China Star — Restaurant in Summerside

After living in Ottawa for 28 yrs with easy access to every kind of top-quality cuisine you can imagine, we've had to sometimes... adjust our expectations moving back to the Maritimes. Not that there aren't good places--there just aren't as many, or as wide a variety of cuisines. And flavourful, honest to gosh, made from scratch, did not come from a bucket or packet or frozen bag Chinese is nearly impossible.

Imagine our delight to discover this aptly named wonder in Summerside! We enjoyed our dinner so much, we went back next day for lunch, and ordered a ton of takeout to take home for future treats.

True, most of the menu is your usual westernized "Chinese" fare, but who can blame 'em for cooking what's most likely to sell? And it's head and shoulders above anything we've had from the most popular places at home.

House-made eggrolls, crisp, meaty, delicious - served with the best home-made duck (plum) sauce we've tasted in years. Lemon chicken with a zingy sauce and lovely chunks of hand-dipped chicken - no gummy frozen "chicken balls" here. An interesting mah-po tofu that was not as hot as you might expect, but really good and I think better for it. Properly chewy noodles. Honey garlic ribs to die for. Some of the best we've had. Black bean ribs also very good. Mixed veg that really is a lovely plate of tender crisp, tasty and interesting veg, not your usual meh bowl of peppers, peppers and carrots sogging sadly in a sloppy soup of too much cornstarch slurry.

Gosh, those eggrolls. Those alone were worth a trip back across the bridge. Which we'll have to do so we can try out some of their other dishes. Shame we could only eat so much at one sitting.

Great folks, great food....

We have recently rediscovered China Star they will always be our pick from now on. The service is friendly and wonderful, the takeout is packaged with care. Tonight, through no fault of theirs, we got a dish that we thought was wrong. It turns out that we misunderstood what we ordered. We called to confirm with them and they immediately wanted to replace it. When I told her we were just curious about a sauce, she offered us a different version of it at no cost AND extra egg rolls despite it being our fault for not knowing what the dish offered. They explained the best way to eat it and how to order it right the next time. And there will definitely be a next time. Thank you for being so gracious to our mistake and going the extra mile to make us feel...

I’m very surprised that I had to give such a low rating of this establishment, most reviews I had read prior were a 5 or 4. The server was very friendly and somewhat attentive, which bumped the rating up to 2 or it would have been a 1. I had a combination plate ( 1 Egg roll, S &S Chicken balls, Chicken Chow Mein & Chicken fried Rice) The biggest issue with the meal was with the deep fried items, the oil was very old and made the food taste almost rancid. The chicken fried rice lacked flavour and ingredients. The chicken chow mein was the tastiest but it only came with bean sprouts no egg noodles. I always give a restaurant a 2nd try before never returning so I’ll try them again in the summer when...