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Mon-Sun. 11:30 a.m. - 9:30 p.m.
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This is the place where Chinese Food and the price match! The food is great and the price is affordable! I always either eat there with my family or get take out! Now if they delivered that would be a plus.
Remember if you don't like MSG then remind them NOT to make it with MSG, something which I forget to do because I want to eat the food quick. The honey walnut prawns and szechuan prawns are recommended with fried rice of course!
I have always passed this place for years because it looked like a hole in the wall and during a commute its looks like the last place anyone wants to stop at. Inside is totally day/night because its actually pretty nice for a Chinese place.
I ordered War Won Ton (good), Honey Walnut Prawns (good), Salty Fish and Chicken Fried Rice (horrible), and Hong Kong Style combo Chow Mein (ok).
Greasy as all hell. The kinda greasy when you have to costantly wipe your mouth because your lips turn into a slip n' slide!
MSG is my biggest complaint... yup, I said it MSG folks. Im super sensative to it and they use enough to give me a splitting headache. I thought it wasnt related but then I had leftovers and BAM!!! Another headache! I dont give a damn what anyone says... they use to much MSG.
Staff tried to be nice but failed just because of their non emotional facial expressions.
My stupid friend told me to come here, thanks alot My!!!
The owners of this restaurant used to own the restaurant where China Delights (in Tara Hills) now is.
Continued great service, great food, and great prices.
Parking is a breeze.
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By far my favorite chinese restaurant. They seriously deserve a YELP sticker. My favorite? Orange spare-ribs and garlic eggplant. AHHHH!! It is especially great together! Their fried flounder is to die for. No joke. Moreover, their WarWonTon works wonders on colds.
I only know this place as "Jimmy's"... my brother's and parents' go-to spot for Chinese. After reading the other Yelpers, I kept an excited eye out for disrespectful servers/cashiers, but everyone was pretty matter-of-fact, and I was only kidding when I said to my bro, "You get the one with the spit" when we miscounted the water requests, and had to ask for another.
The food is good, not great - the only unusual dish for me was the smothered tofu. Walnut shrimp was too mayonaisy as at almost any other Chinese establishment, and the spicy spare ribs reminded me of baby powder. Of course I slurped all this up, and washed it down with Belfast Cider - hurray for old times!
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I am addicted to there orange chicken! Friendly Service and big LCDs on the walls. China House does something to there orange chicken that makes me order it all the time and Im not a big fan of orange chicken!? Dragon Terrace has better walnut prawns.
Friendly Service and Food is good and easy on the pockets!
Mos Def a good choice in Pinole....The Fish with Black Bean Sauce is tastey with some good good Shrimp Fried Rice with no egg.....
http://twitter.com/DRP...
What do you do when the food is great but the servers are curt and snooty? How many stars do you give? I'll give it 3 because I would go back for take out but avoid any sit down service.
The server lady never smiled, and in fact scowled at our teenagers with us at the table. Really, I wanted to ask for a "kid friendly" server. She acted like we were wasting her time and with a curt tone pressured us to hurry up and make a decision almost as soon as we sat down. So we quickly did. The food was good but if we had a chance to peruse the menu without feeling pressured we would have ordered differently.
I will say it was surprising that so many people were dining in on a Sunday afternoon. Well after all the food is good.
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I wouldn't come back unless someone requested it. The servers weren't friendly AT ALL and the food was super greasy. A friend ordered lemon chicken, and got a plate of lemon chicken and nothing else.
I don't know if this is normal when ordering an entree, but I thought rice, salad or soup would have been better than 16 ounces of chicken, covered in jelly.
The server we had rolled her eyes and walked away when we said we weren't ready. We had to ask for tea when the cups were set in front of us. They just weren't friendly.
The potsticker were fine, the chicken chow mein was overly greasy, but the black pepper steak sizzling platter was pretty tasty. And had bell pepper and onion which complemented the steak well.
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Great food, try the chicken curry. . it is to die for. Their walnut prawns are delish as others have stated. Everything I have tried here is spot on.
Best place in town, they were previously in the new Trader Joe's center (not sure what it's actually called), they also have a second location in El Cerrito.
Beats bootsy ass Hunan Village any day.
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Super unfriendly service but I guess I just didn't care. Taste of the food is decent and the place seems clean. However, I have not gone back since we found a bunch of dirt in our beef and brocoli. Assuming they did not wash the brocoli. Too bad. Its so close to home.
I moved to the area about a year ago after being absolutely spoiled by my proximity to China Village and this has become my regular to-go place. Although China House and China Village's specialties are very different - CV really is known for their amazing szechuan and if CH has one, I haven't figured out what it is yet - both do offer versions of the standard Chinese-American hybrids that most of us grew up eating and which the SO likes for takeout - chicken fried rice, singapore-style meifun, prawns w/ snow peas, honey walnut prawns, kung pao chicken (alas, no szechuan peppercorns in the last one). In this respect, China House's offerings are very good. The portions are generous, they use a light hand with the corn starch on the velveted entrees and on the oil in general, and prices are reasonable. And, aside from the fried things in sauces, the eggrolls, 10 different kinds of noodles, etc. (which I have no complaints about aside from the tomato beef chow mein - woah on the sweet & sour sauce) there are items on the menu for those that like to deviate from the norm - salted fish and chicken fried rice, scallops in the seafood section (although I'm sure they're previously frozen), they do offer clay pots... I'm looking forward to trying the hot & spicy bean curd w/ minced pork next time if I can manage to wrangle the phone from the SO.
As far as the service, the first time I went in it was 15 minutes before closing and they still took us. The food arrived very quickly and the servers did start cleaning up as we were finishing our meal, but we were there after their official closing. Since then, the servers have never been overtly warm, but they seem to recognize us when we come in and are always professional and efficient.
This is a Great Place to eat, we know the Owners for 12 years now and they always deliver
Good food. They used to have Peking Garden, and then they expand I guess.
Our Favorite is Fried Flounder with Cilantro and Mushroom with Chinese Greens.
Every time now we dine in there they know already what we're going to order
They go healthy now, we usually requested our food to be less salty so they
Cooked it the way we want it to be prepared. The Service is excellent and fast.
Next time we will try the Steam Flounder with Ginger & Scallion, partnered with Minced beef with Egg drop, yummy delicious.
AHHHHH!!!! do not go here!!!
however much tempted you are to stop here.. just keep driving!
everything we ordered and ate was bland and greasy. it makes my tummy hurt just thinking about it!
it was on a whim that we decided to try this place because we usually go to our default chinese restaurant...
we ordered the preset dinner for two.... the sizzling rice soup was SO BLAND, it was definately not sizzlin... we had some beef dish where the texture of the beef made me question what kind of meat i was actually eating... again very oily and really didn't have any taste... very very mediocre food.. it wasn't terrible but it def. was not good.
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A good place, but I liked it better when it was on Pinole Valley. They moved when the renovation of the Pinole Valley shopping center started to El Cerrito(I Think). Then while keeping the new spot they moved back to Pinole to a place off of San Pablo Ave. which used to be Giovanni's Deli(never liked the place). They became a little lower on their food quality since then, but not bad. I would definitely recommend going to Hunan-Villa which is down the street across from Embers, and the 99 cent store in Pinole Shores.
Wow, I barely even recognize the restaurant anymore! As Lyzbeth said, it's a nice restaurant with table cloths with a glass top. During my visit, they seemed to be short staffed, as the waitresses that I observed were doing double duty running between the cash register processing take out orders and on the floor. A second waitress brought out the take out orders and was also running around the floor.
Although the space is small, the set up looks like they could probably even offer dim sum! Now that would be something new in Pinole!
I had a lunch special. Ordered Garlic Chicken with Chow Mein. The order taker generously offered to substitute a vegetable of my choice when I said I didn't want water chestnuts. The wait was a bit long....next time I'll just call my order in since I now have the menu. I could smell the garlic before I opened the box....uuummmm...the chow mein was not greasy but they did seem to clump up a bit. There wasn't as much chicken as I would have liked, but there was a plentiful amount of food, not over sauced or drenched in oil.
Four star start with definite potential for a 5.
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I really love this place and the food is good! I did order recently wonton soup. The wontons were not very good. (the meat tasted old) I told the owner and he said the meat was probably marinated? No, it was old! He did not give a discount or apologize. I probably won't eat there for a long time.
China House just opened in the location of the old Giovanni's Restaurant.
This is a nice standard Chinese restaurant. The prices are good and so is the food. Daily lunch specials are $5.25 and come with a pot of tea, soup of the day, two fried won ton with sweet sauce, choice of one of 30 dishes, choice of chow mein, fried rice or steamed rice, orange section and fortune cookie.
All this in a nice restaurant with white table cloths and pink carnations on the tables. I had the pork with black mushrooms (#24) which had very tend pieces of pork, lots of black mushrooms, bamboo shoots and scallions.
Not a restaurant to go out of the way for, but a nice addition to the town of Pinole. Maybe not really a four star restaurant, but good for its category.
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The food is very good and the service is very fast!
We ate their lunch special and it was ok... not a four star, but ok. Where they really shine, however is phone/take out orders. When you call in a huge order and they say it will be ready in fifteen minutes, they mean FIFTEEN minutes, not "we'll wait 'til you show up, then heat up the grill while you cool your heels". Their prices are reasonable and once you find the things the things they make well (stay away from crab appetizers), you will love them. I usually order more than we eat for dinner, because these are one set of leftovers that don't languish in the fridge. I love their tomato-beef chow fun and their garlic eggplant! Easy parking is such a plus.
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What a gem in this part of the East Bay! There's plenty of mediocre Chinese restaurants but China House stands out heads above them all in our area. Atmosphere is pleasant, roomy and the restaurant is clean as a whistle. Service is very efficient and I always get any special requests. We're very fond of the Mongolian Beef, Tomato Beef , Chicken with Chinese Greens and the various fish filet dishes. We often get the fish fillet prepared like tomato beef and it's outstanding. The soups are outstanding, especially the Hot and Sour, Chicken Corn and the Minced Beef w/Egg Drop. I always use their excellent hot sauce for that extra zip. Parking is a breeze either in the lot or ample spots on the street. Lunch specials for under $6 are available 7 days a week, 11:30 to 3pm. In this economy, you can't go wrong going out to China House.
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To my surprise, this restaurant is very good. we used to drive by the old Giovanni all the time and only set my foot in there once because it was old and not updated. Now it has been converted to a new Chinese restaurant. the new owner has updated the place to modern style and it clean. I like the table cloth table with glass on top, food is awesomely tasty, price is very affordable. Parking is easy. and it offers daily lunch special. most importantly, food taste better than any other Chinese restaurant within the 5 miles radius vicinity.
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I went here and thought the service was awful. I asked the waitress for my hot chili sauce twice and she finally gave it to me when I was already done with my soup!!! That was just for starters when the food arrived (walnut prawns & Tofu Beef) I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased. The service sucks but the food is delicious. I will order and pick up next time.
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I have only eaten here once and usually have take out. I am actually not big on eating chinese food, but for whatever reason I am always okay having take out from here. It is pretty good and very reasonably priced.
The place had a very nice interior. There was a party in the restaurant. There were many people and they were very noisy. It took a long time to get our food. But, it was good.
Fried Ice Cream was the Best.
I have been coming to this restaurant for over 8 years, and I have yet to be dissappointed. I am surprised that people here are complaining about bad service, because I have yet to experience it. We never have to wait very long for the food to come out, and any special requests we make are always respected. The food is always delicious, and never too greasy. My family always orders the wor won ton soup, walnuts prawns, and sesame beef, among other things. Those three dishes are divine here. The food never makes me sick, and I am notorious for having a sensitive stomach. So go there. And order the sesame beef. You won't be dissappointed.
there food is great for the price. i think the food is very similar to the food at Hanan villa but isn't as great. i always take it to go because they make it so quick. you can buy 3 or 4 dishes for under $25 and they come in good proportion.
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Pinole, CA
Category: Chinese
Pinole, CA
Category: Chinese
Pinole, CA
Category: Chinese
Pinole, CA
Category: Indian
Hercules, CA
Category: Chinese
