Bamboo Express — Restaurant in Loveland

I've driven by this place for years never stopping in, I finally decided to change that. I placed my order online. For some reason the online menu is extremely limited. When I went to pick it up, I saw they had many more options available and added one of them. I'm assuming everything I ordered was pulled from the pre-made options instead of fresh. I got home to eat and everything was dry, like sitting under heat lamps for hours, kind of dry.

That was really unfortunate.

As with every restaurant I try for the first time, I get a sampling of their offerings. In this case, I got the teriyaki chicken sticks, Chinese donuts, Sesame chicken, chicken and broccoli (not on the website), egg drop soup. The egg drop soup was by far the best thing I tried, probably because it couldn't have dried out.

I don't know if I went at a bad time, no time should be a bad time at a restaurant, but you know how that goes, or if they were having a bad day. If the food was freshly made, I think it may have had real potential or at least be much better, especially for the cost.

I'll probably give it another shot, maybe around opening...

The dishes available at this 'by the scoop' Chinese flavored smorgasbord are the Americanized chinese-style , mostly Chicken based fare that we fat and lazy and or ignorant public crave. The sauces are wan, lacking depth and character, and tend toward the oily. That unfortunate truth said, I like that kind of food almost as well as any other American. By simply lowering my standards, I have been rewarded with literally dozens of FAST, FILLING, SATISFYING meals. Two entree scoops, mix or match, plus a scoop of rice or the totally edible vegi lo-mein runs about $8.00 And is a good quantity. Would easily feed 2 with a lighter appetite. I like the hot sour soup. The egg drop and the wonton soups tend to be gloopy and gloppy. I like the spring rolls. The egg rolls tend to be cardboardy and dry. I always choose black pepper chicken as one of my 3 scoops.

Tip: Men; use the ladies wash room. It has soap, towels AND it doesn't stink so bad. Not especially wheelchair friendly. Adequate parking lot. Open reasonably late, till 9:30PM Highly...

The place is a little run down and not very clean. Some of the food on the steam table was obviously old and dried out. Two times, the cook poured a fresh dish on top of the one that had been sitting on the steam table-- probably since lunch as it was just after 5pm.

About three hours after eating here, I got a terrible stomach ache and so did my husband. This was followed by hours of vomiting and diarrhea for my husband and myself. This wasn't a, "Something did not agree with me situation." This is full on food poisoning. We are both very sick with fever, chills, achy joints-- and all of the other classic food poisoning symptoms. Hopefully, this will run it's course quickly. (We are on day three of being sick.)

I really hate to leave this kind of review but this is a serious situation. I'm hoping that it's a fluke and food is normally handled...