City Wok: Chinese food for Whiteys that are scared of going to Convoy?

After a long hot day of driving and shopping and looking at stuff, the Kid and I picked up the Wife from work. We did some errands and then had a hankering for some Chinese food. I remembered There being a place on Washington so we headed there.

At first we were just gonna get take out, but decided to eat in after seeing that it wasn't too crowded and we were already inside. The waiter, I believe his name was Gene, was super nice and really friendly with the Kid. He was prompt, courteous , and helpful with the menu.

Gene informed us that it was happy hour and that certain drinks and appetizers were half off. We chose to start out with the City Wok Gyoza Bao and Chinese Chicken Salad.

The salad came out first and looked fresh and delicious. It was full of nice size pieces of shredded chicken, julienned carrots, and fried wontons ( which we got on the side later). The salad was nice at first bite, but after bite 2 and 3 it was abundantly clear that the special ginger dressing was more ginger than special and that this salad could not swim cause it was drowning in dressing.

The Gyoza Boa came out later and was accompanied by a old plastic cup of Chinese mustard and a kind of watered down plum sauce. I say the mustard was old because it had a wrinkled skin on top that fresh things don't tend to accumulate. The "Bao " themselves were definitely more Gyoza than Bao , but also freakishly apart of both worlds. The interior was a dense mixture of pork and spices that you find in any $.99 Chinese place , but they were wrapped in such a way that the bottom part of the wrapper was under cooked and doughy.

Next we tried the Lo Mein with chicken. It came out steaming hot and looked delicious , it tasted flinty of mustard and really had no flavor at all. The chicken was cooked rather nice, but lacked seasoning.

This sumptuous looking dish is the Spicy Chili String Beans. Looking is the operative word in that sentence. Looking at this dish you could see it had all the makings of a yummy satisfying veggie side. It had onions, slices of Serrano chilies, garlic , and a little oil and of course the string beans. The one ingredient it lacked was time. Having been a wok cook I know that Chinese wok cooking is a speedy process and that is why there are so many sauces and spices and accoutrements that go into each dish because you develop that favor in a quick hot sauce before tossing in your protein or veggie. If you don't take the time with they sauce/flavoring base your dish will lack any kind of cohesion and will just be a plate of ingredients. Both the Lo Mein and the String Beans we're that , just pretty faces and no substance.