Lucky Danger — Restaurant in Arlington

Skip it. I was excited to try it which is somewhat challenging since they’re open 5 hours a day, 5 days a week.

The ordering system is a mess. There are 2 options - their website or a Square terminal on-site. Since other people were using the terminal, I used my phone to order from their site. While ordering, it doesn’t tell you how long it will take to get your food. After placing the order at 7:05 PM, the website said it would be ready “today after 8 PM.” I immediately asked the employee if that was accurate. She looked around, seemingly counting takeout bags all over, and said “8:20?” I asked to cancel the order I just placed. She asked the chef and came back and said she couldn’t cancel it. I went out to my car. 10 minutes later, I got an email and text that my order was ready. I went back inside to verify (NOTE - there is no other way to reach them). She said it would be another hour. I drove back to DC to put groceries away and returned an hour later.

When I returned, another employee couldn’t find my order. He checked with the chef who said “I thought they wanted to cancel that.” Then the guy asked if I wanted food. I declined since I wasn’t comfortable doing business with this restaurant.

This is the worst takeout experience I’ve ever had. I’m baffled that a takeout only restaurant which opened during the pandemic could do takeout so...

Overall, I was disappointed, but let’s start with the positives: they use compostable containers, and they clearly have fun with cute little avatars for each of their menu items when labeling their containers. They provided nice quality napkins and 🥢 as well. The food portions are quite small, but in line with their pricing. Unfortunately, that is where the positives end. The hot and sour soup had a good amount of wood ear and straw mushrooms, but the base was so salty and syrupy, it was nearly inedible. The Mapo Tofu was quite bland (it is listed as “spicy” on their menu 😂), and contained barely enough mushrooms and scallions to be considered garnishes (typical Mapo Tofu has a lot more veggies in it). I actually poured some of the hot and sour soup into the Mapo just to give it some flavor (still no spice). The pan seared pork dumplings were VERY small (half the size of would normally see) and all 5 were burnt. They had no hot mustard packets either, which, IMHO, is like a McDonalds without ketchup. In addition, you have to use Uber Eats to order, even for carry out, which charges a hefty service fee of $3.95. If you want it delivered, it’s another $3.95. Then you need to add tax and tip on that. So a $22 order was actually close to $40! I will not be...

Really wanted to like this place. I tried them shortly after they opened due to the extremely clever concept and was thoroughly underwhelmed by the lack of quality control in the execution (burnt and overly cooked food).

It's been more than half a year since then and figured I would give it another try to see if they worked out their kinks. The menu got bigger for sure, so theres a lot more options to choose from, which seemed like a good sign. However, the end result was still disappointedly mediocre:

The General Tso's chicken was mushy and extremely salty. It lacked any sort of texture despite the thick breading around the chicken. The Sweet and Sour Pork was tough and extremely dry. It almost tasted like deep fried beef jerky and had no resemblance to pork. The Ketchup Shrimp was overbreaded and just tasted like any other sweet/sour dish they had. The ketchup did not come through and it was extremely underwhelming.

I am honestly not sure I would come back again to be honest. I really wanted to like this place and support a local AAPI business, but the food was just disappointing and not...