CHINESE COOKERY — Restaurant in Town of Amherst

JAN 2025 - Final Update 1-Star. Used to love this place for over 20 years. Sadly, this last visit was our final one. Food is still bland, dry and mostly not good. Sure, they get a few things right occasionally, but very inconsistent Prices are going up "Lunch Specials" are putting less in, presumably due to "increased employment costs". Folks.. it's family run. THE BIGGIE - * Shifty business practices * -- undisclosed fees, and even extra fees on CC statement! There's the new $1 "Processing Fee" added even if paying cash. There's additional auto-added processing fees. And then 3% extra was added to my CC charge that wasn't previously disclosed when paying online.

In short -- "meh" food and clearly a focus on increased profits vs quality business.

I tried and retried and tried again -- sure do miss Irene and the prior owners -- alas, we won't be back here.

Best of luck to the no-longer-new owners.. I hope you figure out how to succeed the way you want.

SEPT UPDATE 3-stars for now. We've ordered since and no more "undercooked" and the heat and spice seem to be amped up much better from when they started in June.

I'm wondering if these are actually new/permanent owners, and the original owners (Irene and family) are not returning? Operations seem different and there's a totally new POS system

JUNE 2024 UPDATE 2-stars, instead of 5-stars The owners are temporarily away and new family is cooking and running operations. I need to update my review temporarily.

They seem nice enough; we've tried take-out from them twice now, and will NOT be back until the original owners are back in town. Here's our honest feedback:

Order 1 -- all dishes needed more flavor, more spice/heat and more sauce. And the crabmeat rangoons were only half-cooked.. they were chewy instead of crispy and the filling was much sweeter than we'd ever had. Order 2 -- Our tofu broccoli -- had almost no broccoli and other vegi's mixed in. And instead of the delicious steamed tofu cubes we're used to, they used thinly-sliced fried bean curd which got rubbery/overcooked -- it was at least sauced (yay?) and had good flavor, but .. lacked the Broccoli and the Tofu was totally different?! And our chicken Lo Mein -- had zero brown sauce on it -- it felt like unsauced dry cooked noodles?! Very underwhelming. I'm attaching a photo here which shows the noodles for reference.

We truly have LOVED Chinese Cookery and everyone there -- and will Rejoice when the owners return! :-)

--- Original Review Below ---

Been eating here for over 7 years, and I enjoy it as the best take-out (or sit-in if you don't mind very basic seating.. read: no ambiance). The steamed vegi dumplings are YUM, they have brown or white rice, and the Singapore Chow Mei Fun is perfectly spiced (other places are often quite bland!). Very consistant too.. love these...

Gosh darn do I love this place. Great food, great prices, great service.

I've gone to this place way too many times in the passed year, with good reason. This place is awesome.

My band practices down the road from this place so, it's super convenient during practice days. But I've taken the 25 minute drive to this place sometimes... JUST BECAUSE.

The service is consistently quick and courteous. Whether you give your order in person or over the phone. It's easy and they've never screwed up any of my orders.

The place itself is... okay. I mean, it's clean enough. It's got tacky enough pictures on the walls. It does only have 3 booths, but I never imagine the place to be a sit-down restaurant (though I have brought dates there to great success.)

The real selling point of this establishment, however, is the food. I love the food here. It's consistently made well. I normally get the Boneless Spare Ribs Combo. They've been able to cater to my requests of less sauce, more sauce, or no sauce. Their fried rice is really some of the best I've had... It's moist without being wet and flavorful without being too salty. I've also had their General Tso's and Sesame Chicken. I'd pretty much be able to recommend any of their dishes because so far they haven't let me down.

I've been going to this place for my Chinese Food fixes for a year now... and I will continue to for...

I always get the chicken in garlic sauce and my husband usually gets the sweet and sour chicken, then we split a pint of wonton soup. When we moved to East Amherst a few years ago, we had to find a new Chinese restaurant. There was one by Dash's that was really good, but they moved out, had to find a new restaurant and came across Chinese Cookery. They have the best fast food Chinese restaurant wonton soup I ever had. If anyone thinks the soup is bland, I'd love to know where they go, because I haven't been able to find any that tastes better, and I've tried a lot of Chinese restaurants. The portions are huge. The rice and sweet and sour chicken we got is not in your normal pint size boxes, they were larger and filled to capacity. Whoever said you get nothing but broccoli stems is crazy. If I could post a photo I would show you large pieces of broccoli florets, plus you get a lot of it and a lot of chicken. We always have enough leftover for the next day, so basically we both get 2 meals each for $20.00. Can't complain about that, plus it's delicious! Oh, and the woman who answers the phone has been nothing but nice and accommodating, even after I accidentally said the wrong order and called back shortly after to correct it. No problem. This is the best fast food Chinese restaurant in...