North China Restaurant — Restaurant in Santa Maria

North China Restaurant is good overall. I went there for lunch on a Wednesday. Parking on the street was pretty easy. The dining room had some open tables when I came in and I was a little confused because there was no register or hostess station by the front door. I was directed by one of the servers to head through the restaurant and through the back door to a waiting area in the back where I was to write my name on the waitlist. There is a little place to sit and read the menu. I was seated after 5-minutes. There is a lunch special with about a dozen standard plates which include soup, egg roll, fried won ton, and fried rice for $14-15 dollars. The table was clean, and a server came right away and took my drink order. The same server quickly came back with my drink and took my order of the lunch special featuring pork fried rice. A very rich and tasty egg drop soup came right away along with hot tea and my diet coke. The soup was very dense and fill with eggs, tofu, and vegetables. Very tasty. Shortly thereafter my lunch special came. Steaming hot, nice looking, and neat presentation of chow mien with lots of bits of pork, generous portion of fried rice, and sizeable egg roll and smallish won ton. I started with the egg roll, and it was surprisingly good with bits of meat and vegetables. The fried wonton was a bit overcooked and didn't contain much of anything I could distinguish. I dipped both fried pieces in a good sweet and sour sauce they brought. The pork chow mien was very good. The noodles were finer in thickness and texture than what I've been served in other restaurants, and I liked it. There were good bits of pork and vegetables throughout the serving. Overall, very nice taste and texture. The fried rice was light and fluffy. Nicely colored and pleasant tasting. I had some trouble distinguishing vegetables or meat in it and prefer more little goodies in the fried rice. The servers were excellent and very attentive checking back with me multiple times and refilling my drinks. The servers were nice, and I could see them smiling at me from under their masks. This was a nice place...

Beef and broccoli: 4/5, flavor was really good but beef pieces were an odd texture to me. Would order again though.

Honey Walnut Shrimp: 5/5, best item we had but wasn’t as sweet as other HWS that I’ve tried, perfectly fried, next time I’ll ask for extra sauce because some pieces weren’t very coated. The portion size is pretty big but it was also $26 so it’d better be.

Mongolian Beef: 0/5, ordered because I read other reviews that it was good. The beef was the same texture as the beef and broccoli (it’s like too soft idk how to explain it), it was so one note like the onions meat and sauce was not flavorful at all. After a couple bites I literally threw the entire container away.

House Chow Mein: 5/5, very good flavor, tasted fresh, good amount of meat

Appetizer Platter: 3/5, egg rolls had good flavor but used spring roll wrappers, potstickers were good, cheese wontons weren’t the best I’ve had but were decent also, fried shrimp was good. Would have liked a sweet teriyaki sauce in addition to the dips given with it.

Overall: Service was amazing and the waitresses were very nice. When I went to pick up my food I was so confused because there’s a couple of street parking spots but I still don’t know where the actual parking lot is lol it’s hard to find, especially at night, I didn’t see any signs and eventually just parked on the street. I would say this is the best Chinese restaurant in the area like most of the items we tried we enjoyed. We would go back but the only issue I have with this place is the prices are exorbitant. At most, I think each of these dishes are maybe worth $10-15 with the HWS being MAYBE $20 because it was actually a pretty good portion. I have never paid this much for Chinese food in my life. For these five dishes plus a side of white rice we spent $120. I’m also used to each entrée coming with white rice on the side but here I had to pay for one container. If you can afford it, it is good Chinese food, but not...

Price Does Not Match Quality The prices of the food here have skyrocketed over the years. Example: Vegetable Fried Rice costs THE SAME as most meat dishes or chow mein. All of those items are around $18-20 which is insane for what you get. The Mongolian beef tasted like it was frozen and got frostbitten then thawed out and cooked in a mass amount of sauce to try and make it more tender. The honey walnut shrimp is the only item that is actual somewhat worth the price as they give you a large amount of it. The chow mein is overpriced for the portion but pretty good. I skipped on the egg flower soup because it was so much more expensive than it used to be.

Overall, don't be fooled by the awards on their wall, it seems to be their way to justify the high prices, but it is nothing more than average.

A few years ago, I used to come here often as it was the only decent Chinese food in Santa Maria (not many other choices anyways), but now it doesn't even make sense to go financially. I thought $15 a few years ago was a lot for chow mein or meat dishes, now I WISH it went back to that.

They still get a good amount of business on a weekday dinner night, so doesn't seem like COVID affected them much either to justify such an increase.

The servers were at least incredibly niceand even packed our food for us at the end which they didn't have to do! For that, I'm still giving their service a 5/5.

Just as a tip: make sure not to say yes to rice when they ask unless you want to pay $2 for it. It is not free as...