Panda Express — Restaurant in Rocky Mount

Ordered two of the family meals and a side of the chicken egg rolls. Overall we are pleased with what we got but the chicken, aside from the orange chicken was kinda bland, it just wasn't exactly as flavorful as we thought it would be. Definitely lacking but could just be because the place just opened and I hope that's the case.

The total wait for getting the food was almost 1 hour and 20 minutes. It took them an extra 35 minutes after the pick up order time.

We ordered: Orange chicken - amazing, definitely would recommend

Black pepper chicken - a bit bland and didn't taste what we are familiar with in regards to black peppered chicken from other Chinese restaurants and just wasn't that great, might be for you but wasn't up to our tastes.

Chicken and mushrooms- bland and similar to the above statement on the black peppered chicken.

Beef and broccoli - This was good but the container we were giving was basically just broccoli and sauce, the beef was hardly there, it was like we had been giving the scraps that people picked through leaving only broccoli behind with tiny bits of broken beef remaining..

Chow mein- I don't know if these are the typical noodles that Panda Express uses for chow mein, but I feel like it would have been better if it had the thicker noodles like some other places do. (So I'm editing my review for this one section here, based on photos from other reviews, the noodles we received with our order is definitely not the same as others got with theirs. The ones we got are very thin noodles, and just weren't good.)

Chicken egg rolls - I was really hoping to like these... I love egg rolls and these sadly reminded me of the eggs rolls my grandmother used to buy years ago from Walmarts frozen section, I started making my own over the years but last night I just didn't feel like cooking at all and thought I'd give the chicken egg rolls a try since I've had good egg rolls from places like China King but I was left disappointed. 😞

Overall, this place was VERY busy and I'm sure under stress it's easy to make mistakes with the food when trying to rush with so many orders I've worked in kitchens so I get it. Hopefully this Panda Express will get better and we will definitely still order again. Next time we might just do a huge order of the orange chicken and rice only. Give this place a try and more than once to give the workers some time to adjust. When the crowds go down some I'm sure it'll be better.

Definitely still recommend this place. My review isn't to be negative, hence the 4 stars, and only wanting to be honest about the taste of the food we received. Just hope that this Panda...

I love how Panda Express continues to show a picture of the Dollar Tree as being the outside of their restaurant (they use to also have Dollar Tree's address as being theirs as well). Panda Express is truly the "Dollar Tree" amongst Americanized, faux Chinese food. For anyone wondering, this place is actually located behind the shops where Dollar Tree and others are and to the side of Great Clips. Per usual, Panda Express picks the least convenient and logical place to put a location. Because Chic Fil A blocks traffic so badly from entering and exiting the main entrance, people had started using this side entrance to get to Walmart and numerous other shops. Now, with Panda Express being here, it's even more a nightmare. There are so many other locations on 301 that Panda Express could have built a location.

Just an FYI about Panda Express: they generally refuse to cook fresh food with 90-60 minute of closing time. They often close early. They are not franchises, but rather are family-owned by billionaire couple, The Cherngs. They do not serve Chinese restaurant favorites like fried chicken wings and their fried rice is a very poor substitute for the fried rice at locally-owned places. They also do not have items like sesame chicken, sweet n sour chicken or sweet n sour pork. They generally do not serve soup. You are charged extra $ for shrimp dishes and some beef dishes. Shrimp is counted as they place it into your carton and the serving size is generally 4-6 pieces. If you get teriyaki chicken, you have to ask for the teriyaki sauce. Seriously. If you get Broccoli Beef, you may find yourself with a couple slivers of beef or no beef at all. If you ask for a refund, you will be refused or told only the store manager can provide a refund and "they aren't there". Corporate rarely responds to Yelp reviews and they do not respond to any...

We tried the fried rice, chow mien, Beijing beef, orange chicken, Broccoli beef, mushroom chicken and an eggroll. The fried rice and the chow mien had almost zero flavor. The chow mien is not the same as it was just a few years ago. The noodles are shorter and harder. The orange chicken and the Beijing beef were the same. The broccoli beef and the mushroom chicken were very bland. The eggroll was ok. It had a ton more flavor than most of the meal. I do understand that they are newly open but they all looked to like they had no Idea what they were doing and many times there were only 2 of the 6 or 8 people working there that were actually doing anything. We did not stay to eat but we did not see any messy tables. There was zero organization for the customers to know where to go and no one working there greeted any of the customers that came in or thanked them when they were leaving. With that many people just standing around you would think that some of them...