China Fast Wok — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

With the look of an ice cold assassin I make the walk of shame to this place for the annual tasting. Has China Fast Wok improved enough to become a staple Chinese joint in the Logan/Palmer Square area?

When this began years ago they started out at a measly 1/5 stars. Whatever resembling food they served was disgusting and you wondered how they stayed in business. Over the years it's safe to say they've improved dramatically.

Walking in they still have the new decor which consists of a few Mahogany tables. I noticed the paper menus had been redesigned this time around. They now look professionally done in the manner of a real restaurant and not like they went to freechinesemenutemplates.ch and picked template #1. I noticed they have put up a huge wall blocking people's view into the kitchen now...take that however you want.

After taking my order of the usual Orange Chicken special the cashier said it would be 10 minutes as usual. Turns out it was almost half an hour before I got my food. Whether they were making it extra tasty in anticipation of this review or taking turns playig soccer with my chicken because of the past scathing reviews...the only way to find out is to eat it all!

Presentation has remained the same since last year. I noticed in the orange sauce instead of trying a completely new recipe, they just added chili sauce to it...and somehow made it better? I don't get the thought process behind it, but adding the chili sauce to the terrible orange sauce somehow masks the orange sauce itself, resulting in just a bland chili sauce. Chicken wasn't as dry as last year, but still bland and uninspiring. Nonetheless definitely an improvement from the "orange sponge" that was served years ago.

The rice actually was good restaurant quality grade this year! I give it a B+! Only thing that kept it from getting that A is that it was soaked in whatever light oil they use (which was definitely, fresh quality oil from the taste of it) to fry the rice in. There was also an extraordinary amount of medium sized shrimp in the rice. For $8 I definitely don't mind what I got as they didn't skimp at all. As always the portions for the specials are HUGE and fill you up. Them actually going from the rice being the worst part to it actually being the best means there's even greater value now.

All in all I think they've earned a bump up to 3.5 stars this year from last year's 3. Hopefully they keep working on their recipes and...

Since our favorite Chinese place went down the tubes, likely sold, we have been trying to find a replacement. China Fast Wok has some great things going for it. Some dishes were close to a 5, others more of a low 3. The Kung Pao shrimp was fantastic. That would be a 5. Plenty of shrimp, great sauce, correct ingredients. Fried rice had a generous amount of shrimp, but rather tasteless. The egg roll made we want to cry. It's one of my favorite things to eat. Never, in my life, have I gotten such a small, half egg roll. Taste was OK, but it was way too small. The other dish was Mongolian Beef. We asked for it "not spicy." Taste was OK, but there was so little meat, we thought they made a mistake. We would not order that again, which is unfortunate. It's such a classic staple. Since originally writing this review, we tried it one more time and both the Kung Pao and Mongolian Beef were really bad. Kung Pao sauce tasted like ketchup.

The owners are very nice, we will not be going back.The egg rolls are puny and the rice ended up...

Consistently great. They've long had a sign in the window which proclaims, "VEGETARIAN HEALTH FOOD", which may be a slight exaggeration, but nonetheless I've tried a couple of vegetarian options which weren't bad. Some of the sauces are a bit too sugary for my taste, however the menu is big enough that I think many people who like Chinese fast food will find something that hits the spot. Similarly, I've found that many of the deep fried meats can be a little tough and occasionally dry. I personally really enjoy the potstickers; they've got relatively thicker wrapping and the sweet soy sauce is excellent. China Fast Wok did recently increased prices slightly, due at least in part to the pandemic, but their prices are still great-- especially their specials and combo meals. This restaurant has also been consistently taking good covid precautions. They're also open on lots of holidays such as Christmas eve/day and new...