Hunan Springs — Restaurant in Lower Macungie Township

Went early around 4:30 on a Sunday, about 4 other tables seated in the restaurant, we were seated promptly by the friendly hostess.

Ambiance: Truly amazing interior, renovated from an old farmhouse with large hanging lights and lots of wood/brick. Wish I could echo these sentiments when it came to the food.

Food: Having been a huge fan of real Chinese cuisine throughout my life, I came because other reviews and their menu make it seem more authentic than your typical Chinese food restaurant, but unless you're ordering the obvious shock value menu item "Chicken w/ Jellyfish", its American style, and very inoffensive. For my appetizer I ordered Cold Sesame Noodles. Now I don't know about you, but I expect my Sesame Noodles to have sesame in them. This was almost literally lo-mien noodles with peanut-butter half mixed in, with crushed peanuts on top. Could not detect and sesame at all, and was only able to finish about half before I didn't feel like eating spoonfuls of peanut-butter anymore. Not good. For dinner I ordered Mapo Tofu, specifically asking for it extra spicy. It was barely spicy at all, and lacked any Ma-La due to this and lack of any Sichuan peppercorns that make any good Mapo Tofu. In fact, I could tell they just added extra "hot chili oil" at the end, as it was very oily, and somehow still not spicy. It was also, to my taste, overly sweet (to much oyster sauce?) and also contained no ground pork that I could detect, which again, IMO, all good Mapo Tofu has. My girlfriends Duck Fried Rice was decent enough, but the special menu stated that all the dishes on it come with a Shrimp Roll, but when we asked why she didn't receive one, were told that the Duck Fried Rice doesn't come with one because it doesn't count as an Entree. Felt jipped. Our Hot & Sour Soup was neither hot nor sour. Loaded with wood ear mushrooms (maybe even canned?), that was the only flavor I could detect. Obviously made in a large batch set over a bain-marie to simmer away any flavor it might have had over the course of 48 hours. The free fried wonton skins were very good, but the spicy mustard they came with was again, not spicy in the least. Watery w/ no flavor.

Service: Our water came in plastic coca-cola branded cups, which was sort of a weird contrast to the beautiful interior and inflated prices, felt cheap. There were about 7 tables seated at the busiest moment during our meal, but the 3 waitstaff were running around like it was a full house, and it took some time to get our waitresses attention for the check. The service we did manage to get was friendly enough. The bathroom was very clean, and the place overall seemed clean enough other than dust inside the lamps that overhang all the tables and thus your food. They had one waiter dressed up with a tucked in white buttonup dress-shirt and a black bow-tie. It was weird in my opinion.

2 out of 5, would not go out of my way to come back. Maybe to try the drinks since I didn't get to do that and their bar looked cool. You will love this place if...

We have been Hunan Springs customers for 20+ years, but after our last experience we will not be a returning customer.

We ordered takeout and received the wrong order (for the 3rd time this year), but did not realize it until we got home. We were missing an order of cashew chicken and instead of regular beef and broccoli that we have ordered hundreds of times we got spicy beef and broccoli.

When we called the restaurant to ask for the order to be corrected, the service was terrible!

We had to wait on hold for the employee on the phone to check with his manager if he could make our order right. We were then told that the manager, Sheri, told him that they'll give us the missing order but she cannot replace the spicy beef and broccoli orders. There was no apology, no empathy, nothing.

We expressed our disappointment and asked for a refund of the missing item versus going back to the restaurant to pick up the missing order and be more frustrated.

This place used to be a great restaurant with great service, but that time has passed. I see we're not the only ones experiencing this since there are recent reviews with the same complaints.

UPDATE (7/13/25 - 7:45 PM): The response from Sherry is far from accurate.

If Sherry valued our support of her restaurant, her initial response and reaction would have been much different. Now Sherry is showing empathy because I left a negative review. There was no empathy or apology during this scenario.

There was no apology. The gentleman on the phone said "Ok, I have to put you on hold to check with my manager about what I can do." Please do not misrepresent facts, Sherry.

The refund did not promptly happen, in fact it is still not reflected on my credit card. And I asked for the refund AFTER I was told that the manager, Sherry, would only allow that the missing order be filled but not a replacement of the spicy beef and broccoli dishes. Please get your facts straight if you're going to debate with me what happened.

You did not offer to remake the beef and broccoli dishes. That is a false statement and is THE reason why we were upset. If you offered to remake those dishes none of this would be happening right now. But you chose to not provide good customer service to longstanding clients.

Your response to this review gives me more reason not to return to your restaurant. You could have said "I am so sorry that we created this experience and we want to make it right for you. Please contact me at the restaurant so I can offer you x to win back your business." But you chose to misrepresent the truth and offer an empty apology. It's...

We are very disappointed. We have been coming here for years, not frequently, but always looking forward to it. It was, in the past, excellent. This time (about 2 weeks ago), it makes me think that whoever manages it now is making very poor decisions. We wanted to order takeout. Struck by how few dishes were still on the menu, as compared to previously. We ended up getting a couple appetisers, a Lo-Mein dish, Pepper Beef, Sweet & Sour Chicken and Pork Fried rice. The Lo-Mien was inedible. It was a starchy, disgusting mess. The low-quality noodles had broken into tiny pieces, in a tasteless sauce. The Pepper Beef was boring and bland but fine, not very good quality beef. The Chicken was mostly batter with small chicken pieces, basic pre-made sauce. Fried Rice was fine, except that we requested no carrots, and still found carrots in it. Overall, it was over-salted yet somehow tasteless, poor quality ingredients, and unsatisfying, particularly after paying what we paid. We could have just gone to almost any American Chinese restaurant and gotten the same or better experience. We've gotten Lo Mein multiple times from many different locations and never had it be that bad. Basically left us feeling pretty cheated of a dining experience we were looking forward to. So back to the drawing board looking for decent...