Mom's Kitchen — Restaurant in Brookside

POST-COVID UPDATE: I don't know what happened to them with Covid, but they are not the same restaurant.

First, during the peak of Covid, they completely discontinued their lunch menu - you could only get dinner entrees during lunch. Second, the last three times I've eaten there (including today), the chicken has been stringy and tough, and the flavor (General Tso's Chicken) is not the same - it is now on par with every other Chinese restaurant in the area. And, since they discontinued salad and added soup to their lunch special, I've now tried their hot-and-sour soup - zero stars. The basic flavor is spicy, but no sour AT ALL, and then they dump waaay too much black pepper in it if you eat the soup with a white plastic spoon, you can see just how much black pepper is in the soup. To me it was inedible.

I lowered my rating from 5 starts down to 2.

Original post:

One of the best Chinese-food restaurants I've ever eaten at, and definitely the best one in Delaware!

I enjoy Chinese food quite a bit and have been looking all over Delaware and Northern Maryland (Elkton) for a decent place to get Chinese food, and, until I found this place, the best I'd found is about a 6 or 6.5 out of 10. I'd give this place a 9 or 9.5 out of 10! The only reason I don't give them a 10 is because they do have some dishes - including the soup you get with the lunch specials - that, although they might appeal to Chinese or Japanese customers, are not appealing o the typical American palette.

I don't know whether or not this place hand-breads their own chicken, but they definitely do NOT buy it frozen from the same place all other Chinese food restaurants buy it from because I have yet to have a tough, grizzled, inedible piece of chicken in my food.

FYI - their spicy dishes tend to be VERY spicy - they finely-chop the spicy red peppers instead of leaving them whole or chopped-in-half - so if very-spicy is too spicy for you, ask for...

I called and placed an order today based off an online menu. This is my first time at this establishment... I go to pick food up, & grab a paper menu on my way out since I run my business from home now, and we do monthly mtgs, because if the reviews I was considering adding them to our list of go to's for tofu.... I get home & its the wrong meal. We call back tell him the issusr and that we would like to get the correct meal. The male who answers says " what would you like. I open paper menu & realize that its meal # is different than the online one..So i tell him this. Hes says "ok . What do you want to order" So I go ahead and find what I initially wanted and tell him the correct meal & the order # listed in paper menu. He then says "thats 8.95" I say "are you saying that we have to pay again?" He says "Not our problem, you want new order, you pay." After explaining to him several times asking for a refund or Correction. He says "you already pay, not our problem", and he hangs up. We call back no answer . So I go to store and show menu online and paper but he stull doesnt budge on correcting order.. So i left food on counter and walked out. No need to argue ..... Thankfully our bank is great at handling events like these so we reached out immediately and will get our money back regardless. Never will go here again. 0 stars, shame on you Moms Kitchen. I dont know if its COVID or they just plain rude. But beware. Also there is nothing on a reciept or sign says no refund or adjustment. See...

The best local Chinese place I have found was a place called Phoenix City, Phenix City went out of business last year. Since then I've been searching. after seeing an article on the internet identifying the best Chinese restaurants in each state and this one being right down the street from my house I thought I would try it. It is by far not the best, pretty average really if not more authentic than others. Maybe I just don't like authentic but a lot of the more authentic places that I found don't seem to offer as delicious meal as some of the more inauthentic places. There are a couple of measures that I use when I visit a Chinese restaurant to compare. One is hot and sour soup, the other is egg rolls. this place the egg rolls are pretty decent, but are only available as vegetarian egg rolls no pork or shrimp for example. The hot and sour soup is definitely more authentic but like I say, it's just not as good as some other places. I'd hope that this would be my go-to replacement as they're very close to where I live and would deliver to my house. My new favorite restaurant is not this one, and unfortunately they don't deliver to my house because I'm about a half a mile too far for them. Mom's is worth a visit to check it out, and if you really like it then you can thank me for turning you on to it. As far as I'm concerned I'm...