Formosa Restaurant — Restaurant in Chattanooga

OMG, what happened to this place? I guess a little background is called for. You see, when my wife and I were younger, we owned a home in Hixson. It was off of Gadd sort of behind Formosa. We couldn't afford to eat at Formosa like it was McDonalds or Burger King, but when we could splurge and wanted Asian food, nothing topped Formosa. My job took me to Charleston, TN, to ensure quality during the seismic rebuild of Wacker. Being a long-term project, we moved there. But we would often would make the drive back just to pick up our favorites at Formosa. On the drive home, we would always enjoy those hot and fresh fried noodles that were included with every order stimulating our appetite for the wonderful meal when we got home. There was a period when I started working out of state, so a tradition was put on hold. Now we're retired and live in Soddy Daisy. We don't have a lot to choose from here, or rather we wanted something different, and we remembered Formose. We ordered on the way and picked it up. Gone were the fried noodles we always ate on the way home. But we waited. We got home and couldn't even imagine Formosa serving what we found in the bag. I had ordered the Pupu platter. The ribs were burnt, and the entire dish was just about inedible. If you tore apart the rolled items, maybe the very center, not even a bite worth, was soft enough to chew. Bottom line on my choice, everything was old, overcooked, or recooked too many times or burnt. I ended up having to go to the dollar store and get a frozen meal to eat. My wife said her dish, while edible, had an unappealing taste. Our dog, he had an order of boneless spareribs. He did eat them, but they were like jerky they were so dry. So ended a good thing. I don't know what happened there, but we'll never know. If you live out our way, check out #1 Chinese Restaurant, of which I now have an appreciation for. I once thought...

The service was good. The time from order to food was a bit long but we had 5 of us and ordered soups and apps. Between us we had wonton, hot and sour, and sizzling rice soup. The wonton was good. The guy eating hot and sour said it was some of the best he's had. I was eating sizzling rice soup and didn't like it. I don't know if it is a regional thing, we just moved here, but where we came from sizzling rice is a chicken soup, sometimes with shrimp and never broccoli or zucchini. So when at Formosa it had only shrimp and no chicken and broccoli and zucchini and a thicker broth, it just didn't taste like what I was used to or wanting, but that is a personal taste preference so I won't knock stars off for it. Then we had fried meat dumplings, which are like pan seared pot stickers. They were very good and the dipping sauce had a little chili sauce or oil in it which wasn't too spicy but added some good flavor. We also got crab Rangoon. These were in a thick egg roll wrapper versus say a dumpling wrapper, but they were crisp, hot, very flavorful. Wish I had asked if they had spicy mustard to go with it! For lunch meals we had Mandarin combination, very tasty with undertones of ginger. Dragon horse chicken which was also very good. Mangolian beef which was made with purple/red onion which I hadn't seen before, but it was fresh tasting and not too sweet like some places. The beef with broccoli was good, also very fresh tasting and not too heavy of a sauce. Lastly we had beef with Formosa greens. By the name I expected more, it's pretty much a beef with veggies in a brown sauce. Nothing special but still prepared well. My non-chinese food husband said he actually enjoyed the food, so that is a super high praise, he had the dragon horse chicken. Overall really good and I am sure we...

*updating again. Since Mike has been bakc the restaurant is so kuch better since covid!

Unfortunately got to change my good review to a bad one after 39 years... we miss you Mitchell and I'm sorry your family has run it into the ground so much. Unfortunately when we order here now they ALWAYS leave out food or make it wrong. When we order food to go we order 10 egg rolls at least because theres 6 of us and our twin 2 year olds LOVE them. Unfortunately when we order that many they mess up and the last 2 times only added 2 in the bag. So they owed us 20 egg rolls because the girl went ahead and made it a even 20 for the headache both times. Thats not counting the endless mistakes on our food almost every time and we usually don't say anything but this last time the princess steakque was just 6 chunks of meat no sauce or broccoli... so we did say something for almost $20, but usually let it go. Tonight they said theres no way they owe us that many and the rude man Alex just argued non stop. He didn't see how we are owed so much.. well if YALL DIDNT MESS UP SO MUCH AND LEAVE OUR FOOD OUT THAT INCONVENIENCES US, YOU WOULDNT OWE US FOOD WE PAID FOR ALEX. We PAID for these egg rolls they were not free or replaced because they were messed up WE PAID FOR THEM ALEX and they left them out. That's stealing my money over $100 worth. When I say we go here A LOT and we have all been GREAT friends with the owner since i was born... Unfortunately with him letting the family take over its horrible now 😭 goodbye formosa, Mitchell, and Mike you'll be forever missed. You and fried bananas will forever be a big memory in my...