Great Wall Restaurant — Restaurant in San Leandro

One of the few Chinese family style restaurants that don't use MSG in their food.. and this place proves that you don't need it for food to taste good.

This place is packed and for good reason. They have a 3 dish for $22.99 special that can feed a party of three. Or they have their standard offerings where you get an even bigger portion. Unfortunately I don't think they have the staff to handle this type of volume as the food came out pretty slow. On a Sunday night, we ordered our food at 6:30 PM and the first dish that came out was close to 7:00 PM, and the last dish came out around 8:30 PM. Another problem with this restaurant, is there was a line of about five people deep waiting for the restroom.

Most of their dishes were spot on and memorable. Their soup of the day was on the mild side which is fine since there's no flavor enhancer. In fact, it was refreshing. They do make their Salty Fish and Chicken Fried Rice (there's a pungent smell so and the fish texture can be a turn off to some) very aromatic and with plenty of salty fish. The Chicken Curry had good flavor, but would've benefit from have more sauce. Garlic Green Bean was nice and crispy but would've prefer if they used less oil. Their Stir Fry Egg with Bitter Melon was well done, and so was their Fried Tofu. Their Sale and Pepper Spare Ribs was standard and would've been better if they cut the pieces of pork in smaller pieces.

This is one place worth trying but bring...

I love to support small restaurants over big chains when time allows. But unfortunately this nice little restaurant did not pass my taste test. I drive all over the Bay Area for work i love testing new Chinese restaurants. But here the food was underwhelming. The price was great but the food was not. The Mongolian beef lwas lacking in flavor and texture. Meat was tasteless unfortunately. The rice was ok. They soup was ok. The hot tea was hot as expected. Location was ok , a little empty for lunch. But I wouldn’t recommend unless u want a cheap Chinese lunch special for $10 with soup and tea included. To be fair I haven’t tasted any other dish but normally they use the same meat for most meat dishes. And the Mongolian beef is usually hard to get wrong. But pics of other plates on here ...

Food is great; service was not. My party of 4 was seated for at least 20 minutes before finally being acknowledged by an employee (who we flagged down). We ordered our food and our drinks and had another long wait before any food came out. One of our dishes was incorrect and had to be sent back. There was a wait between every single dish for our table. Other tables seemingly received much better service than our own. Bottom line: this place has delicious food and good service unless you're not of Asian descent. Will probably stick to getting take out...