Searching for Chinese in Charlotte, I found that this place had an intriguing menu. They are retro in the sense that there is no online ordering, so I called in. It is busy enough that plenty of other people had also called in for takeout. The price was higher than I thought it would be by a significant margin; I thought something was off but then rechecking their menu I saw it was indeed $20 for a vegetable entree. On the upside, they did offer brown rice at no extra charge. Still, I'll get three meals out of it and as someone who eats a lot of takeout, this was not a great value.
In terms of quality, I was thrilled to find that they offered a stir-fried okra dish. This is a ubiquitous Indian dish, and of course okra is common throughout the tropics globally, but I'd never seen this offered at a Chinese restaurant before. And the rapid cooking technique typical of the cuisine produced a delightfully crisp vegetable, which went great with a black bean sauce and some very hot dried chilis. On the other hand, their interpretation of ma po tofu had some fermented broad beans but minimal vegetables (sometimes you get mushrooms or peas or at least some leeks or something) and no numbing sensation. They had a bean curd roll dish that I enjoyed, and some quality dumplings.
Overall, not huge portions and a mix of okay to great quality. read more