I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, because of the number of people who have used the words "Best Chinese" in their reviews to describe Tai Pei (TP). If this is the best Chinese food you've had, well then: (1) you're insane, and (2) what, not even?, and (3) you must like most of your foodstuffs to be filled with high fructose corn syrup (errm, I mean "corn sugar").
Is the food bad? No. But it's not amazing. TP should never have the superlative "Best" attached to it, unless you're including additional qualifiers like:
+ "Best... Lunch Value" (because the portions are over the top, and you need to talk to your doctor if you're still hungry after eating one of TP's lunch menu specials).
+ "Best... Customer Service for a Chinese restaurant in the Bethany/Warr Acres Area" (because they are really friendly, and efficient to boot).
+ "Best... Illusion of Variety, but They're Really the Same Four Items Mixed/Matched Different Ways" (because Chicken Lo Mein, Garlic Chicken, Sweet & Sour Chicken, and Sweet & Sour Pork account for almost every item on the lunch menu).
Lunch specials are (generally) $6.50 a person and (generally) include two meat options, rice, soup and an egg roll. Pretty good deal, all things considered. If you take the food to go, the soup isn't included.
TP's Garlic Chicken is pretty good in all of its deep-fried, state-fair fritter-esque glory. The garlic flavor comes in strong. The egg roll was great the first time I had it, not so much the second time (dunno if the oil was bad, but the flavor was funky). The Hot & Sour Soup lives up to its name for the most part. The Sweet & Sour Chicken (and the Garlic Chicken for that matter) is cornstarch battered out the wazoo, and the included sauce is unpleasantly sweet, like it had some kind of Jolly Rancher-esque candy worked into it. The Sesame Chicken was also really sweet; sweeter than Sesame Chicken I've had elsewhere. Actually, that's kind of the one common theme. Everything has a sweet under (or over) tone. Which is fine for a bit, but becomes increasingly unpleasant as the meal continues.
They do provide you with Sambal Oelek when you ask for hot sauce, (which you will need, unless your taste-buds are like that of a toddler). Considering how everything borders on being sickly sweet (outside of the Hot & Sour soup), I feel like TP should have hot sauce ready and waiting on all of the tables from the outset.
Good value. Good portions. Standard American-Chinese food. Y'all trippin' with that [*][*][*][*] average though. read more