 |
dem walls
dat face (sorry Sandya) |
Don't confuse Golden Empress Garden with Empress Garden, the latter being in Chinatown. I was expecting a fiesty short-haired waitress thanks to browsing some Yelp reviews, but alas, it was not meant to be. Instead, we had a friendly young man as our waiter - I should mention this is the first sit-down Chinese restaurant we've encountered, although the menu is pretty much laid out like the flyers for Chinese restaurants you get slipped under your door. Before I even get to the review, I will say that this is flat-out the best Chinese restaurant we've encountered on our saunter - every dish was just fresher and tastier than any of the other places we've been to so far. Also, it had a beautiful interior - seriously the nicest stone walls I have seen in any restaurant on South Street we've encountered so far.
 |
| wonton soup |
Of course, I ordered the wonton soup as a starter - it's my baseline assessment of any Chinese restaurant. This, again, is the best one I've had so far. It wasn't overly salty and the broth was a bit different than usual - I think it was more vegetable based than chicken based, which went really well with the wontons. The wontons themselves were great too. You know how sometimes wontons from cheap restaurants are kind of waxy and lack any flavor? These ones were nice and chewy, and didn't taste like I was chewing on cardboard. The pork filling was nice too, complemented well with some scallions. We also ordered some fried dumplings as an appetizer, and Erin ordered a scallion pancake which she kindly shared with us. Both were very good - nothing out of this world, but definitely not bland or overly dry.
 |
| fried dumplings |
I ordered chicken (real, not fake) and broccoli. The reason I mention this is because Golden Empress Garden is slated as being a vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurant. They have an entire menu devoted to faux meat items, which is almost as extensive as their meat-friendly menu. I'm pretty sure we ordered food from here during a ~girl's night sleepover~ and it being pretty tasty except for the faux Peking duck (sorry Julie). Sandya got the fake General Tso's chicken, so read her review for comments on that, but it's nice to see a Chinese delivery place that caters to herbivores without being overly obnoxious (see: Pure Fare and/or the juice place we went to that I can't even remember the name of because it was so terrible and overpriced). I enjoyed my meal, and it was even better the next day for leftovers. The meat seemed like better quality than you normally get at these types of restaurants, the vegetables were fresh, and the sauce was not overly salty OMG MSG IN YO FACE. It actually had some flavor to it other than salt - but what that flavor was I couldn't tell you, because my palate is not yet so refined.
All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon - eating tasty food with friends. In the future, I will be ordering take-out from here when I have a hankerin' for wonton soup. And as an added bonus, we even previewed a future stop by grabbing beers at Woolly Mammouth's afterwards - an even better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Golden Empress Garden
618 South Street
Philadelphia, PA
(215) 625-6688
No comments:
Post a Comment