Kwang Chow Restaurant — Restaurant in Milwaukie

I entered here expecting the usual greasy spoon chinese food, what I couldn't have know is that I would leave a hollow shell of the woman I used to be.

First thing in the door I noticed the restaurant had a pervasive mildew smell, not terrible but not pleasant either. It wasn't enough to dissuade me from the course I had chose, and I even found it a little nostalgic of the chinese restaurant I ate at as a child.

After I was sat I checked through the sauces, in the usual ketchup and mustard bottles that can be very misleading, and was disappointed to find that they were indeed just ketchup and mustard. Having read the reviews I decided to try the much praised egg rolls, and the staple of every chinese restaurant, ham fried rice. My food arrived shortly thereafter, and I will admit I was intimidated by the massive portions. I had enough food to feed 4-5 people before me.

The server also let me know what sauces were in each bottle, and I was surprised to hear that the red bottle actually contained sweet and sour sauce. Skeptically, I tried a small sample, which to my horror, was simply watered-down ketchup. Alarms started going off in my head, but I couldn't stop now, not with $16 already spent. God, if only I had walked away then...

Despite my trepidation I dug into the ham fried rice, which was the paragon of greasy spoon ham fried rice everywhere. Sadly, I had no decent sauces to add to it, but it was still good for what it was.

This is where things moved into the realm of mental (and intestinal) scarring. I decided to dig into the "prize-winning" eggrolls. What I found inside the infinite layers of fried dough was a substance, somewhere between baby food and snot.

My immediate reaction was revulsion, however, much like the character from Heart of Darkness, I had long ago passed the point of no return. I took a bite of the alien-egg roll and found a texture to match it's disturbing appearance. I thanked the gods that, despite all the the wrongness of the substance I had taken into my mouth, it was blessedly tasteless.

Having utterly abolished any pleasure I may have once taken in eating, I quickly paid my bill and left before the shame and self-loathing I felt inside...

I was optimistic about this place because my neighbor really amped them up and said they were better than Hong Kong 97 that's across the street from us. She was right to some extent; the fried shrimp and pork fried rice were better than the same stuff from Hong Kong 97. However, I'm disappointed that while the menu says you can substitute things for combo plates, they refused to let me add the General Tso chicken to my combo order. It's only an entree meal and that's the only way you can order it which wasn't going to work for me because I wanted to share my food with my daughter who only really likes fried rice and fried shrimp. Instead, I reluctantly got the sweet and sour chicken, and it was very disappointing. It was overly sweet, and the chicken was no better than the lemon chicken I've had from Hong Kong 97, it was almost as soggy with the breading falling off too. It had a pineapple taste to it and while my favorite Chinese place back in Texas puts chunks in their sweet and sour sauce, I'm not used to it being an overwhelming flavor in the sauce. I definitely will not be back and it was not worth the $14 I wasted since I really didn't eat much of the chicken and don't want...

I've been going there since the early 1980s. I wouldn't be surprised if my first food wasn't bbq pork. My mom, my sister, my kids and myself were all treated like family there. When we did take out orders they didn't even have to ask who it was in the phone. The food was always good, the service was always great and it was always the place to go for birthdays and special occasions. I took my mom in for her birthday lunch today to check out the differences between old owners and new owners. I couldn't be more disappointed. Yeah... it was sad not seeing a familiar face. And it sucked that they had no idea who we were. But the food. Omg. It was bad. The menu isn't the same. The batter on the shrimp and sweet&sour chicken wasn't even cooked all the way through. You could squeeze it with your fingers and have oil drip from it. The fried rice was literally only rice and bbq pork. I searched through the whole container for signs of egg... but none was to found. And to top it off... lol... I got a burnt fortune cookie with no fortune. This will be our last visit, ending a run...