China Kitchen Eatery — Restaurant in Ontario

China Kitchen Eatery was quite a good location for Chinese food not long ago, but in the time since the pandemic, the quality has fallen off.

We used to go out of our way (living in LaSalle) to enjoy this restaurant's take out but after my last two experiences, I've pretty much made up my mind that I won't be going back. Tonight we ordered 1 order of chicken fried rice, 2 orders of sweet & sour chicken, 1 order of honey garlic ribs, 1 order of the vegetable & noodle (lomaine?) and 4 eggrolls. We were picking up our meal and the price was still just a couple dollars short of $90!!

That's a steep price by any measure but for some people perhaps it would still be a good take out option if the food was top notch. But the problem is that it's not, at least not anymore. The fried rice is a particular complaint of mine because it has the distinct look and taste of a fried rice that was watered down or diluted with white rice. It was pale, dry and didn't have much of a taste at all frankly. That tells me that they are either using very cheap soya sauce or very little for a large batch. The egg rolls weren't bad and the chicken balls were good, crispy on the outside and tender inside. But on the whole, I can't justify paying that amount for that level of quality.

One last note, though it's not a particularly bothersome thing to me personally, I think it's worth mentioning. As I said, this used to be quite the little location for good Chinese food and they did offer both dine-in and take out. I believe just around the pandemic, they stopped offering dine-in. But they didn't take that opportunity to enlarge the reception area and offer a nice, comfortable and welcoming area for customers to come in and wait. They merely put up a few dividers to block the view of the area that was the dining room, stacked up a bunch of chairs toward the front and taped a small sign on the front door. It's very amateurish and it gives the feeling of picking up your dinner at a warehouse lol.

I have nothing negative to say about the people here, the staff have always been good to excellent. I don't mean to sound bitter because I am not. I am posting this review because I often use Google reviews to help me decide where to go for various services and retail outlets etc. My bottom line here is that if you are looking for Chinese food in the area, look a little harder and you'll probably end up saving a few bucks and having a...

Don't know what happened to the kitchen staff, but my Saturday night take-out of #7 (soo-guy, w/chkn rice, beef+vegg, soup & egg roll) was absolutely DISGUSTING! To summarize ..the food had clearly, been an OLD leftover (no wonder it was ready in 20 min) that had been put into the fryer to reheat, and thereby WAY over-cooking it .. totally dried it out ..and made it un-edible. The rice was totally dry. The tiny squares of chicken in it, were rock hard, the veg was so tough, my teeth couldn't bite thru it, the beef, was slimmy, the 2" ends of the egg roll were hard like cement, and the soo-guy? It, was preposterous! Impossible to eat! I tried to pick a few bits of meat (there was very little chicken under the batter) away from the hard-as-rock outside, but most of the 3 pcs of it (soo-guy) were SHARDS, of something that may have been meat at one time. It was bad enough, that the dinner for 1 prices increased to way-high levels, but then, to serve (hidden in a container & not discovered till I got home & changed) this over-cooked, and probably previously prepped meal that someone else didn't pick up, and it got refried .. well.. it simply is not acceptable! I was very disappointed (they USED to be good), and was angered by their callous disregard to what they served to customers! And no, I did not phone to complain. No point. They did what they did, and they knew they did it. I didn't think to take a pic of the entire meal, but I DID take a pic of the soo-guy ..as it looked, upon me breaking away (hard to do - that's how hard/tough it was!) the hard shell-casing of batter. Without a doubt, I shall NEVER .. EVER .. visit / order food, from this...

We have always ordered from them but this will definitely be the last time. In past orders we have had things like the sauce packages missing, egg rolls missing, fortune cookies missing and on occasion got our order wrong. This time our order had sauce packages missing and the fortune cookies, we like soy sauce in our soup, had no plum sauce to eat our egg rolls sorry but we like the plum sauce on them so they are not dry. My husband called to let them know and they said we could drive back and pick them up while our food gets cold or pick up 2 free egg rolls next time. So I who just had surgery a few days ago calls back to only have the young daughter of the restaurant be extremely rude on the phone. Saying stuff like “what it’s not edible….. “. and “ I didn’t think it would be a big deal without the sauce packages missing.” In other words why can you not eat it as is without the sauces. We paid and we pay good money to eat out once in a while and it is a big deal to us to have what we need to make the meal enjoyable. The attitude on the phone was not the way to treat a paying customer and might I add a loyal customer. Who has recommended this restaurant, being rude on the phone was the deal breaker. You can no longer eat in you can only order out. If you at times are busy and can’t handle orders, maybe...