Chinese snack — Restaurant in Tbilisi

Tried the food at the new location, steamed jiaozi, boiled beef casserole and beef noodle soup were delicious but the stewed chicken was overly salted with copious amounts of msg (tell-tale sign of bad headache two hours latter). Also sampled the kom pao chicken with peanuts - tasted okay but nothing to get excited about. Very tasty, very authentic Chinese cuisine. I ordered one plate of beef chou mien and 20 steamed jiaozi (dumplings) with the bill coming to just 35 lari (so low I thought she had made a mistake). More than half of the menu is just in Mandarin so I copied it all down, as pre-arrival homework, and put it in Pinyin and translated it. The lady chef / manager corrected my errors)) Been 7 years since I have had such authentic Chinese cooking. Place is small and modest. I actually passed it by, at first, without knowing it; address is № 8 Ваkhtrioni not at all far from the metro at the corner with Pekini. I took an outside photo to facilitate recognition of it. This is a veritable hidden gem. Very highly...

This place has three tables and the owner/chef working behind a curtain. The owner works alone (or at least that was the case during our visit), so expect a fairly long waiting time before your food arrives.

It was our first time and we ordered several dishes to get the overall picture: fried dumplings, braised pork, kung pao chicken, fried rice, and fried noodles with beef. The beef noodles were amazing — I especially liked their chewy texture, you could tell they were hand-made and just perfect. The chicken was really good but too salty — and so was the braised pork that would've been 10 out of 10 otherwise.

We paid less than $9 per person with 5 large dishes and 4 soft drinks, which is completely reasonable.

I would say that if those two dishes hadn't been oversalted, I'd eagerly call them amazing. Maybe it was just today or maybe telling the owner to keep the salt level in check would help.

Anyway, the place is totally...

I was hopeful with all the good reviews and all the Chinese customers eating. However, food was just ok and the braised pork ribs were so tough and felt cold in some spots. Maybe they microwaved frozen meat? Mapo tofu was flavorless like they just tossed the tofu at the last minute and didn't absorb any flavor. I can make better from the boxed version at home!

Maybe this food is authentic to mainland China which I didn't like either. I guess I was spoiled from such good Chinese food in L.A. like SGV and Rowland Heights. Even the fast food Chinese like Chinatown Express or Quickly will be way more flavorful and tasty. Also.... The prices are not even cheap and give you very...