Shangri-La Restaurant — Restaurant in Birmingham

The people here are nice, but I was quite disappointed in my food tonight. I ordered the Family Dinner for Two so I could have leftovers for tomorrow. When you order any of the family dinners, they decide which entrees you get. The dinner for two is sweet and sour chicken and mongolian beef. I was not happy to get home and find that the chicken was breaded. I don't like breaded sweet and sour chicken. This seems to be the standard in most of Chinese restaurants these days. I think they do it that way to give you less chicken. The veggies and pineapple weren't even cooked in the dish. They were steamed and placed in a separate container, as was the sickly sweet sauce. The same mass-produced red sauce you get on every cheap Chinese buffet. If I'd wanted buffet food, there were other cheaper places I could have gone. I was stunned by what they call fried wontons. It literally is a deep-fried wonton wrapper. Not a dumpling. Not wrapped around anything. No filling. Just a fried wrapper. The menu says fried wonton, not fried wonton wrapper. I couldn't finish the egg roll. It had a funky fishy taste. The menu also said my meal would come with sizzling rice soup. It was a seafood and chicken soup. It was good, but it was not what is on their menu. It's too bad it was such a disappointing meal. I got a lunch combo there not long ago and enjoyed it. Did not enjoy tonight's meal, and if I ever return, I will not order a family dinner again or an egg roll or fried wonton or sweet and sour chicken or sizzling rice soup. The customers should be able to choose which entrees they want in their meal. And the fried wrapper? Just no.

Addendum: It appears that I did get the correct soup. Just opened a bag that I thought was those greasy fried noodles they give you to put on top of your food (I always trash them), but it was a bag of what appears to be freeze-dried rice. I suppose I was suppose to dump them into the soup. Whaaaaat???? Dried rice?...

The Chinese food is ok, but don’t order anything off their Japanese or sushi menu. It’s overpriced and they don’t know how to properly make the food.

Pictured is what they call hibachi salmon. Notice the baby carrots and asparagus, lol. Also the “yum yum” sauce they provided was actually a bunch of spicy mayo.

Edit to owner’s response: my point is that asparagus isn’t even supposed to be in hibachi vegetables. They hold too much moisture. Carrots are in hibachi, but they should be cut smaller. These are just baby carrot cut in half. They don’t cook at the same speed as the rest of the vegetable due to the thickness. They should be sliced thinner. Also all of these vegetables are either steamed or cooked with too much liquid. A hibachi plate shouldn’t be a pile of wet vegetables over an overcooked salmon filet. I can’t believe you charge $20 for this when a REAL hibachi restaurant charges the same price, with better quality food, and the chef cooks the food in front of you...

This is an update to an older review....apparently, the management or ownership at Shangri La has changed, because what came out of the kitchen this past Friday night was far superior to anything I have had there in at least a decade.

Gone were the canned vegetables and in with the fresh. The egg rolls were larger and crunchier. The hot & sour soup wasn’t gloopy like it has been for years, and so on and so forth.

However, one time doesn’t a complete change make. Still it was enough to add a star while leaving the original review below.

Here is the original.....

The food at Shangri-La is pretty standard American-style Chinese cuisine, and it benefits from being the only full-service Chinese restaurant in its zip code. However, the take out portions of its 'signature' and most popular dishes are pretty small by comparison, so don't expect two to an entrée unless you are getting appetizers and soup...