Mandarin Kitchen — Restaurant in Des Moines

Update 2025: Based on what I'm reading from other reviewers, Mandarin Kitchen changed ownership not too long ago. It really pains me to write this, as this was my favorite place for Americanized Chinese food in the area, but I can no longer recommend this place. The Orange Chicken used to be hot, crispy and you could taste the orange; not anymore. The Honey Walnut prawns came drenched in a thick, gloopy sauce. The egg rolls tasted of slightly old oil, and the fried rice was dry and clumpy. It still isn't the worst Chinese I've had in the area, but it is nowhere close to what it used to be. This used to be a place where you could tell the owners took pride in their food.

Original review: I moved here from the east coast a few years ago. I was surprised that so many Chinese places in the area were so bad. I tried places in Bremerton, Federal Way and Seattle. I figured Tai Tung, with it's Bruce Lee endorsement, would be a winner, but nah. I had given up on good Chinese out here, until Mandarin Kitchen was recommended. Despite my skepticism, it was good. It was really good! It is among the best I've had! We had hot, fresh orange chicken on our table literally within five minutes of sitting. It actually tasted like orange, and consisted of lightly battered chicken rather than breading with a hint of chicken. We had also ordered lo mein, fried rice and honey walnut prawns. They were all delicious.

We're definitely coming back, and passing by all the other Chinese places in Federal Way to come here instead. There are any number of great, authentic Chinese places in the area but when it comes to Americanized Chinese this is the only place...

My apologies that this review is long, but I really need to let this out because I'm just purely disappointed. We ate there a few weeks ago. We got seated when we arrived, but we waited for quite a long time for someone to take our order. One guy kept walking to the other tables surrounding us, speaking to them as they ate and asking them about the food. He spoke too long with them and did not notice us once that we were ready to take our order. We even set our menus aside and still waited. We felt somewhat discriminated since we feel that we were the only asians eating in the restaurant (no offense, but truthfully we were - since we were surrounded by Caucasians at the time). After a very long wait, we had our order taken and we waited again patiently for our food. Once the food arrived and we started eating, we noticed that the prawn dish was too sweet and overloaded/heavily drenched in its own extremely sugary sauce. It was disappointing. The amount of prawns was little as well. As for the beef dish, the beef was quite hard and too chewy in texture. Overall, the service we experienced was poor... same goes for the food. This restaurant seems to not serve proper Chinese food. I suggest anyone to go somewhere else if they want really nice service and kind people and good quality cooked food. This restaurant is a...

Let me preface this by saying that my sister and I went to school with the original owners daughter and our family had been customers for nearly 30yrs since it was called Four Winds…until now. When Mike bought it years ago and made it his family business, it flourished. Having experienced a change in ownership and menu, I was expecting to see similar results. Unfortunately this was not the case when I took my parents there a couple weekends ago. Not only did the menu shrink drastically, but the service wasn’t great and prices went up for smaller portions. We ordered our usual “A” dinners and a couple extras (Mongolian Beef, Honey Walnut Prawns) and were more than disappointed with almost everything. What’s the deal with regular instead of spicy mustard with the BBQ Pork? Pork Fried Rice was worse than Safeway lunch after sitting for 3hrs under a heat lamp. Almond Chicken was horrible, Lo Mein was so salty it wasn’t edible. Even the Wonton soup had zero flavor. I will say this….the water was refreshing after adding a slice of lemon. I’m sorry to see so many others experience similar since this place used to be a pillar of holiday family dinners for us and many others. We wish...