Panda House — Restaurant in Stratford

Since I'm new to CT I have not been able to find Chinese food that I enjoy. But I found it here. My three stars is only because of the service. (I would give the food four stars). We normally order take-away and it's always fresh, hot and very tasty. Last evening we decided to dine in their restaurant. I honestly can't remember the last time I received such bad service. When we walked in, the host was working to cash out a take-away customer so we just stood there waiting for him to be done. However, when he was done, he answered the ringing phone and never even looked at us. All customers want is to be acknowledged. All he needed to do was give us a smile and hold up an index finger to signal he'd be right with us. When he did finally bring us to our table it was without words, without a smile, he put the menus down and walked away. Then our waiter had the same demeanor. No hello, no greeting, slow service and no kindness. I would think in today's world a small business would be thrilled to have us. If they were - it certainly did not appear that way. Net net: good food,...

My party came in at 9 PM for a late dinner, ready to order takeout because this places closes at 9:30 on Sunday nights. However, the owner happily took us in and sat us down, saying that he'd stay with us all night and that it would stress him out if we rushed.

As for the food, I got the chicken + shrimp combo in the chef specialties. It was seasoned well and good in general. Do keep in mind, however, that the spicy dishes here are not spicy at all. However, they still taste good. In addition, the "new revoultion" food section isn't bland at all and I highly recommend it, as one of my party members ended up getting the chicken + broccoli combo which was actually good.

The only disappointing thing aside from the lack of actual spicy food was that all of the food seemed to be seasoned with the same sauce. It's a great sauce, but maybe something different?

In addition, the pricing was higher than one would expect. My group of four paid almost $100 and we didn't order drinks.

The food here was honestly more of a 4/5, but the service was a 6, which is why a 5 star review is...

We wanted to try a new Chinese place and picked this one due to its rating and proximity to home. It turned out to be a great decision that resulted in an evening we will never forget. The food is well-prepared and fresh. The atmosphere of this place was a very pleasant surprise. We were commenting before going that, although I love Chinese food (having been to China many times), Chinese restaurants in the US almost never have any atmosphere. Panda House is in an older office park and they have built a sun porch on the front with a garden outside of it. Finally, the icing on the cake, the crowning event of the evening is that the gregarious owner Jack decided to sit down and have a drink with us after dinner, presumably because I was speaking Chinese to him and his staff. We ended up sitting there and drinking with him until 11:30 pm! He's such a friendly and interesting guy. We only ended the "party" because his wife had called him twice, yelling "Where are you?!" This will be a...