China Chef Bistro — Restaurant in Phoenix

This place used to be a fantastic family restaurant, but it’s completely gone downhill under the new ownership. Let’s be clear: my family and I were regulars here for years. We had a great relationship with the previous owner—she knew our names, our usual order, and genuinely cared about us as customers. That’s long gone.

Since the ownership change, the food has tanked. Portions are smaller, recipes have been butchered (looking at you, orange tofu and moo shu), and, for some reason, they thought mixing politics with kung pao chicken was a good idea.

The final straw? After Trump’s election, I got a text offering discounted food to “celebrate”. Seriously? Politics never had any place here before, and now they’re pushing this nonsense. We immediately called to get off their marketing list, and when my wife updated our review to reflect this bizarre turn, the so-called “chef” hit back with a snarky response, even throwing race into the mix.

Yes, it’s a free market, and they can make whatever choices they want. But between the sharp decline of food quality and political grandstanding? I’m done. If they want to alienate loyal customers, congratulations—they succeeded. I won’t support their nationalism or...

I would suggest trying any other Chinese place than this. I am shocked other people said this was really good food. I did dine in and the place was a third full but they had trouble serving the people who were there. They brought soup without a spoon, didn't bring utensils with my meal, had to go ask for napkins. Messed up the order of the guy next to me. The meal took 40 minutes to come out. Not good for a lunchtime time customers. Chinese carryout generally takes 10 minutes so I'm surprised it took this long. The cashew chicken had clearly undercooked chicken, ironically with scorched cashews. I will say the vegetables, celery and cucumber looked very fresh, so I was impressed there. The fried rice was more like dry overcooked flavorless rice, no egg, no onion no vegetable. Since the order took so long to come out I didn't have time to complain and have it fixed. The server was very very sweet, so they probably would have recooked it for me if I asked. I feel bad giving a bad review but it really is the worst Chinese food I've ever had! I was trying it out before planning to do carry out for some friends and family and I'm definitely not using this place. Sorry... Maybe I caught you all...

I am shocked this place has such a good rating. My wife and I used to love the Chinese restaurant that used to be at this location (I think it was called Noodles and Rice). Tonight, I got the Sesame Chicken and my wife got the Chicken Pad Thai... Neither of us can remember a meal that was more disgusting!

I legitimately questioned if they had some other weird meat under the breading so I cut one open to look inside. It LOOKED like chicken, but it didn't taste like any other chicken I've had before. I spit out 3 different pieces that tasted like rubber. My wife had about the same experience with her chicken too. At the end of the meal, we had about 75% of our food left over to be thrown away.

I got the special which includes egg drop soup, fried rice, a veggie egg roll, and a crab wonton. The soup was alright. So was the rice. The egg roll seemed like it was probably store bought and just warmed up. The wonton was sadly the best tasting part of the meal.

They do have good portion sizes, but that just means more terrible food to us. So that might be viewed as a pro or con depending on your perspective.

We will never give this place another dime! Stay away if you don't hate...