Gen Hoe Restaurant — Restaurant in Geneva Township

Having moved out this area from the city, this place gives me nostalgic 80s-90s Three Happiness in Chinatown vibes. If you know, you know! In other words, the food, the staff, the decor... it's like someone beamed a restaurant in Chinatown from back in the day and teleported them here! They even serve Dim Sum on Sundays like Three Happiness and other traditional Chinatown restaurants! (PS: many of the traditional restaurants and closing and the more modern fusion/trendy places are taking their place!)

That is to also say the food is absolutely authentic! And it's no surprise too! Mrs. Lee (the owner) told me how a lot of her staff lives in the city!

The Americanized menu feels out of place, but since it's in St Charles, I totally understand the need to cater to the American palate.

You can just ask them the dish in Chinese if you spoke the language, but if you don't (like me), they have photos of some of the more authentic dishes you can just point to.

I still can't believe they have crispy duck like you can get in Chinatown! And it's proper crispy! This is labor intensive so I was surprised they make it in-house! They include pineapples and tomatoes which was unexpected but the acidity helps cut the natural heartiness of the duck. I'm going to share that tip with my mom and bother now. 😅

If you're Chinese and grew up in Chinatown, you need to come here! If you can speak Cantonese or Mandarin, even better!

PS: with the combination of authentic and Americanized dishes, their menu is HUGE! I'd like to try their take on the egg fried rice next time. Uncle Roger on YouTube definitely influenced...

Maybe we caught them on a bad night but the food was not good, the fried rice was salty and flavorless. The chicken in the fried rice was chewy, the Sesame Chicken we ordered had a very thick red sauce with no flavor, the Orange Beef was chewy/fatty and had a thick sauce that again had no flavor. The egg rolls tasted good but very greasy and lacked flavor. The main course was out in less than ten minutes which was odd considering we ordered 4 different dishes. It seems like all the food was frozen or refrigerated for a very long time and warmed up for us. One of the plates given to us for the egg rolls had residual food on it and when we told the waiter he said, "it's water" and we showed him the red food stain and he seemed inconvenienced. The server was not friendly and when he brought the check to our table I was reading an e-mail on my phone and he slid my phone away from me and put down the check which has never happened to me before. The atmosphere is dated but nice for a Chinese restaurant and there was ample seating and a lot of parking. The location is great and I could see this as a really great place with a lot of potential but overall this was a below average experience and we will not...

It’s a pretty atmosphere less Chicago suburbs Chinese place, however that’s standard so I wouldn’t single any of them out for that!

Service was decent enough as they seemed to watch the local lad to do every table. He was decent enough for a youngster trying to earn a little money without a lot of help.

They brought me a beer with the cap on, which was funny but as the lad was trying to help his mate and couldn’t legally cap it anyway it all added to the entertainment

However. I’ve been there several times and the best advice I can offer is don’t order anything you don’t see a picture of. I ordered the beef special. Soup and egg roll nice enough, BUT, the beef thing masquerading as the special was drowned in a sauce of indeterminate nature with about four small pieces of onion and a couple of very small bits of pepper. It was supposed to be a nicer cut of beef, it wasn’t, and was not particularly edible by anyone except the very hungry.

I was going to leave the remainder but thought the dog will have it. I got them to get rid of the sauce and as they say, dinners in the dog!

I’ve had decent luck there before but check the menu pictures and if there are none don’t do it, particularly...