Shanghai Inn Restaurant — Restaurant in Lake View Township

I tried to call the restaurant directly and give this feedback privately, but unfortunately the voicemail box was full, and no information exists only for sharing private feedback. So, unfortunately, my review -- and its 3 stars -- will have to be public until this issue is addressed.

I say unfortunately, because my star value has nothing to do with the quality of the food. It's quite good. I think it's some of my favorite Chinese food on the north side, comforting, well-executed, with familiar favorites that manage to still be "different" from the norm in ways that are tasty and appreciated. I've never ordered something from this restaurant that isn't excellent and I'd recommend it to anyone.

However, when I opened up my fortune cookie, it said "There's more to life than just money, there's Bitcoin." The logo on the back, when I looked it up, was to a crytpocurrency-hawking grift website in the Bahamas. Other cookies had similar messages from the same company.

If I wanted an advertisement, I'd watch television. If I wanted an advertisement for a climate-destroying Ponzi scheme run by a parade of two-bit grifters and felonious charlatans trying to swindle as many easy marks as they can find, I'd watch the Republican National Convention. Since all I'd wanted was Chinese food, I had a reasonable expectation that my fortune cookie would tell me something innocuous about how I needed to beware of friends with false faces, a few lucky numbers, and a phrase to learn in Chinese. Instead I received something that made me feel so much disgust I questioned whether I needed to call a priest to renew the blessing on my house.

This issue needs to be addressed with the supplier. I do not want to encounter advertising at the conclusion to my meal, and I certainly don't want advertisements for a speculative financial scheme designed to enrich a handful of cartoon villains at the expense of millions of suckers. I'll update this review accordingly the next time my fortune cookie is a fortune cookie and not a Trojan horse for glibertarian...

Overall: Not bad! Way better than other chinese places i have had. The food arrived hot, fresh, and not old or stale. The delivery could have been better but I ordered from Grubhub and this place handles their own deliveries. This means you do NOT get to track the order in grubhub. This makes for a poor delivery experience because you dont know when the person will arrive. A MAJOR NO NO- the delivery driver sat my food outside on the ground!! I HATE that. That is SO UNSANITARY! I get that she was having trouble getting into my building but she didnt have trouble contacting me! I answered her text right away and even communicated that I was on my way down. I saw her just as she turned around and was leaving! Dont do that again! I updated my delivery to ensure i had clear delivery instructions so the next driver wont have to contact me or wait until they get here. I suggest the same! Or perhaps i will check if they deliver to me and i can order direct.

Now for the real review…the food! I ordered, Mongolian beef and added broccoli medium spicy- This was piping hot! The broccoli was fresh. I didn’t expect red and green peppers. I have never had that in mongolian beef. The spice could have been better for medium. The sauce/gravy had flavor and wasn’t bad. The only negative is that it was too greasy! You can literally see the grease kind of separating in the sauce! That was bad. But overall, not bad. Combination fried rice- this arrived hot. The rice wasnt hard or too old. The meat inside was chicken, beef, and shrimp. The rice didnt have a bad or old smell. It was good. The negative, it needed more flavor. Maybe some green onion or scallion or more soy sauce. Idk. But it did lack some flavor. I added sides of hot sauce. I didnt like it. It was like siracha but mixed with mild salsa. Final review: i would and maybe order from this place again. And maybe soon! But please add some flavor to the rice and take out some grease in the...

Ordered and picked up the “lo mein” (pictured) as well as a few other options. The food is very good, but these unusual thin ramen-like noodles came without any sauce; which is atypical from the usual lo mein I’ve ordered from most Chinese places. I called the restaurant and was told that this dish is a traditional lo mien, and that most Chinese places serve a Cantonese-style lo mein that comes with a brown sauce. During the conversation, Manager was fighting back about how the lo mein shouldn’t need to be listed as ‘dry/ without sauce’ when according to them “most other places serve lo mein as Cantonese-style with the brown sauce”. (They Also stated that we are new customers; indicating that I would know if I already ordered there before) Before trekking back to get some other meal replacement, I asked them to make the ‘Cantonese-style’ lo mein that they suggested was the style we preferred, but the manager stated that the Cantonese-style lo mein was where the vegetables with sauce were separated from the noodles and that I wouldn’t want that dish. In confusion, I asked what the original style from other restaurants was called, and the manager doubled back to say that the lo mein I ordered was the style I was asking for; but that I just need to customize it by asking to add brown sauce. (Which contradicts what they said at the very beginning)

All in all, the food was very tasty and I mostly recommend them; but it gives me the impression that I need to explain what dish I’m expecting just to make sure I don’t...