Peony Chinese Cuisine — Restaurant in Temecula

The Chicken Egg Foo Young was not what I expected. I'm used to and love the East Coast version of this dish. Was hoping to get it again here. I'm talking about egg omelets filled with meat, bean sprouts and other veggies in a thick brown sauce. Here, the omelets tasted like eggy bread dumplings with very little veggies or other ingredients inside. Bland. Instead of a brown sauce, there was an entire different dish served on top. Kind of like a Chicken Kung Pao with battered chicken chunks, water chestnuts, pea pods and carrots. As a matter of fact, I didn't discover the omeletes underneath until I had a serving at home. I thought they gave me the wrong dish.

Didn't like the omelets at all. Tasteless filler. But the chicken dish on top was good. Nice peanut flavor. Not enough sauce to wet the rice, though. I suspect this is a good restaurant. I just need to figure out their menu and find things I'd like. The dinner-sized dish was enough for four good meals for me, so great...

The quality was pretty much what you'd expect from your average Chinese takeout spot. Nothing special, but the prices were a bit more than I'd like to pay for just okay food. I spent as much if not more than if I'd ordered from Chef K, and the quality isn't even in the same arena.

Maybe it's just because I was expecting the usual Americanized Chinese stuff. The meat seemed a bit tough, not velveted, and the flavors weren't what I was expecting from Chinese food. The house chicken, for example, was very salty, which isn't unexpected in Chinese takeout, but it wasn't really savory. Hot and sour soup had peas and shrimp in it, which was unexpected. Leaned more into a Thai soup than the usual.

Overall, it was aggressively passable. Ordering was easy, but the prices were a bit high, and the food was just average. If you're in the mood for your run of the mil Chinese takeout, you might want to look elsewhere. Probably won't be...

I've been going Peony Chinese Restaurant in Lake Elsinore since around 1997 and it is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. To be honest I usally order the same thing because I believe its the best they have to offer. My wife isn't a big eater, so we usally share. They're prices are higher than fast food Chinese restaurants, but I believe it's way better than fast food Chinese. I always have the House special chicken lunch. It comes with rice which i substitute with lomein noodles and it also comes with a salad which I substitute cream cheese wonton. I then add a side of steamed rice and a small order of Wonton soup which serves 2-3. By ordering this way we get a lot of different flavors and we actually have left overs. Just DELICIOUS!! Oh and I almost forgot they have a beautiful dining...