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Absolutely the greatest Chinese food I have ever had anywhere or anytime. You can't go wrong here. Every dish is amazing. Try the crispy spicy chicken or the honey crispy shrimp. The fried dumplings and Szechuan Green Beans are great appetizers as well.
Excellent food. Excellent service.
My hubby's from Taiwan and I lived there for three years, so needless to say we're picky about our Chinese food. Aside from Evergreen on Nicollet and Little Szechuan in St. Paul, this place is IT. We live in Plymouth, so we're here more often than the other two places. We always order from the Chinese menu and the specials board just inside the door. The kids love the dried tofu and meat dish. Be sure to ask what vegetables they have and lunge for the "A" vegetable or pea tips. They're just greens stir-fried with garlic, nothing scary. If you like "different meats" they do a really nice job with the chang wang and sometimes do a good job with the kidneys.
*gets down to her knees and bows*
SO worth it! I absolutely loved the food and even tried a pot sticker for the first time. For the first time in a long time, I actually am looking forward to eating left overs for the next few days. Oh! Try the chinese made beer that's been imported here, yummy!!
My hubby and I made a pact, we're stopping by once a month from now on!
So we live in Plymouth & for the most part, when you ask anyone where to go out to eat, they rattle off a list of chain restaurants. The Chinese food recommendation we got was LeeAnn Chin's. Seriously? Anyhoo, we stumbled upon Tea House in the MSP/St. Paul Magazine & when we drove by Pineda's Tacos. Since my 18-month old refuses to sit still for more than 5 minutes now, we have to do takeout. We were pretty impressed.
I called at 5pm for a takeout order & expected about a 1/2 hour before I could pick-up. My order was ready in 15 MINUTES. It takes me longer to drive there! I got my hubby the Sweet & Sour Crispy Chicken & the Family Style Tofu for me. The portions don't look very big, but they are & they come with rice. The chicken was a little too crispy for me, but maybe that would be an issue solved by eating in? The tofu I got Sichuan style (with Chinese veggies & flavors), but you can get Americanized. Even my super picky toddler liked the tofu! BONUS!
We'll definitely try to dine-in someday. The super nice servers were enamored by my halfie daughter, so I'm sure she'd make it through a service with all the attention. :) Otherwise, I will definitely call-in for another takeout order soon.
took my boyfriend and his family here for his birthday. Everyone loved it. their fried rice was dark and flavorful. the egg rolls are super crispy witout being too greasy. the outside of the restaurant is a little misleading, it looks funny with christmas lights strung around, however the interior is beautiful and warm. we had excellent service, the prices are on the higher side but not unreasonable.
We specifically went to try the steamed soup dumplings we read about, but the St.Paul location is the only place that carries those.
Try: the SCECHUAN GREEN BEANS they were garlicky and wonderful, it was a delicious side dish that everyone was 'wowed' by
Never been to China but I feel I'm there when I sit in the booths at the Tea House. I just love the red walls and the woodwork surrounding the booths. Something more to love is their fantastic Sichuan menu. One of my favorites items is the crab and asparagus soup. Love crab, asparagus not so much, and yet these two taste wonderful together. Then they have this honey crisp shrimp that looks nothing like its menu picture, but it's still yummy. It's battered fried shrimp with a sweet sauce. And to me the shredded pork and tofu is like comfort food.
Some things to know on their Sichuan menu: Scallops with black pepper are hotter than any of the spicy dishes they have. Make sure to ask them to go easy on the black pepper or they will cover em' black like a hockey puck. Wontons and dumplings in hot sauce are not so hot save for the grated white stuff on them. That stuff is spicy.
I don't order much from the American Chinese menu. I've had the lo mein and it's nothing spectacular. But their fried rice is good stuff even if it has frozen peas and carrots.
Their buffet is great and the service is always friendly and fast. Portions aren't generous for the price but Tea House is about quality Chinese food. Right now there's no dim sum but if they can somehow steal the dim sum chefs of Mandarin Kitchen, this place would be my dream Chinese restaurant.
how did i grow up in minneapolis and never know about this restaurant?!?!!? for shaaaaaaame!
The Tea House is hands down the best chinese in the suburbs (sorry Great Wall...but you're still my number one for christmas eve). The restaurant is straight up chinese kitsch, huge round table, waiters of questionable descent, hot tea and towels, etc. Tea House has 2 menus -- one "normal" (aka american) chinese food and one "authentic" chinese food (like pigs feet and intestine and stuff like that). We ordered from the american chinese menu. yea.
anyways, the food was ordered and out quickly and it was DELISH! The orange beef was my fave...followed closely by chicken with vegetables...the wonton soup was also great. it's right across from the newish plymouth movie theatre...so dare i say a good spot for a casual dinner/date.
YUM
I've been to so many Chinese restaurants, both in MN and other states, and I have yet to find one that's better than Tea House. The Chungking scallops are to die for, but I have yet to find one clunker item on their menu. The food is always fresh, the service is always cordial and the sheer variety of goodies on the Szechuan menu is mind-boggling.
There is now a Tea House on the other side of the Cities too, in St. Paul, right off White Bear Avenue and Suburban.
This place is the best Chinese that Ive ever had, and live in San Francisco which is saying a ton. Plus, Ive been to China. So why does MN get this China love? I miss tea house damn it. I miss goddamn tiger pork. For some reason you can only get tiger pork in MN. Why the hell is this? The typical Minnesotan cant appreciate the quality food that comes from the tea house. Its not fair.
When my next relative dies, Il be at tea house.
Let me just say this. There are several people in my company who are from China and this where they prefer to eat to reminisce about home. This means that even people from China say this is the real deal!!! It has a very warm atmosphere, is right across from a movie theater (perfect for those dinner and a movie dates), and the food is fantastic.
Now this place does both authentic chinese dishes and americanized versions of chinese dishes. The latter is good, but if you want unbelievable, ask for their chinese menu (the "other menu"). It's smaller than the americanized one, but every dish on there is mouthwatering and tasty. You want go to this place for sure, before you can say you've tried real chinese food (without actually going there).
Good food, strange set up.
Went to Tea House for my first and highly anticipated trip for the lunch buffet. The first thing that struck me was how the food was set up nearly in the door way, seriously 15 feet max from the entrance. Strange, but I went along with it....
I have a certain way of going through a Chinese Buffet and this set up was not conducive to my 'system' if you will.
We were seated right inside, first table by the buffet - didn't like that one bit. People were all crowding around us and stuff and it wasn't comfortable (including the chairs since I banged my ankle more than once on the wood bar down below) or conversation friendly.
Now, on to what people care about the food - food was good. I like the cream cheese won tons as well as the Mongolian pork and general Tso's chicken. Those were probably my favorites. The chow mien and egg foo young had a dark gravy which doesn't please my pallet and the egg rolls didn't have much taste.
The DC was bubbly and delicious and the service was spot on. Plates were cleaned immediately.
I am giving his 4 stars with trepidation. I want to give it 3 (set up, table location, etc) but I have a sneaking suspicion if I do, I'll get railroaded for bringing down the overall rating like I have before. I will give it 4 this time and go back for a second look because I think I should. Maybe I've missed something that everyone just loves. If anyone can give me suggestions on what else to try, I would be receptive.
Great first time experience. I work really close to here, so can't believe this was my first!
Beer - Tsing Tao (sp?) always a win when I see this at a restaurant. Ordered right away based on reviews of the Tiger Pork on Yelp. It was sinfully good the first few bites but then got really salty :( I'd be happy with a salt lick so was cool with this - but it would have been way too much for the normal to handle. Maybe it was a fluke. Will definitely be back to try again.
Hubby got the sesame chicken - boring it sounds - but it was AMAZING!!!! Yum.
Service was very friendly. Had to wait a while for our check but who cares. Go here.
I go, I order kung pao tofu (not on the menu anymore, but they'll make it), I eat, I become happy (especially if they're not too light on the hot peppers), I take half home. Repeat.
I don't know about authentic, I just know good.
One of my colleagues took me to Leann Chinn for lunch. While it wasn't necessarily *bad*, it wasn't much better than Panda Express. Anyway, so I wanted to see if there were more authentic Chinese restaurants close to the office.
I found the Tea House which got these amazing reviews. Compared to Chinese restaurants in any major city (Chicago, SF, New York), it would be considered fairly mediocre. I was initially turned off by the fact that their website had a "Regular Menu" and "Authentic Chinese Menu". Damn it -- have some pride in your culture! If people can't deal with eating anything remotely close to "authentic", just tell them to go some place like Leann Chinn. I would sincerely hope that there are enough open-minded people in Minneapolis to support restaurants that choose to serve *real* Chinese food (but it sounds like that might not be the case). And I'm not talking about chicken feet or anything like that -- there is plenty of authentic food is isn't "weird"!
Anyway, we got the beef chow fun and five spice shrimp from the "authentic" menu. It was pretty pricey for mediocre Chinese food (beef chow fun in a Chinese restaurant in New York or Boston is typically $6 or 7; it's $11 at the Tea House). But yeah, unfortunately you have to pay a premium for authentic ethnic food in cities like Minneapolis.
The beef chow fun was not bad -- a little bit bland but acceptable for Minneapolis. Noodles were cooked fairly well, maybe very slightly overcooked. Five spice shrimp was also kinda bland but it wasn't terrible.
Am I the only one confused about the rave over tea house? I've been here twice for regular dinner and the lunch buffet, and both times I was not one bit impressed by the food. I think everything tasted like a typical Americanized Chinese restaurant food, which has as much MSG as humanly possible. The servers were polite, but they don't care to refill your drinks unless you walk up to the pop machine. The only good thing about the lunch buffet was the sugar rolled donuts at the end.
I will not return here even if my craving for chinese becomes very severe. I will drive 10 minutes further and get evergreen on nicollet ave.
this makes me very very sad. for months i have woken up, sweating, in the middle of the night crying out for the tea house's tiger pork. the closest i could find in scotland was a bbq pork at a malaysian restaurant.
i feel betrayed. its not like when i went to pizza luce with high expectations and then was disappointed when it was donkey balls, this has been my favorite restaurant since it opened and immediately became our annual xmas meal locale, plus my first destination when i visit home.
im sad. i should have suspected that when they added a tv and opened two new locations, that it would go to shit but deep in a place in my heart i dont often speak of, something told me the tiger pork would always be there for me.
what was there for me tonight was a plate of shit. pure and simple. the triple kung pao was also nasty. ive never come to minneapolis for a visit of any length over two days and not eaten here 9 times, but for the record, i will not return (at least this visit and until i have confirmations from 4 trusted sources that the tiger pork has once again returned)
despite a nearly bad moment with a waiter who insisted (correctly) that we get three, not two… Read more »
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