JW Chen's Asian Fusion — Restaurant in South Bend

The first time we’ve been here is tonight (Easter Sunday: 31 March 2024). We’ve been in the area for 4 years and this is my honest review of this restaurant. No, I’m not getting anything in return for my opinion made here.

Appetizers: They were delicious but a bit overpriced. Shrimp shumai (8 for $9) was tiny (size of a quarter). $1 a rangoon (6) is a bit pricey for what it is. $7 for 4 pork buns (size of a palm sized mandarin) is still steep. The picture depicts the food already being eaten by our kids. Price: $22

Entree: Roast Pork Rice Bowl-our daughter ordered this. She gives the following review: 1. Pork was tender, good flavor. 2. Bok choy was nice, fresh, and crunchy. 3. Sauce on rice had good flavoring to it; great actually. 4. The rice tasted like sushi rice, not as sticky and perfectly cooked. 5. Portion sizing was huge (she’s a 4th grader). Additionally, she loved the crab rangoons, not “seafoody” in her words. The pork buns were her favorite appetizer. Price: $14 Entree: Chicken Lo Mein (no veggies), Curry Chicken Katsu (no sauce, with rice NOT pictured) and side white rice. Our son ordered these, his review (please excuse some wording as he is a toddler): “it was good.” This is saying a lot because our son is VERY picky (as most children are) and the owners were so accommodating as to make his food particularly to his liking! The portion size for the noodles and katsu is definitely a “shareable” size, I would say between 2 adults. Price: $28 Entree: Sichuan Beef (comes with rice and is spicy)-my husband says the following: 1. Not overloaded with veggies but veggies are fresh and crunchy. 2. Good amount of beef, nice and tender. Flavorful. Little sweetness to the kick of spicy. The spice is portioned to the entire dish (he’s not a spice person either so take that for what you may). 3. The small bowl of rice is just enough for the plate of food being served. 4. The portion size was right for an adult, I wouldn’t say it’s “shareable”. Price: $15 Entree: Salt and Pepper Fish (comes with rice) and seafood hot sour soup (no mushrooms). Salt and pepper fish is lightly battered and fried to perfection. The dish may sound as if it’s overloaded with salt and pepper but it’s not. Trust the process. It’s tossed with diced green bell peppers and onions. The taste is so balanced, between salty and peppery (ever so lightly). Paired with plain white rice is chefs kiss. The seafood sour soup is the star of the show (it was rainy out). It had egg, imitation crab pieces, scallops, shrimp, bambo, scallions. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing. The taste was between a lemony ginger chicken style type broth, it’s hard to explain because the flavor combination as a whole made sense and at the same time you can taste the individual pieces that make this soup alongside the delicious broth. Just the broth alone marries well with the steamed white rice that comes with the entree. The portion size of the soup was enough for 3 adults. Ask for smaller bowls if you want to share. Portion size for the salt and pepper fish could be shared between 3 adults; easily. Price: $30 Entree: Crispy Beef (comes with white rice). We took this to go so we haven’t tasted it yet. I can say the smell is intoxicating. Although we’re stuffed, it still makes the mouth water. The dish itself looks appetizing. Lots of meat to a one person dish. Price: $16 Drinks: We had water and sodas. They come in 12 oz. cans and 16.9 oz. bottles. I’m certain you can ask for a cup of ice but the cans and bottles are cold. Price: $1.50/$1 Service: We arrived around 8:30 pm and they closed at 10pm this night. We were greeted right away at the door. There was no one in the restaurant. The owners took their time to cater to us throughout the night. It made the experience much more pleasant. Ambiance: There was ample parking; handicap stalls right in front of the entrance. The restaurant was clean and looked in order. The bathrooms were clean. They have paperless drying (blower).

Overall we’ll return. The food and service is great. 10/10...

I wish Google allowed negative or at minimum the option of giving Zero Stars, because J.W. Chen and their horrible food doesn't deserve a fraction of a star. Im no professional Chef or a PitMaster by any means, however I have been blessed to have been raised in the south where we have a huge mix of a little bit of everything from learning how to smoke all sorts of meats and grill pretty much from a good Tomahawk to toasted potatoes and onions to corn on the cobb. Being in the kitchen with my mom learning a good homemade Alfredo sauce she does and changing it up to make mine even better, (dont tell her mines better though) and learning how to make Sausage Gravy that has won me a few competitions, not to mention a few different styles of BBQ sauce that every time I make a batch i end up selling it all and have to hide my own bottles so that I can use it. And after all of that, i joined the Army and spent 5.5 years South Korea, traveling to places all over from Japan, China, Australia, Philippines, Russia, UK, Amsterdam, Spain, Italy, a few places in Africa and Columbia, Peru and Mexico. So anytime we try a new restaurant we have a "keep it simple, stupid" where we order simple, popular dishes, that it would be completely stupid for the restaurant to not have it perfect every time it's ordered. So for a Chinese restaurant she ordered Pork fried rice with no onions which we have only turned away from one place once due to having onions and the place ended up having the best of anywhere. So the surprise at JW Chen was that it was the first time ever that we had fried rice that was actually horrible tasting, it was like the rice was stale from a few days ago or something and had absolutely no seasoning, like it was seasoned by a 13 year old white girl who was taught how to cook by her mama that was 14 when giving birth and raised her on Ramen, hamburger helper and McDonald's. Our appetizer was the very common Crab Rangoo, which tasted like a mix of a little cream cheese and so much powered sugar my tooth hurt after and so little immatation grab meat I literally found only maybe 8 pieces of it the size of half a fire ant in 6 pieces with the crust so freezer burnt that I don't think it could ever be crispy but definitely chewy. And I ordered the Governors Chicken. I usually order General Tso's Chicken but after calling they said was exact same thing just different name. Chicken way over cooked probably trying to cover up the fact the chicken was freezer burnt like everything else and probably refried from a few days ago that was about to spoil, hard and chewy, dry as the dessert even soaked in the worst excuse of a sauce I've ever seen, like the sweet n sour sauce was extremely orange tasting and I think they just added soy sauce in it to get it darker and threw some chili peppers in it and served it without tasting it. Only items that were decent were desert which I know were definitely pre cooked and the average low end cheesecakes and a tiramisu from cheap commercial vendor. I spent way too much money and could understand it it were just one item, or even a mistake or missed item. But for the entire meal to taste like it was picked from the garbage after sitting a few days, I can roll with that at all. I don't think that i would even take a free meal from them if they tried to redeem themselves because I really don't see it just being an off day when everything they touched was horrible. I even tipped $11 online and $15 cash to driver. So out of the $90-$100 spent i can honestly say that maybe $21 of it was acceptable and only because it was desserts. It actually cost us more because we still had to order from somewhere else so we could actually eat. I hope that my review helps someone, because I ordered strictly off of other people's reviews which has me really confused. Either this area have no clue what real quality food tastes like, or they find a way to only keep...

I'm not sure this place is good or not. me and my boyfriend went to this place just because it has good reviews. So first,we went on a week day, not many people in there, the restaurant looks okay. And there was an old lady sitting in the middle (looks like the manager) and asked us table for how many. Then we sat next to the window, ready to oder. And a waitress came over and asked me if I'm Chinese. Haha. "Yes,"I told her "I'm Chinese." Well, since then the rest of the WHOLE TIME she's speaking Chinese to me. And absolutely ignored my boyfriend, she didn't even ask him what he would like to drink.. ( Same as that lady sitting in the middle) Anyways, we ordered steamed dumplings, crispy calamari and one black beans with chicken. Dumplings were boiled not steamed. Crispy calamari was really good. Same as chicken. When we about to get the check, we just found out there is no checks, just that lady write our orders on a paper. Well, that's Cool , I don't mind. I just felt a little bit shooked cause this is not a cheap restaurant but with cheap server, and paper writing orders. At the end, they were trying to charge us the chicken for the dinner price, cause the lady said we didn't say we want to oder the lunch special. But we were there around 1pm. So she gave us the lunch price for the chicken with a really really BIG unhappy face. Lol All in all. Food was great, but not match with the price. And sever need to...