hot wok cafe

my go to choice for new chinese american is to try out their dumplings and their mongolian beef.  if they get both right, i'll be back again.  sadly, hot wok's mongolian beef had a similar problem with a few other restaurants.  the dish was heavy on pepper and spice and lacked some of the sweet notes that you come to expect from that dish.  dumplings were fine, though, and to their credit, i received some type of sweet sauce that i added to my mongolian beef that helped get it to where i liked it.  it was also weighed down with lots of vegetables.  more veggies than beef.

fried rice was barelyfriedrice.  just white rice, little bit of egg mixed in, and that's about it.

wow!!! egg drop soup was very well made, perfect consistency! thefriedcream cheese things were the best i've ever had anywhere. i usually hate them and i almost ordered more because they were so good. i will be coming back a lot more and thankfully i live close enough for delivery too!!

great stir-fry. i'm a little bit confused how someone could compare this place to mall chinese food. just because it comes fast, doesn't make it fast food. this place deserves to be compared to any other wok shop around.
stir fry is a difficult technique to master. because the food is prepared over such high heat and so fast, there is no room for error, and it takes a lot of experience to know the signs for success and danger at a glance. such is the experience at hot wok.
i had the dinner combo withfriedrice and egg drop soup, and everything came out so fast that it was all in front of me before the soup had cooled off enough to eat without danger! nevertheless, i finally got through all of it to render a verdict.
thefriedrice was simple and well-cooked, but nothing spectacular. it was a great complement to my kung pow chicken/shrimp dish, especially when i dumped the remainder in to enjoy them together.
the main dish itself was equally well-cooked, and the sauce was a great blend of spicy and pungent, with the heavy consistency that goes best with stir fry. it's hard to get chicken and shrimp to cook equally in stir fry without overcooking the shrimp or undercooking the chicken, but nothing was wrong here.
the accoutrements to the meal were a spring roll and cheese wonton, and it was refreshing to actually get one of each without having to pay separately for them. the spring roll was very well prepared, andfriedto a perfect golden brown without feeling heavy in the mouth. the wonton was alsofriedwell, and didn't have the papery-crispy-ness often found with cheap ones.
and after all this was finished, i could finally eat my soup! egg drop soup is easy to get wrong, because the albumen in eggs is very protein-heavy, and if you don't prepare and store it right, it will seize on you, and film up, and generally just look nasty and have very poor mouth feel. that being said, i was very pleased with the soup i got. it was a just-right blend between the heavy, savory flavors of the eggs and the subtle sweetness from the celery, lettuce, and carrot shreds.
final price for all this goodness? $9.75, excluding drink and tax, certainly not too much for a poor college student stuck up at acc all day. i would not hesitate to go back.