Dragon Cafe — Restaurant in La Vista

This is going to be a long post and is sadly way overdue. I have been going to Dragon Cafe since I was a little girl, my grandma would always take us, and this was back when it was Shanghi Palace. Dragon Cafe was my go-to place since forever up until about the last year or so. EVERY order we have placed with them is NEVER ready on time and is NEVER correct. I am not talking like 5 or 10 minutes of waiting, that is fine, and I understand that but here you always wait, at least 15-20 minutes MINIMUM. Our most recent experiences with them were 45-60 minutes if not longer. With that kind of service, we started looking for a new place to get our sushi and Chinese from.

Fast forward to today, Dragon is close to my work, and I was craving sushi so I figured I would give them another shot, only fair since it had been awhile. I got ONE roll of sushi and ONE order of crab rangoon, pick up scheduled for 12:15. Food didn't come out until almost 12:35. I figured I'd better check the order since we've had issues with accuracy. I ordered a Mango Dragon roll. When you look at their menu, rolls that are deep fried say "whole roll fried" next to the roll, this one did not. The roll description says "deep-fried eel and avocado inside, top w fresh juicy Mango" so to me this reads as the eel is fried and that's it, doesn't say anything about the whole roll being fried. Plus, their dragon roll, regular dragon roll that doesn't have mango isn't a fried roll either, just doesn't make sense. I called because at this point I am super irritated and going to be late getting back to work from lunch. I spoke to the lady up front and the owner. They both just argued with me about what a mango dragon roll is and told me it's fried. Again, that's fine if that's what it's supposed to be, but it is not stated on the menu that way so hopefully they make a correction. If it's a fried roll, it should say it's a fried roll. Sadly even with the disappointment of getting a fried roll, I thought maybe it would still taste good and it doesn't. It's honestly soggy and tastes like oil so I threw it in the trash after two bites. The mango is just hard chunks cut up into tiny pieces juts thrown all over the sushi, does NOT look like someone put any time or effort into it all. If I had to guess, they hadn't even started my food by the time I got there and then threw it together with zero effort to get me out the door.

There were two things I loved at Dragon that I didn't think I'd be able to find anywhere else. The crab rangoon and the sweet and sour chicken. Thankfully after all my searching, Umami in Bellevue came through for the win, they have both of those items and they are actually better than Dragon. I've never had an order that was incorrect, and I've never had to wait more than a couple of minutes. That is what service should be.

I don't think I have ever had sour feelings about a family-owned business, especially not enough to right a google review but this one is needed. It's been a long time coming and I hope they get serious about taking care of their customers. I have called and talked to them multiple times but here we are so sadly it's not going to change, we are taking our business elsewhere...

I have been to a few continents, several countries, and almost all 50 states and I love chinese food...usually. Tonight, I had the worst food that I have ever had...I'll say it again to accentuate, WORST FOOD EVER. I've had some crappy goat in Iraq that was far better than what I got tonight. What is especially important to me is that this place has a current rating of 4.1 and after tasting their food, I figure that all of their cooks quit and now they have a high-school lunch lady making the food or, worse yet, they have ceased to care about the quality of their product. I ordered and had this crappy-meal delivered to my hotel room which consisted of General Tsao's chicken, kung pao chicken, pork fried rice, and white rice. First off, when the guy showed up with my food (if you can call it that) a large pool of brown sauce was pooled at the bottom of the bag. I didn't realize how bad the sauce issue was until I opened the bag; sauce covered nearly every inch of the four containers and it appeared that the bag was at one point thrown as one of the styrofoam containers was cracked and smashed. I was ravenous, as I had to skip lunch due to my work schedule and dug right into the usually-delicious General's chicken. It lacked in every regard of what the dish would usually consist of. I ate it anyway, frowning the entire time because there was zero spice included. I moved onto the kung pao, hoping for more flavor than the General provided and found none. Instead of spice, I found that it tasted more like the gym socks that were stuffed in my mouth when I was a freshman. I spit it out immediately when I was reminded of those glory days. I almost heaved but thought it better to try to hold it in as the aftertaste of the kung would be better than the taste of bile (a close 2nd in my opinion). I then tried the pork fried rice to try to get that nasty taste out of my mouth, but discovered that it was actually worse than the previous dish. Really? You can't even do pork fried rice correctly? I threw the remainder into the trash of the lobby because the leftovers were rank, then walked across the street to Sonic to get something good. Sonic never disappoints. Sorry Dragon Cafe, but your food sucks. Fix it if you please, but don't expect a return customer after the terribly disappointing meal...

Spring rolls were oily, inside and out. I asked to make sure it was egg rolls. He said they were the same, however these were made of rice paper and not flour, but I digress.

The Mei Fun was heavily salted. Way too much msg and not enough seasoning. Not even a hint of ginger. The chicken was also old, and stringy, meaning it wasn’t hydrated long enough with the cornstarch slurry which would have rejuvenated the chicken. The noodles had a gummy texture meaning the noodles were over cooked during the stirfry and not enough oil was added for the light sear. The meat portion was fair. 4/10

The Dragon and Phoenix, basically deep fried tender beef tossed in brown sauce separated by broccoli from jumbo shrimp also deep fried and tossed in a simple garlic sauce. The shrimp were swimming in the sauce, also doused in msg. The beef was tender like the chicken should have been from the mei fun. The beef sauce was a bit too sweet and was drily familiar to bbq, Just saying. The portion was ok. 4/10

Overall I wouldn’t spend my money here. There are better options and fell below par for the typical Asian fast food restaurant. I was expecting midrange and hoping for a notch above. I’m very disappointed and think this restaurant is cutting corners when it comes to prepping their food and is heavy handed with the salt and msg in place of the Asian trio garlic ginger and spring onion. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are using bullion or store bought chicken stock for their base stock, which would explain all the salt. There is no pride I this food and the oily spring roll immediately hurt my stomach. It may look good but trust me,...