Tasty Noodles & Dumplings — Restaurant in Albuquerque

We'd been wanting to give this place a go for a while. Intrigued by the whole "Chinese Bistro" thing, so a few nights ago, we ordered take away. Normally we don't order any kind of "family dinner," but in this case we did because we thought that perhaps it'd give us an overview of what we might expect of the other dishes offered by Tsai's. I mean, if the dishes comprising a family meal are good, the other dishes should be good as well. Bad move. Our choice of entree was the Lo Mein. Like one of the other reviewers here, I've been fortunate enough to have eaten some really amazing and mind-blowingly good Chinese food over the course of my life, and that includes restaurants in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown. If you have ever had amazing Chinese food, then you KNOW what amazing Chinese food tastes like. This is not it. The appetizers comprising the "pupu platter" were hideous. I couldn't bring myself to even eat the beef stick. My experience with the egg drop soup could not have been more disappointing. I'm glad that somebody else had the opposite experience. I regret not having gone with the hot and sour soup, but had I done so, I think I know how that would have gone. The lo mein was perfectly awful. Spaghetti noodles with a lackluster brown sauce and a scant amount of vegetables scattered in with the protein choices. We didn't even eat the fried rice. Yesterday, I didn't want to let the food go to waste, so I had it for lunch. I opened the container of fried rice to discover that I just had a container of sadness. All it was was white rice with a brown sauce on it. Not a vegetable to be seen. Not even a pea. Possibly the worst fried rice I have EVER had. The net net of this story is: Stay away, keep your money in your pocket and go spend it at Chin...

Server dropped food and left. Didn't see her again. We were the only people there. Went in thinking it was still Tsai's. Terrible mistake! Disgusting dumplings. We didn't eat them and when I asked if they could be removed from the bill, the girl asked why. I said, "Well, they were really awful." She then says "What? How?" She did finally remove them. Then says "this never happened before." I bet not, they haven't been open long. Appetizers were delivered last. Not that it mattered. Everything was so greasy! Hot, but so greasy it came off on the napkins. Friend ordered crab rangoon, got cream cheese rangoon. I ordered beef and broccoli, sauce was watery and oil floated in it. I make better at home and I'm a white girl from the Midwest. Vegetable fried rice was about 50 percent bean sprouts and used what looked like canned carrots and peas, and same with corn. I was so disappointed because Tsai's used to make theirs with huge pieces of fresh vegetables. We started to leave and had to stop at the mall to make a mad dash for the bathrooms. 20 minutes later we were both so ill that I took my friend back to where he was staying and went home. Just avoid this place. It's overpriced, gross, and altogether an expensive...

Great food, but don't expect great service. I had the General Tso's Chicken, which didn't come with the traditional brown, sweet sauce I'm used to. Instead it came in a sauce much like orange chicken, which was great, and the chunks were large enough that it took about 5-7 bites per chunk (like very large meatballs), and the entree came with 12 of those massive chunks of perfectly cooked, perfectly tender chicken.

So, no complaints, whatsoever, about the food. And, they have hand-pulled noodles, so I'll try those next time.

However, I sat there for about 15-17 minutes waiting for one of the wait staff to recognize I was out of drink, attempting to flag them down multiple times, and they always just looked away. So, I got tired of letting my food get cold and just refilled my drink myself, which made me feel uncomfortable, and I'm sure it did them as well. But, I'm not going to risk choking on my food, nor letting it get cold when I just dropped over $20 on my meal.

I only tipped them 14%, and that seemed way too much, but I would gladly have given them well over a 20% tip if they had just taken...