Chop Suey Inn — Restaurant in Homewood

Return Review (09-29-21): After over a year since my last review I decided to return and see if anything improved. My last year review was a 1 out of 5.

First the pros: Food looked amazing. I ordered the Mongolian beef, fried rice, and 1 egg roll. Beef was cooked perfectly. I think there's a technique they use to make it really soft, I personally don't care for the texture when it's really soft like that but I understand some people do.

Fried rice was good.

Restaurant is much cleaner

Cons: Even if you call ahead you may wait a while.

While the beef was cooked perfectly, there was little to no flavor and spice. The dish was listed as a spicy dish but it had no spice at all. I know a lot of Chinese restaurants lessen spice to cater to America taste but that was disappointing. I think you can request it to be more spicy. When this restaurant was at it's peak, I would order this dish and it was be perfectly spicy and it was not something I needed to request. Right amount of Mongolian sauce just needs more flavor.

Biggest Con: Now the most disappointing thing to me is the egg roll. This place was known for having the best egg rolls in arguably the state. Not anymore. Took a bite and it had no flavor. Pulled it apart and now instead of shrimp the standard egg rolls come with some type of very bland chicken inside.

Final Take: Score is overall better because the food was at least edible this time but the egg rolls have gone down and one of the most popular items, the Mongolian beef lacked flavor and spice. 6.3 / 10

Update: 7-16-20 Went today. The store looks cleaner. Ordered the Mongolian Beef with one egg roll. Egg roll was good. Only complaint was that the shrimp inside was not deveined. Mongolian beef was horrible. It had a bland taste and had this weird powdery texture to it to it. Took like 2 bites and just trashed the whole meal.

Original Review:

My experience here over the past year is that their food is good. Great food, the best Egg Rolls I've had anywhere. The service is questionable especially when they would be busy. Guy at the front would argue and yell at other staff members on top of the store not being the cleanest.

I stopped going when I saw a roach two times in a row. My experience is that if there's one roach there are more in other areas. Especially when you visit multiple times and see a roach every time.

Really good food, just bad service sometimes and roaches. The negatives could...

REVISITED-REVISED They have made a MAJOR effort in the dining room. New floor, some wall art, a TV or three! It's still not for sissies, but not like an impound lot cash room either. Wife LOVES the food here from way back...but she still doesn't want to eat here- take out only. PRO TIP- Go through the propped open door and past the walk-in cooler to get to restrooms. PRO TIP 2- All the meals in little boxes in the menu are silly go9d values. "Special dinner anytime" for $12 bucks feeds three normal folks. $25 for two meal, lunch specials, todos, a lotta bang for the buck. Might be Calico Kung Pao or Szechuan Siamese, but there is plenty of it. 3 egg rolls and a vegetable dish is a great meal for two WELL under $20. PRO TIP 3- Mustard is not in a sachet, but a little cup with a snap lid. Did you ever have Agent Orange at Manchas? That is nursing home Jello compared to this stuff. It needs to be served with a toothpick or an eye-dropper. everything else is------ ORIGINAL REVIEW NOW

5IVE ST*RS!!! This is the Sketchiest restaurant in the metro, and it's in Homewood! Go figure. This makes Gordos seem like Chez FonFon. Fried chicken at the Brighton Marathon, the River Fish Market on Vanderbilt, and Boston Fish Supreme (multiple locations) give you more comfort than this place. SOME folks love the food. The egg rolls are the best in town- like Joy Youngs or Kao's. Most other dishes are so mild as to be bland. Prices are right, portions are large. Folks behind the counter are stressed and loud- no idea if it's happy or not. Clientele is often fractious. The dining room feels like the waiting room in a jail. If you're feeling guilty about living in the USA, and want to take a quick trip to the 3rd World- 813 Green...

In my effort to eat at any and all Chinese restaurants in Alabama, I finally made my way to Chop Suey Inn on Green Springs Avenue in Birmingham. Frankly, I was a little dubious. While the standard bill of fare at most joints in our state would be alien in China, here was a place still advertising and serving chop suey (and even chow mein). Talk about old school...but I wasn't there for either.

For long years, I had heard a rumor how one of the cooks at the old Joy Young restaurant had defected to Chop Suey Inn, and had taken the egg roll recipe with them. I loved those dern things, and finally decided to see if the rumor was true.

I will cut to the quick and say: the egg rolls at Chop Suey Inn are the same as the ones Joy Young used to make. Period and end of discussion. Defecting cooks and all of that? Who knows or cares? A bite of one of those bad boys WILL fill old timers with some sense of nostalgia.

So, why only 3 stars?

I won't take away points for the atmosphere, because I wasn't expecting any at a walk up counter Chinese joint on Green Springs Avenue. To be sure, they could use a poster or two on the walls, but I wasn't expecting anything and they met my expectations. No, it was the entrée.

My co-worker said they would have given their kung pao chicken 4 out of 5 stars, but my General's chicken was only a two star effort. You might argue I shouldn't order General's chicken, but it is a go to dish of mine at a new restaurant, as fried chicken thighs are hard to screw up. The only way to do so is to drown them in sub-standard sauce, which they did.

Had I left it at just the egg rolls, which I will do in the future, the score would have been...