Little Panda — Restaurant in Sweetwater

Stopped in here while passing through. I prefer to support local businesses rather than chain restaurants. Few other diners at 2pm on a Monday.

They have a pretty extensive menu but I ordered sweet and sour chicken lunch special, just to keep things simple.

I tried to be friendly and left a generous tip when ordering. Service was curt. I don't speak any version of Chinese so there was a little bit of a language barrier to be fair

As you can see in the photo, the food is very basic. No vegetable matter in this dish which most often contains onions, bell peppers and pineapple. The breaded chicken pieces were freshly deep fried (probably from frozen). The fried rice and egg roll were cold, probably made in a batch long ago.

TLDR: Not a lot of actual cooking occurring here. Can't recommend. I will try a different local business on my next pass...

How this place has only three stars is beyond me. The food is excellent!

I ordered Orange Chicken and Fried Rice online and left special instructions. The instructions were, "no egg in my fried rice." On the drive to pick it up, I prepped my for the argument of why they failed to follow my instructions. My son laughed as he watched me have this full argument, by myself.

Once we arrived, I gave my name and asked if there was egg in it. They told me there wasn't. I trusted them. Once back at his house, low and behold, the food was as ordered. The Orange Chicken may be the best I've ever had. The rice was awesome. There was enough food that I was able to get three meals out of it.

I know that if I ever return to Sweetwater to stay or just pass through, I'm stopping...

So if you’re craving Chinese Food, this is it. Not so bad that you can’t eat it but not memorable either. I made the mistake of ordering Char Siu (pork) fried rice. This is also a free side with your entire. So instead of cooking me up a from scratch order of fried rice with some bigger pieces of meat and other vegetables, they just gave me the side dish as my entree. So it was a side dish charged at a full meal price. So order chicken fried rice or something like that instead. I should have just ordered a lunch special which is less expensive and comes with an entree, fried rice, soup and a drink....