China Gourmet — Restaurant in Encinitas

Stopped by Bevmo after work and decided to order out from this new Chinese restaurant next door. The host in the front was very sweet and gave me a rewards card to earn a free entrée after a certain amount of points. Interior decor looked nice. Very clean and traditional.

As for the food unfortunately it was a huge miss for me....

A bit pricey for the portions on the meat entrees. Also I did not realize it was $6 to add on only ONE piece of fried shrimp, an egg roll and a small cup of soup...robbery.

Apps Egg Drop Soup: Bland and oily Egg Roll: Avg Fried Shrimp: Probably the most unique thing I tried. I was of fan of the batter they used. It almost tasted like fried sweet corn bread. I could eat a plate of these.

Pork Chow Fun: No color. Lacked green onions. Bland with a strange rancid smell that I could not pin point.

Braised Eggplant: Usually my favorite dish. Flavor was there but it was drowned out by the oil unfortunately

Honey Walnut Shimp: Batter texture was great but where was the sauce?!?! Missing all the flavor...

Tangerine Beef Lv 2: Probably the most disappointing dish. Zero tangerine whatsoever. I could only taste soy sauce with a little sugar. No spice at Lv 2 out of 5. Texture was very dry like beef jerky.

I'd come back for that fried shrimp but otherwise it was 4 strikes out on the...

I tried to have dinner with my wife at this place since Valentine's Day but the place is always packed for dinner and we couldn't wait for too long...so we came on Monday night and surprisingly found out the place is quite busy, fortunately we were seated in less than 15 minutes, which allowed us to appreciate the elegant deco they have. Besides the attentive service, they delighted us with some most delicious food - we ordered the braised chicken with basil (3 cup chicken), sauteed beef in Hunan style (THE black bean sauce), steamed fish garnished in ginger and scallions paired with their house Chardonnay (but I think they could do better with Sonoma Cutrer) and then pot stickers; Each dish came poping hot, with unique, authentic Chinese food taste and THE "wok hei" ( if you want sweet sour chicken and fired rich, I suggest going to Panda for more bang of you buck) , the meat were so tender that they literally melt in you mouth yet with a nice and subtle texture, the seasoning were just enough to bring out the flavor, without over powering the aroma of the meat protein and fresh veggies. From top to bottom, this is truly a "gourmet" restaurant! I highly recommend China Gourmet if you want to appreciate Chinese "Haute cuisine" that can be found nowhere...

The place’s location is convenient, one waitress was quite friendly, but the guy waiter was probably new and mixed up the orders. However the food is somewhat under the par. The waiter sent us the wrong fish instead of back-bean sauce fish that we ordered. Xiao-long-bao is ok-ish, didn’t have the soup pouch, green onion pancake was really flat taste. The final bill came out as a little surprising becuz the serving size of each was quite small, for really so-so cooking. Cannot really give any ranking above 2.

But the waitress was very nice. Although with only very few tables in the place at that time, the food serving time was slow. She eventually knocked the tip off from our bill, I guess as a way to apologize for the slow serving and the...