| Enormous menu selection serving Mandarin and Taiwanese Cuisine |
Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1040
Reviewed: 5/12/2004
Rating: 7.5
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Queen House Chinese Restaurants packs a great value for your money. The lunch specials run from 11:30 - 3:00PM. We barely made the cutoff with our late lunch at 2:57PM. The specials are about $5-7 and it comes with soup, salad, rice, and your dish. I thought it would all fit on one plate....so we ordered a 3rd dish. Holy moly...look at the pictures...they basically brought out a la carte style dishes. It was a ton of food!!! We ordered black bean chicken, thick combination noodles, and green onions with beef. The chicken and beef dish were salty but the noodles stood out over the other 2 dishes. The noodles had that wok flavor to the noodles, like its been cooking over high heat.
Now for the bad...the place isn't exactly the cleanest restaurant I've been to. Behind my table was a nice collection of spiderwebs and small gnats. Water was gross, I had to order a coke. I'm glad it came in an unopened can. If you can look past the dirty walls and toxic water, Queen House Chinese restaurant gives Taco Bell a run for the value.
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Reviewer: ne00
Total Reviews: 187
Reviewed: 8/21/2005
Rating: 7
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Queen House is a small café that may seem big because of the mirrors along the wall but seats limited number of people and usually busy. Being as small as it is the café is dirty, but they serve up fast, affordable, and good tasting food. Great place to grab a quick bite or a late night snack.
Typically patrons here order the soup based noodles or the combination platters. My friends and I usually order their chicken steak over rice or pork chop over rice. A large serving of pork chop is placed a bed of fluffy rice and served with vegetables of the day and sometimes a tea egg with minced beef.
Queen House also own a boba tea shop next door, so they are more strict than other cafes on people bringing in outside drinks, especially from other boba shops that compete with them. When ordering a smoothie or boba milk tea from Queen House, they place their order next door so it may take a bit longer than those who make it in house.
This place is cash only (not sure if they accept credit cards over a certain limit) but its affordable and both lunch and dinner prices are the same off their menu. This being a Chinese café, its open 7 days a week and typically opens very late.
Bottom Line: Affordable, quick, and good meal. Dirty and doesnt look too sanitary, drink the tea and avoid the water or order a can of soda. Wipe clean the utensils and tea cups with your napkin first.
***Update 2.10.06 ****
Queen House is one of the shortest reviews I have written on Jatbar.com. The tradition for long reviews must continue, thus tonight I decided to check out Queen House's 3 dish for 17.95 everyday special.
I had previously heard from friends that Queen House offered 4 dishes for 17.95 but turns out it's actually 3 dishes for 17.95 and your choice of scallion cakes or steamed rice. If your group is feeling hungry, you can add additional dishes from the list for 5.95 more per plate. My friend and I go for the salt and pepper spareribs, the beef stew clay pot and the salt and pepper fried fish pieces, and we went with the rice instead of scallions.
Now that I have looked at the scallions, I think we should have skipped the rice and gone with that, as it is two layers of crispy scallions. As we wait for our food, the place is quiet small but seems to be very popular probably because it is so cheap to eat here. You can get most rice dishes or noodles for fewer than 5 bucks.
The restaurant is not exactly clean as the chopsticks looks worn out on the ends, probably from being used or washed one too many times and the cups just are not too clean if you inspect it too in depth. I never try to worry, as I need to drink my water, the less I think of if the better, unless there are particles floating in my drink.
Our dishes arrive pretty much all together after waiting over 10 minutes. The plates are small, not at all like the huge plates at New Yong Kang. The salt and pepper spareribs were red-smoked looking spareribs. It was tasty but far from being peppery. My friend complained all night about in taking too much sodium and how he could die from eating so much sodium. My friend is a meticulous eater, much so more than I am. The spareribs had a lot of flavor but were a bit on the overcooked side.
The beef stew clay pot had chunks of beef with fat, tofu, and turnips. The beef soup went well with the rice, as it was flavorful. The beef was excessively over cooked. The only tender parts of the beef were the ones with fat hanging from it. For most part, the beef was dry once I started to eat it. The salt and pepper flounder pieces were just ok for me. They cooked the salt and pepper part correctly, unlike the spareribs, but did not serve enough. Each of us got at most 3 pieces of fish pieces. To me this dish was a bit on the bland side.
For being a small restaurant, there was mostly only one server out in the front. When the restaurant was full, two servers worked the front area taking orders and serving dishes. When our rice ran, empty it took a while for a server to pass us by and we had to ask for more rice, which was quickly brought out, fresh from the steamer.
The final meal was $22 after tips for 3 dishes and steamed rice. We were both full but not exactly satisfied. I would only come back here for their rice plates or noodles if there was nothing else to eat.
Pluses: Cheap items, accepts Visa or MC, friendly servers.
Minuses: A bit on the dirty side, cramped, small plates.
*** Updated 5/12/2006 ***
According to Lainie's review, previous jatbar agents have not given Queen House a fair chance. Having lost a bet recently, my friend wanted some noodles at Queen House for lunch, so what better way than to try out some of the stuff recommended by agent Lainie.
Since my last visit, I have heard several people mention Queen House. Despite their popularity, one point that keeps being brought up during conversations involving Queen House is how "dirty" and "unsanitary" they are. Some of my friends like to eat at Queen House but they comment that it is one of the dirtiest restaurants they know of.
We arrive around 11:40am and barely beat the lunch crowd. As soon as we sit, the lunch crowd arrives and there are several people standing outside waiting for tables. My friend goes for the Spicy Sichuan Beef Noodle Soup and I choose the fried pork chop noodle soup and an order of scallion cakes.
My friend's noodles arrive first. His bowl of noodles is steaming hot and looks very spicy, something that I would not ever order. Mine comes out at least 5 minutes later. My bowl of noodle soup consists of noodles, soup, and spinach. My fried pork chop served sliced up on a plate on the side. The noodles here are hand made thus its round, thick, and chewy. I usually do not order thick round noodles, as I tend to favor vermicelli style noodles. The pork chop did not taste pleasant as is mostly consisted of a fatty type of meat that was harder to chew having been deep-fried. The soup base was the best part of the meal. The soup must have consisted of MSG as I was thirsty throughout my meal. Even after the meal ended I was guzzling down water at work. The scallion cakes are good but nothing to WOW about, as I have had better at other restaurants. The scallion cakes were not overly oily, had a nice light texture and good scallion flavors.
Our lunch was very cheap as final bill came out to be $12 for both people with leftovers. The noodles were large and very difficult to finish. After our meal journeyed next door for some boba milk tea. We both ordered the barley milk tea with boba. That was the best barely milk tea I have ever had as it was just barley flavoring and not the actual barley that is typically used at other milk tea shops.
My rating still remains a 7 as this is a solid location for a quick, inexpensive lunch that offers a large selection of items that someone will find pleasing. |
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Reviewer: Lainie
Total Reviews: 41
Reviewed: 2/20/2006
Rating: 9
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When going to Queen House it's important to remember that this is regional Chinese food, more specifically Taiwanese cuisine. I don't expect the typical rice and 'popularized' Chinese food dishes to be their specialty. If you go with that idea, Queen House is great. Order the specialties of the house like all their handmade noodle dishes (be it in soup or w/sauce) like the Tan Tan Noodles. The thick handmade noodles in the chili, ground meat, water chestnut and mushroom sauce are fantastic. So are the Spicy Sichuan Beef Noodle Soup (with a deep flavorful broth) and the Preserved Vegetables and Pork Noodle Soup. Very regional and harder to find. If you go on the weekends, the Fried Doughnuts and Sweetened Soymilk (to dip them in) are excellent. So are the Scallion Cakes, fried to perfection and minimally greasy. This place is great for classic Taiwanese food (not necessarily the 'classic' Cantonese or Sichuan food). |
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Reviewer: takeru
Total Reviews: 31
Reviewed: 6/14/2009
Rating: 7.5
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Been itching to try this place for a while, there always seems to be a line out the door and it was highly recommended by fellow cheap eats connoisseur DH.
Fortunately, at 730 on a sunday night we had no problem getting a table, in fact QH wasn't busy at all and most of the staff was chilling out in the back. So we got quick attentive service.
Was told that the special 3 items for $22 dinner was our best bet so we ordered the clay pot beef stew, salt/pepper fish and garlic pea shoots.
Everything came out lightning fast - in under 5 minutes. Hmmm... a bit suspicious, were they prepared ahead of time and keep warm somehow? Also our food wasn't piping hot, which made me wonder.
Nevertheless, our dishes were pretty tasty overall. The clay pot beef stew had equivalent of amounts of beef and tendon mixed w/ turnips. Fish was deep fried in a light batter and had a nice wok hay. Pea shoots were crisp and fresh tasting and provided a nice contrast to the other two dishes.
Pros - decent sized, tasty dishes, quick service, low prices.
Cons - food not piping hot, small cramped tables.
Definitely worth a return visit. |
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