Katherine
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Mar 14, 2019
I'm on a quest, to find a Chinese food place in the Quad Cities, that makes a decent almond chicken, sesame chicken, crab rangoon and fried wonton, These are staples I'll eat multiple times a month, and I get frustrated that they're so often hard to find made properly. I had a place I was getting all three from, but they recently tried to short-change me in a way that makes me unwilling to patronize me again.
So, as for Great Wall, this restaurant came fairly close on the crab rangoon, but that's it. It had almost no crab flavor, and the wraps weren't folded but pinched in a way that means the tips of of the wraps are overly crunchy. But the amount of filling wasn't too skimpy, and they were decently flavorful.
The fried wontons however, were folded in the round napkin ring style, to disguise that they had so little meat in them that you couldn't even taste it. And they were actually harder to bite into than the rangoon.
The almost chicken isn't almond chicken - it's chicken soup with almonds on top. I ordered it no-veggie deliberately, as I do not like chutes, water chestnuts or any other stuff they tend to put on almond chicken. But the important part of what makes almond chicken is the chicken, the almonds and the SAUCE. A sauce that's made with, in addition to other ingredients, soy sauce. That's what gives it a savory flavor. This came in a basic chicken broth with no specific flavor to it at all; i.e. chicken soup.
The sesame chicken was, as is frustratingly common, covered in some kind of red sauce that is neither savory nor sweet. Typically, sesame chicken is a good sweet/savory blended dish, because the sauce is made with brown sugar, honey and soy. This is made with some weird, and overly citrus, red sauce. And there was WAY more breading in the bowl than there was chicken. Some hunks were entirely breading, without a sign of any chicken in it.
Their red sauce for dipping isn't bad, but it came in two containers, neither of which was even half-full. I guess they assume two entrees means two people eating who might not want to share their red sauce containers - rather than one who wants a mix of entrees and leftovers. And that's fine, but if you're going to do this, use the small clear plastic cups instead of the larger foam ones. It's less wasteful, and the plastic ones are at least recyclable.
So, my quest continues, because nothing at this location came close to what I wanted.