Rainbow Garden — Restaurant in Champaign

My wife and I and my Mom ate here today. Everything was very good. I did forget to take photos unfortunately. We had vegetable egg rolls and steamed pork dumplings for an appetizer. Both were very good. The egg rolls came with a sauce like the gold colored duck sauce you get in a packet. Not my fav, but it works. Wished they had a meat egg roll. Dumplings were good too a very good sauce. We ordered beef and broccoli, General's chicken, lo mein noodles with vegetables that came with 1 personal sized white rice, and and upgrade to personal sized fried rice. The lo mein noodles with vegetables do not come with a side of rice. The general's chicken was not too spicy at all, unless you ate those dark chili pepper pieces. Then it has a great kick of heat, which I love. The ladies really liked the General's and they don't like heat so best of both worlds. Very good noodles and beef with broccoli. Large portions per item. We easily ate our fill and had some leftovers. You could feed 4 with 3 items, but you'll need to order extra rice as it's a pretty small serving each. We ordered the lo mein with vegetables as a rice replacement and it worked out great. We definitely recommend eating here. Little on the pricey side, averaged about $12-$13 and change per main item. We had three waters, the general's chicken, beef and broccoli, lo mein with vegetables, two egg rolls, the six dumplings, and upgrade to fried rice totaling $55 and some change before tip. Only saw the main entrance but very clean and pleasant interior. And oddly, and don't laugh, but the best tasting water. Give it a try. Very slow at 12:20...

My favorite Chinese food in Champaign. Been ordering from Rainbow Garden for a couple years now without issue. Finally had my first problem tonight.

Usually the food shows up within half an hour, or at least 45 minutes. After about an hour and a half, I've got nothin'. I call, they say they're really slammed but the driver has left, I say no big deal, and keep waiting. An hour later (2.5 from the order), still no luck, so I call them again. Turns out there was some confusion with my address ("Drive" vs. "Court", identical street name). They void my order to comp my food, and then promise to remake it anyway.

The delivery guy calls me, is at my door within 5 minutes with the original food (still warm, but obviously not "fresh"). 10 minutes later the person I spoke to on the phone delivered me a freshly-made order personally - and made a point to hand me the void receipt so I know I didn't get charged. And this was not an insignificant order, it was $50 for a few people. They essentially gave me double my order for no cost just to make things right, which I personally think is very much above and beyond (I was just looking for a straight refund, to be honest).

Long story, but all I'm saying is if this is how they handle the (extremely rare) screw-up, you bet I'm gonna keep...

Kids and I went for early dinner. We were frequent visitors of the RG in Urbana. No clue if it's in any way related but we kept saying we need to try here since the other's closure. And, why haven't we come here before?! Really good meal.

--Pork dumplings, pan fried, were flavorful. --Same with crab rangoon (hard to mess those up though) --Orange chicken for my picky kid who continues to be picky 🙄 It was very good. Loved the extra barely steamed broccoli and carrots. I try to forgo rice so it was a lovely vessel for all of the various sauces 😋 **Princess Pork. This was awesome. The kid that does eat ate more meat and veg in one sitting than I've seen, possibly, ever. Perfect crisp-tender veg and yummy pork. Slight heat of the palette-tingle variety (note: kid 2 and, especially, me can handle some serious HEAT, ymmv). We killed this. No take-homes. --"The kid that eats" reports their house tea was very good and he finished his pot (had to add since he tries tea everywhere)

Overall, we'll be back. Maybe without older kid who hates food.

P.s. We found the music and ambiance very soothing. As someone who takes issue with overly loud restaurants on the regular (high ceilings and echoey acoustics, music, TVs, etc) this was very much...