorndyke that recently changed its name, but a lot more space. And yes, the bar is more popular than the main room, so not crowded at all, and very quiet. Menu, decent. I noticed that there was only shellfish, no actual fish, on the seafood menu, and that a lot of the menu items were deep-​fried — more than I’d expected. No real vegetable-​heavy dishes (e.g., chicken with broccoli) other than the actual vegetarian dishes.
However, I discovered that when they don’t mention vegetables in the description of the dish, that really means no vegetables — zero. So the General Tso’s chicken really is just chicken in «spicy and sour» sauce. They weren’t kidding about the sour, either. Not the way I usually get it but that’s OK. It was a large serving (a plus) and the chicken to breading ratio was very favorable (read: large pieces of chicken with not too much breading), more so than at other places. But I still was surprised not to see a solitary piece of broccoli in the whole thing.
I may come back, but if I do I will be sure to order something that explicitly has vegetables in it. As it was, it was a bit of a shock!

I used to eat here a lot when I was younger, but the dining room has slowly emptied and the bar (along with it’s smell) has completely taken over.
The food is still pretty good, but I wouldn’t suggest doing anything but take out, which can take a long time to get for some reason.
The whole place smells like smoke and stale beer since the slightly sketchy clientele smoke right outside the front door under an air vent which is actually illegal here in Seattle. I don’t think I would ever walk in their alone.

Gim Wah’s ambiance was wood with pink tablecloths and silk flowers. Family style dining even for the single. They have plenty specials, al la carte picks and pots of hot green tea. Competitive Chinense food prices in a nice community, Magnolia. Great customer service. And I enjoyed my chow mein dinner… So good food too.

Great «junky» chinese food, is what I call it. Stuff to recommend: pork chow mein with soft noodles, Mandarin chicken, mongolian beef, almond chicken, and pork fried rice.
Avoid the bar, it still reeks of cigarette smoke and gross people. :)

I go to the Gim Wah for it’s bar. Seattle does not have many throw back bars from the past.
It really has an good feel to it hust when you walk in .
Don’t expect fancy, but it just has a tight ambience.
drinks are stiff, has a good jukebox. Great bartenders. It can be rough at times, but no worries, their harmless.
If you want to order food, the chicken wings or BBQ pork.
They have really cold beer (just not on draft).

Awful, horrible, yucky food.
The bar is the main attraction.

Okay, I have to admit, I’ve been eating here about 3 times a year since they opened in 1875. Well, okay maybe not that long ago, but it feels like it.
It is the ONLY Chinese restaurant in Magnolia. And yes, it is outdated compared to more trendy «nouvelle– Chinois» cuisine. In short, gourmet, it is not.
The one thing this place does possess that most others in the city lack, is a history of being an integral part of a community. And in Magnolia’s case, the only Asian place for soaking up booze late night in the entire zip code.
Amongst a host of other usual suspects, they offer: Moo Shu Pork, Moo Gu Gai Pan, Mongolian Beef, Chow Mein, Garlic Prawns, Sweet & Sour pork –prawns –chicken, Beef with Oyster Sauce, etc.
In short, the food ranges from okay-​good, depending on who you are and what you’re used to per Chinese cuisine.
I don’t love this place for the food, but I like it. I do love this place because, like a member of the family, I’m compelled in wishing them the best and supporting their efforts. Besides, let’s admit it, when you have a craving for Chinese food and you don’t want to drive half a city away, 3 star American-​style Chinese food will do just fine.

I’d say you can’t go wrong with any restaurant that has a «Fine Dining» award on the wall. Except it is from 1978. And yellowed from what I can only surmise as an army of chain-​smoking boozehounds that still appear to be packed into the bar, sans smokes. Except for the 6 I passed on the way in and I am pretty sure one even had an oxygen tank!
I am so coming back to hang out in this bar one night. Quite possibly the sweetest bar ever. Mirrors, packed with folks that looked near death and like they hadn’t moved since turning 21. In 1945.
I had some Fried Rice. It was exactly as I expected. Slightly greasy, slightly wrong… but good. In a bad way.