GOLDEN HOUSE Chinese Restaurant And Takeaway - — Restaurant in England

Tue 30 April 2019 6:30pm ish. Collected and tried to eat the worst chicken in green pepper and black bean sauce of my long life from the Golden House Restaurant takeaway, whilst visiting a few days in Dunster near Minehead.

I had the same dish from the other Chinese restaurant 'The China Garden' on Alcombe rd, in Minehead on Sunday evening 28 April 2019, with separate egg fried rice( virtually no egg!). From there the sauce was nice and strong, plenty pepper and most important the chicken tasted as genuinely wok fried from fresh or close to that. You can hear the cooks frying while you wait. Service was nice and it was busy.

Back to the Golden House:

I expected better from a restaurant. The egg fried rice was nice with enough egg and spring onion and not tainted with soy sauce. Much better than the egg fried rice from China Garden which was the opposite and overcooked. However, the chicken in my green pepper and black bean sauce dish was fibrous, squashy, wet and broken down tasting, like it had been bought in processed and pumped full of water, then heated from frozen. A lot of cheap Chinese food places use this junk. It was disgusting and I had to leave most of it and just eat the very watery black bean liquid in my punnet, full of sliced carrot bulking the dish where there should have been plenty of mild peppers(capsicums). I suspect the watery sauce was due to all the frozen water released from the chicken when heated or a lazy cook.

My veggie partner had chips with vegetable curry and added Tofu. Her dish was ok but not as tasty as the same from the China Garden and the chips were not as chunky. They were standard fries from frozen used in kebab takeaways, so were very starchy. You would expect a restaurant to deep fry their own had cut chips.

One plus is the Golden House does Tofu if your vegetarian, the China Garden inexplicably doesn't, yet has a vegetarian section.

Overall? If you can't get basic chicken right in the Golden House when they sell for £2.80 a whole chicken trade, then I can only assume the rest of the meats and fish there are awful too.

I would never go back to Golden House if visiting Dunster and would use the China Garden, and insist they cook proper egg fried rice with some spring onion and egg in it, to go with their nice main dishes. Or, just order...

Incredibly disappointed with our experience here. I specifically asked whether one of the noodle dishes was suitable for vegans and was assured 'yes, this is no problem'. I was then served a bland dish with egg in it. When I raised my concerns with the waitress, she was unapologetic and said that she didn't know that vegans didn't eat eggs. Such poor knowledge of the food they are serving is disappointing for vegetarians/vegans, but more worringly dangerous for anyone with allergies. After mutterings from her coworker, we were offered free drinks or £5 off the bill, neither of which covered the cost of the dish. My friend barely touched the crispy beef dish that she had ordered as it tasted strangely sour.

The placemats proudly state that the restaurant is recommended by Egon Ronay (a food critic), but given the fact he passed away 10 years ago, I can only assume standards have slipped...

Dropped in here for a sit-down meal whilst staying in Minehead overnight. Found the place on the off-chance whilst strolling through the High Street, just tucked away around the corner from the local 'Spoons. It's not a cheap place to eat-in, but it's been a couple of years since we have been to a Chinese restaurant so the prices may be on a par with others. The food, however, was well-flavoured and nicely portioned for the two of us. We had a combo starters, a rice and two dishes, a couple of beers and a wine which, with a tip came out at £80. I'm thinking the combo starters at £26 was over-priced for what was priced at only £16 for a takeaway. The other dishes are all around £10 each. Only three stars for the atmosphere as we were only two of four people in there - I'm guessing Minehead is quiet in January... The staff were very pleasant though, and the takeaway...