China Panda Restaurant — Restaurant in Buellton

Stop! No! Do not go to this place, an unpleasant fake Chinese restaurant. If you visited Solvang, you better drive 5 minutes more around to find any other true Panda Express, but never China Panda Restaurant 1. Two individuals cook and take the orders. Clean, cash, and serve. It takes 1 hour to order. 2. The both guys are super busy. 3. The chicken orange was the worst of all my life. No color, flavor, acid-type chemical, or navigating in dense water. 4. Fry Rice was acid with a ton of hard white onions. The rice was almost sticky and without residual egg. It lacks vegetable, ginger, oil flavor, or salt. It was not fried at all but boiled rice only. The chow main was almost Italian pasta. Watering pasta is almost white with the flavor of water and all with a yellow liquid. And acid. Why? 6. WanTan soup. It was water with a few veggies in a gallon bowl. 7 Attitude. I was sad and furious inside, but I considered my wife to be constructive when making my comments. The gentleman was polite but never apologized. The lady was charismatic but avoided my good and soft comments, blaming Williams, the manager. I said: you have a good opportunity with a restaurant in this area, but consider that you need help because the food is not the best. I have a lot of experience with Chinese food and its inferior quality. Please get help to improve it. But both did not care; therefore, here is my review. The size of the kitchen is 6x10 ft. I didn't see any place to fry. The kitchen lack of door and it has no ceiling or extractor fan . No oil odor or space for a kitchen. I am assuming that the food was cooked before and they warmed up Only. How 2 guys may cook for 12 tables? From 1 to 10...

William, the owner has run this business exceptionally well for quite a few years, hard worker and very customer service oriented. The food for the price and serving size is top notch 5 star. Dishes always come out hot and veggies fresh. Our “2” favorites are the chicken and pork dishes. We often order the chicken dishes (that can be made) with white meat chicken, as for pork dishes BBQ’d pork also that can be made that way. The chow mein noodle dishes, egg flower soup, fried rice are also very good. Great locals restaurant, far better than the fast food restaurants in the area and the steak restaurants nearby in Buellton. For breakfast there’s no place in the SYV as Ellen’s also in Buellton.The Red Barn in Santa Ynez is great for steaks, etc both family owned. We’ve frequented China Panda often for lunch and dinner for many years eaten in or take out occasionally for dinner. Have had many of their great dishes. Can accommodate a group of 10-12, recommend calling ahead and making a reservation for that number of people. Easy to find as it’s located in the same complex as O’Reilly’s. Believe they still offer certain dishes mild spicy or hot spicy. Uncertain if the soy sauce on the tables has MSG, don’t believe they use it in their dishes and they are perfect and flavorful without it. Some other things we really like are the restaurant is very clean, shows pride of ownership. We’ve always felt very good after eating their as healthy food. Plenty of free parking and handicapped parking places also believe it’s handicap friendly. ...

Our visit to this restaurant was extremely disappointing. We were a group of four adults and four kids, and none of us had a good experience with the food.

The kids, who usually enjoy noodles, couldn't eat them because both the noodles and the fried rice tasted bad. The flavors were off, and the dishes felt stale. The chicken salad was even worse — it seemed to be made with canned chicken and had a noticeable, unpleasant smell.

Despite ordering a large amount of food, everything was brought to our table in under 10 minutes. That was immediately concerning and made us question how freshly the food had been prepared. Unfortunately, the speed did not mean quality — everything tasted rushed and poorly made.

The most worrying part came after the meal. One of the kids and all four adults ended up with upset stomachs shortly after eating. This raised serious concerns about food safety and hygiene.

Overall, the food was not just disappointing in taste but may have also been unsafe. We would not recommend this restaurant and will not...