China Bowl — Restaurant in Gainesville

Major Update, China Bowl Hunter Crossing: Wow, grossed me out, and I've been to Asia dozens of times. We placed an order to go, picked it up and then headed home with the food. We were eating egg foo yong and I suddenly felt something strange in my mouth with the food. I reached in my mouth and slowly began pulling out a dark thin object and it got longer as I continued pulling on it. By the time I had pulled the item completely out, I had a nine inch long piece of jet black hair. Keep in mind what we were eating, an item which they prepare beforehand, not something like stir fry.

I mentioned to my wife, there was an Asian woman sitting on the floor behind the counter playing with a child when I picked up our order. When she finally noticed me, she got up from the floor and asked my name and phone number then gave me my order. She was sweaty and wasn't wearing a hair net. The next day, I took the hair wrapped in a napkin back to the restaurant. The owner first claimed she wasn't working there yesterday, then I explained that yes, she was, and had waited on me. Then he denied that she worked in the kitchen but she was the only person working in the store with long black hair. Next he offered to make me another order, which I of course declined. I told him I couldn't understand the hair in the food and suggested she wear a hair net next time. The issue of him lying and the woman acting as if she couldn't speak or understand English, but she did the day before, this was just despicable and I indicated we weren't coming back. He suddenly offered to refund the cost of "one" egg foo yong, NOT the order of egg foo yong, Not the entire order, but only "One" egg foo yong, maybe twenty cents at most.

Enjoy your next meal from China Bowl, but check it closely for whatever your ingredients might be. My rating was four stars six months ago, but the new owner gets one star. Accidents happen, I get that, but intentionally lying is a...

Food poisoning. We'll get back to it.

First, this is not a one-off. I've gone here a couple dozen times over the years, and it's had a marked decline in the past year or a little less. Second, I should have cancelled the order when they called me to verify I wanted the house chow mein. "It doesn't come with noodles, that's lo mein" they informed me. It's interesting, and I wanted to ask him what he thought "mein" meant. It means noodles. Anyhow, it was nearly lunch and I was craving Chinese, so whatever. Strangely enough it came with rice.

The food smelled a little less than appetizing and it was 80% onions. I thought the two things were related, shrugged, and moved on. It didn't taste very good. Lesson learned. Well, no, because that night I threw up. I'll be vague and say the symptoms of violent food poisoning continued to manifest. Thank God the next day was July 4th and there was no work, but then the entire weekend and into the start of next week I could not keep down anything --- not even water --- longer than an hour. It has now been over a week and I'm still not well.

So yeah. This place no longer looks clean, the people helping you are suspect, and the food will give you a religious experience as you pray for a quick death rather than live in the bathroom...

I called to try and find this place as I’m a delivery driver and the directions took me to the dentist’s office across the parking lot. A lady answered with a curt “Hello”. I told her I needed help finding her restaurant and told her where I was. She repeated the address to me without including the suite number. I told her again I was there, but couldn’t find her. She hung up on me. I finally found the place and the inside looked like they were about to shut down. There was no space for customers to sit as there were boxes on every surface. The kitchen was dark, which is a red flag to me because who knows what’s happening back there when you can’t see it. They also had so much plexi glass up at the register that it felt like I was in a pawn shop or a payday loan place. I would never eat there given the service I received and the way the...