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Cermak-Chinatown (Red)
Mon-Fri. 10:30 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.
Sun. 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
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hands down the best food in China town. I usually would not give 5 stars to a place with service that leaves a bit to be desired, but I think that it's the best in the area. There are no places that specialize in Hunan cuisine and that is the specialty if Spring World. Using unique spices to create one of a kind food.
I actually like this place more than Lao Sze Chuan, ever since that place became super popular.
Start with the appetizer platter, you can go up to the counter and pick 3 or 4 different apps for like $5. I love the pig's ear and the tofu skin
They also give you a seaweed salad as soon as you sit down that's super addictive! Sour and a little bit spicy!
Come here over Lao Sze Chuan if you want a less crowded, slightly cheaper and super authentic meal!
Also I think they validate parking
Even if you are stone cold broke, you deserve a treat every now and then. Spring World's overly generous $4.00 lunch is just the thing for the under-employed set.
Here is what $4.00 gets you: a bowl of soup (their choice, if you are lucky it is the amazing hot and sour), a choice from menu A and a choice from menu B, rice and tea. Yes, TWO entrees, meaning you can actually get 2 or 3 meals out of this tasty splurge.
Even the Americanized Chinese is pretty decent here, but I'd suggest sticking with more authentic offerings such as the ethereal Szechuan Tofu (although I'll admit that I'm a sucker for their Kung Pao chicken and the husbands eternal General Tsao's chicken is not as odious here as at other places).
I have no idea how they stay in business with this lunch special, but I'm not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth, heck no! Keep in mind, you may have to ask for the lunch menu as they do not automatically give it to you, perhaps for the aforementioned reason.
Hands down, the best lunch special in Chicago.
I've been to Spring World twice while visiting Chicago. The menu is a little overwhelming, but they have some great dishes.
The tofu skin dish (I think with chives?) is delicious. I also like the dish with chicken and stir fried sticky rice cakes. This has such a unique flavor and texture. Also, the fish in spicy oil is good. I like the bamboo pieces floating in the oil, but be careful--they can slip out of your chopsticks quite easily! That was sad... I am not a huge bitter melon fan, but they have a bitter melon dish that I like (which is saying a lot). It is stirfried with sesame oil and some other flavors. However, the last time we went, they served us water spinach that was too chewy. That was the only disappointing dish.
Also, the atmosphere and service are good for a place with such good food. Those elements rarely coincide in really good, authentic Chinese restaurants. Spring World is great if you want authentic Sichuan/Yunnan cuisine.
Spring World is absolutely unbelievable. There is simply no other place in Chicago where you can get both the kind of quality and authenticity available here. Having spent quite a bit of time working and living in southwest China this past year, I was pretty disappointed to come back to the usual offerings of Lao Sichuan and other restaurants. Don't get me wrong; Lao Sichuan is pretty good, but it just isn't the real thing. Unlike at a lot of the more authentic Chinese restaurants in the States, where making everything ridiculously spicy seems to be the standard by which food is judged, the flavoring and diversity of the food at Spring World is amazing - I have been six times since getting back to the States two months ago and haven't even made a dent in the menu!
If you're on a budget, try the "snacks." I'm not quite sure what most of the English names are for the dishes, but they're invariably delicious, plus ordering three or four of them makes for a good cheap meal for two. The main courses and veggies are great too. Everything tastes exactly the way it's supposed to. If you're not quite sure what to order, look at the pictures or ask the waitresses, most of whom are very nice and patient regardless of how familiar you are with the menu's listings. The fact that they speak Kunming dialect makes the whole restaurant that much cooler.
In response to Spring World's detractors, clearly you guys have no idea what you're talking about. Classifying it as a Hunan or a Northern restaurant should disqualify you from being allowed to comment on it, because it's clearly advertised as a Yunnan restaurant. Ordering dim sum at a non-Cantonese restaurant is probably never a good call (do they even have it here?). Claiming that it's a bad place because the General Tso's chicken is sub-par is just funny. If you want that crap, save your money and go to Wok-N-Roll.
Last week I went to the restaurant at 7:30 pm and ordered the hot and sour soup because I read reviews that made it sound like a good dish. It was not, it was very "funky" tasting. The next day we went back to try the lunch specials, which by the way are very tiny portions even for the price. They gave us the hot and sour soup as part of the meal, so I tried it again. It was much better. So, I guess be leery when you order food there at night. They might use food that is not so fresh anymore!
Been coming here for 4 years, and each time it is fantastic. We always get the meal for two, and are never even slightly unhappy. I have eaten almost everywhere in Chinatown, and Spring World is The Best.
We had some delicious marinated tripe here too.
My favourite.
It was very good. I got to try food that I never see on menus in Detroit, not that is too surprising. Beef and maw was really good and the scallion cakes worked really wonderfully with it. The Yunan Ham with Leeks was good, too. For the two of us it was a really fun meal.
So many of the previous reviewers seem to have no conception of what Spring World actually is, that I'm not sure where to begin. Yeah, if you want egg rolls and bland faux-Chinese garbage, you probably won't be so happy. Big deal. If you want that shit then you can find plenty of places that'll happily cater to you.
Instead, do your homework. Try the tea smoked duck, lamb with cumin, various stir-fried greens, and any number of other fantastic and very authentic dishes. Every meal starts off with amazing spicy cabbage salad, somewhat like kimchee but not thoroughly pickled. You'll get an incredible meal here if you focus on the restaurant's specialties. This is not Panda Express and if you want that kind of food, go elsewhere.
Spring World has gotten a lot better since it got a face lift. In the past, the food was consistently inconsistent. But the final tally would put this place under more bad trips than good. That, however, is no longer the case! It's cleaner and brighter... dare I say spiffier? The odd thing is they've 2 menus that are polar opposites of each other - one is mild & bland and the other, hot & spicy. Make up your mind people!
They have good deals on appetizers ($3.95 you pick them) - not necessarily the stuff off their menu. They also have this awesome dish that has chicken stir fried with bits of dough (not unlike Chinese gnocchi) that is drowned in pepper. It's funny that this dish is a surprise with every visit. It can be sweeter one day and spicy enough to warrant FDA warnings another. Go and give it a try... if you're feeling lucky.
Oh, and don't bother ordering the steamed dumplings. The 999999999999 times I've asked for it, they've said they didn't have it. Oh they *could* cross it off their menu... but I suspect they get their Pavlovian jollies watching me come in to ask for it only to be denied time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time.
We came here with my brother this past weekend and had a HORRIBLE meal. I dont know if it was our fault for ordering such a generic meal or what....maybe I made the mistake of allowing my boyfriend to order food here. He likes to think of himself has an expert asian diner, but alas he is not and I tried to save it by letting my brother order some dim sum dishes, but even those were, disappointing.
UGH, I was so mad I even had to pay for it.
The dishes were small, we got the 3 delight, general tso chicken, eggrolls, beef, potato cakes, mushroom tofu, and bean dumplings.
I dont understand how this place could have such a shitty eggroll, they came out with PACKETS of sweet and sour sauce, that we had to open and squeeze out ourselves. WTF.
Also the bean dumplings had beef in them?
The general tso chicken was also very shitty, too much breading, over fried and the chicken was fatty?
The 3 delight was small, and just regular, nothing special but for a 14 dollar dish, I expected just alittle something extra.
So i dont know- Maybe we just ordered all the wrong dishes.... everyone else seemed to like the place. I just had the worst chinese-american meal in my life here though.
Whenever I try out a new Chinese restaurant, there are a few things I look for. One of them is how well the place does its hot and sour soup. I'm a big soup fan and I just happen to like spicy things so I think this is a natural selection in how I determine the quality of a given place.
This is the best hot and sour soup in Chicago. Well, OK - depending on when you read this review and what other restaurants may come up after this review is written, maybe I should write the last statement this way:
This is the best hot and sour soup in Chicago so far.
Not only is the soup spicy but it has an extra kick on the sour side which works really well together. Some restaurants get lazy w/ this soup and is either just hot or sour or worse yet, neither of both.
You will not be having that problem here. The soup is excellent. My only complaint about this soup is that it only comes in one size (small) so if you're in love w/ this soup like I am, you'll need to order multiple small orders. I've not yet had success in having them give me a bigger container of the soup and have them charge me appropriately.
Maybe if we can gather some momentum behind the popularity of the soup, they may create the option to order a LARGE. That'd be a dream come true.
As for the remaining items on the menu, they seem to be catered towards the spicier end of the spectrum. If you enjoy spicy Chinese food and are especially craving a phenomenal hot and sour soup, this is where you need to be.
This is the only Yunnan restaurant in the Midwest. The owner is from Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, China. The food is 100% authentic. They recently remodeled and the place looks nice. If you're into authentic Chinese food or Chinese cuisine from regions other than Canton this is your place...
This place is great because they offer $3.95 lunches! It is such a great deal - Included in the lunch is a selection from list A - meat dishes, one from list B - veggies/tofu but served in equal quanity, tea and soup. Their stinky tofu is absolutely delish! Also, their spicy food is what this place is known for - it's really great - the different types of spices.
See my pictures for some of the samples of the food - YUM!
Spring world has interesting menu items that we continue to enjoy. Stay away from the "usual" Chinese food fare and opt for the stews/casseroles - lamb and fish is outstanding - the steamed fish, or for the more adventurous, the pork tongue appetizer (which was delicious).
Only bad dish we had there was with a friend who insisted on ordering vegetarian chow mein.
Each time we go we try to order something we haven't tried before - this past time it was leeks with bean curd skin - which was pretty good but a little salty for our tastebuds. We noticed they have a weekend buffet, but did not try it this time.
THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE "HOT POT".
The hot pot ($15.95/person) is AWFUL here. I was so disgusted by the quality of the meat (brown spots on the beef) and the fact that they had SPAM (wtf?!), that I really only ate some tofu and napa cabbage and hardly touched anythign else. We opted for half mild/half spicy broth split, and the spicy mixture was all oil and chili peppers--highly unsavory. Suffice it to say, I was extremely disappointed and will NEVER come here again for hot pot. I'll be sticking with Lao Sze Chuan for hot pot, definitely.
Again, this review was FOR THE HOT POT, but if the browning beef is of any indication, this restaurant is probably not the greatest, period.
When I lived closer to Chinatown, this was my fav place to go. The food is much more authentic then most chinese resturants. Though they had a face lift and revamped the menu, they really should have had an english speaker look at their explanations of the food. They are cryptic to say the least. My fav dish is what they call "bean curd and chives" or something to that effect. What it is, is a dry tofu, and yellow chives, which are much sweeter and less pungent than green chives. Also I love their onion pancakes, which are not like pancakes at all. They are crispy, salty, and amazing. The hot and sour soup is also top notch, though I did go one time and it was so ridic salty that I could not eat it. All depends on the batch you're getting. Overall, very good, but don't go there and just get orange chicken folks, there is so much more to chinese food than that silly dish.
Come here if you like restaurants that treat customers like garbage. They act like they don't want you there. They wanted to know what I was doing there (hello, people come to restaurants to have food). When I asked if they were open for lunch, she muttered something disgusting under her breath. They refused to give me service because I was dining alone and for another non-pc reason. They lied and said there was no lunch service available although they clearly were setting up for lunch and the sign in the window indicated that they were open. The waitress swore at me under her breath and practically threw a menu at me. The other waitress participated in the rudeness. I came here based on a recommendation and was really looking forward to it. Much to my shock and disgust, I guess you have to look a certain way to be treated with respect at this restaurant. A highly unpleasant experience.
gets no love while gweilos continue to flock to Joy Yee. sad.
Yunnan Cuisine is what you need to know. The over-the-bridge noodles is 1 sample, others include: spicy ginger chicken, pig's feet, yunnan ham, fish and lamb stew, etc.
and there are the lunches... holy cow. the "chilled 3 strings" is my fave from list B. and... if you're TRULY in the cut, you'd know the waitresses, offer them cash only, include a bigger tip and not pay tax.
This is northern-type cuisine. You will find the greasiest, spiciest chinese food here. Best MaPo Tofu Ive had in Chinatown square. Not too pricey, but not too cheap.
This is my kind of place, spicy and cheap. Go for the hot dishes, like the "Across the Bridge," a hot pot with their specialty spices, sliced meats and noodles, not the cold, and you'll be fine.
wasn't really my cup of tea but my friends seem to like it. the seafood soup i'd ordered was pretty bland but their onion pancakes are the best i've had in chinatown.
If you crave an inexpensive meal, this is the place. You can get lunch for about $4.00! They have a pretty extensive regular menu too that goes from standard fare to a little more interesting like frog dishes. I think the food is average though after trying some cold noodles and a beef pea pod stir fry dish.
this place is a dollar more then most places, and the amount of food isnt as much as in other places. that being said the food was great, the eggplant, the pork, and the chicken dishes are great, the soups are very very good, the general tso chicken tastes like mcdonals chicken nuggets with some sweet and sour sauce poured over them(its great)lol. this place is excellent and a must for mcnugget fans out there!!!
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Dim Sum
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Chinese
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Chinese
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Chinese
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Vietnamese
Since I'm Chinese - nothing beats home-cooked…
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