Apple Green Bistro — Restaurant in Cupertino

Apple Green Bistro is one of the many authentic Chinese restaurants located in the Cupertino Village plaza. We came here on a Thursday night around 8pm and were seated immediately. The menus were clean, had pictures, and had both Chinese and English. They served us complimentary hot tea, perfect for a cold-for-California winter night. The service was above average for an authentic Chinese restaurant, which is always a nice plus to the dining experience.

We ordered the $12.99 Eggplant with Preserved Egg and Chili Pepper (not the best eggplant dish I've had), the $11.99 Sauteed Sliced Pork and Sour Cabbage (the pork was decent in flavor), the $12.99 Chinese Chives with Dry Tofu (very flavorful and highly recommend), the $12.99 Sauteed Yu Choy (a safe, classic vegetable order), and the $10.99 California Beef Noodle Soup (average). All 5 portion sizes of these dishes were generous, and our family of 4 ended up taking about two dishes worth of leftovers home, so I recommend ordering 3-4 dishes between 4 people for dinner, not including rice on the side.

Overall, I'd say this is a tasty, affordable, and worth-it Chinese restaurant that is nice to dine in or order takeout every...

To me, the best dish was the vegetable tofu in brown sauce, because it was flavorful enough to enjoy various kinds of flavors. The establishment is clearly a Chinese restaurant that many would visit on a random basis, as it is located amongst a lot of stores that have Chinese on their titles or related to Chinese culture in an outlet format in Cupertino.

I thought the Kung Pao Chicken was pretty standard and was good enough to make myself full. The black mushroom with vegetables was unfortunately below my expectations as the mushrooms had strong flavor while the vegetables didn't have any, causing a flavor imbalance, while the dish itself didn't have enough juice or broth to allow some mushroom umami flavor to flavor up the vegetables. The sesame bread with green onion was pretty thick and I mostly used it to accompany my dishes instead of rice, and since it was flavorless itself, it worked out fine. However, if one was expecting it to taste like the scallion pancakes that are popular in China, then one could be disappointed.

Since there were other Chinese restaurants around the area, if I make it around the area again, I would most likely try another...

This place had been great in both flavor and food quality a few years ago. But our recent two visits were awful. The food were not fresh and we got false advertisement.

One time was a few weeks ago when we ordered roasted fish(烤鱼) and the fish tasted not fresh while Apple Green claimed all their fish were fresh cooked. To us it felt very close to a taste of frozen-for-a-long -time-and-then-defrost fish.

The second time is today where we ordered frog pot(干锅牛蛙，活杀) and lamb chop(烤羊排). The meat of both were hard and not easy to consume. They don’t seem to be fresh cooked while the menu claims they are. We talked to the manager but she said that the center of the roasted lamb’s meat will be soft while the edge ones got burned. I am not sure if we should be responsible for those burned ones but even with our insist, the manager didn’t offer a different resolution than forcing us to accept it. So we had to eat them and went back home. Around 20mins later both of us had got a run. We felt really angry.

That’s why I am writing this review and please do not go to this place. The food is not fresh cooked and the service is...