Golden Dragon Chinese Food — Restaurant in Laguna Niguel

The good: Friendly service. Everything is cooked fresh. Price point is good. Quaint restaurant, low key, self order (no waitress, my fav)

The bad: The food is super, super bland. Almost tasteless. I ordered the Chicken Chop Suey. Tasted like someone took a wok, threw in some celery, sprouts, water chest nuts, chicken, onions and mushrooms with some water, stirred it for 5 mins and threw it on a plate.

I can usually overlook some of the other items, however this just didn't cut it for me.

Also, one of the other things that I've grown accustomed to in other mom and pop Chinese and Thai shops is some kind of dinner plate special, where a roll, wonton or other garnishment is included along with fried rice when you sit in. No such thing here.

If you'd like an example of a business doing it right, check out Thai Pepper in Huntington Beach. They're on point.

I may come back and try to give another dish a try, unsure...

I like the egg flower soup when I have a cold. It makes feel better. I love egg flower soup and it's hard to find.

Tonight I got orange chicken. The good: they use bite-sized chunks of white meat chicken instead of that weird, flat, processed chicken some places use. The bad: it was SUPER sweet and syrupy. I'll try something savory next time.

It fills the empty spot but it's not amazing.

EDIT: I've come to like this little place. The lady at the counter is friendly. She even brought my meal to the car one night during the pandemic.

Their lunch specials are filling. They're usually enough for lunch and dinner.

I like this place better than other Chinese fast food joints because you can get things like chow mein and chow fun and mu shu. They even offer a couple of...

Zero stars if I could. Warning for delivery orders. This restaurant started out good but went downhill quickly and I will no longer order from them. My last order of spicy barbecue pork had 5 smaller than quarter size slices of pork in a sea of sliced onions!! Had to hunt for the pork slices. The shrimp in lobster sauce had exactly 4 pieces of scrawny shrimp floating in an unappetizing soupy mixture with big chunks of bell pepper and onion chunks. Kung Pao chicken was a little better with a few pieces of chicken but still full of huge chunks of bell pepper, squash, peanuts and (you guessed it) more onion chunks. Egg rolls are not fresh and taste previously frozen. These people went down the tubes quickly....