What's your favorite Chinese take out dish?

I love sesame chicken. I could probably eat it every day for the rest of my life.

And I know it’s not Chinese, but I had the best chicken pad thai I’ve ever had for dinner last night.

General Tso’s.

Now I’m hungary, lol.

kung pao chicken or general tso chicken

Hot & Sour Soup.

I always, always, always get pork lo mein!

i like shrimp in a Chinese restaurant because you know it’s shrimp as opposed to cat or raccoon or road kill. So i would say shrimp with snow peas or shrimp with string beans.

i do love love love hot and sour soup and eggrolls. i also like, at the Chinese buffet, the donuts.

Mu Shu chicken.

Strawberry chicken.

I like Lo Mein, but Chinese is not my favorite East Asian food.
do fortune cookies count?

Pork Tiki Tiki

Either sesame chicken (extra spicy) or orange beef (also extra spicy).

Now I think I’m gonna get that tomorrow.

Really good gyoza or hom bow.

Shu mai.

Broccoli Beef.

Anything with chicken is an instant win!

Kung Pao Chicken
Mongolian Beef
Hunan Chicken
Sesame Chicken
General Tso’s Chicken
Pepper Steak
Wonton Eggdrop Soup (yeah, our place combines the two… weird but tasty)

Our local restaurant makes this dish called Seven Stars Around the Moon. You get:

1 huge container of:
beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster with carrots, celery, baby corns, mushrooms, snow peas, and water chestnuts, all in this rich, creamy brown sauce.

You also get an additional container of:
sweet and sour chicken and ginormous sweet and sour butterfly shrimp

That one meal costs only $12.95 and it will last me about four full meals.

I repudiate American Chinese take out.
In general, too sweet and too much fried food; a bastardization of authentic Chinese food over here.
And what the hell is all this “brown sauce” about?
As foreign a concept here as the fortune cookie…

If you ask me my favourite Chinese dish, however, I would say (currently)- get some really good tofu – and just fry it over the pan with a little bit of salt. Maybe add some spring-onion/ginger paste/oil/salt. Mmm…

If your ingredients are fresh and of high quality you really don’t need much trickery.
This really came into focus when I went to Italy and just had spaghetti with tomato, but my god, the difference fresh tomatoes and fresh pasta makes….

Vegetables in garlic sauce or brown sauce over sticky rice. I order it every time (I’m guessing it doesn’t have a name, because I order it just like that.) I never turn down stir-fried veggies, I could eat that every day and never get tired of it, seriously.

I love all Chinese food, but then I’m Jew-ish.

Century eggs and sweet rice ball soup.

Peking Duck!

Omnomnomnomnomnomnom!

Happy Famry

Moo shu pork is one of my favorites, no pancakes, white or brown rice.

I also like beef with peppers, whatever they call that? With white rice.

Curry chicken, love Chinese curry, not fond of thai curry at all. White rice or veggie fried rice.

Beef chow fun.

Chicken or pork or plain veggie fried rice, depending on what else is being ordered. I actually rarely order fried rice, but I like it a lot.

Wonton soup.

Sometimes eggroll, but not always. If it comes with the special then I eat it.

Pretty much I am like @seazen, Jewish Chinese. However, I almost never order seafood at a chinese restaurant. The only exception is sea bass at pf changs.

I am the opposite: I’m Chinese Jew-ish.

Not to be confused with Kosher Chinese. I like the pork dishes.

Kosher Chinese is like parve milk for nescafe. Yuck and oxymoronic.

@seazen_ They just don’t serve pork or shelfish, and dumplings are made with chicken. It’s not a big leap. Nothing dairy in Chinese food usually.

Pork stufffed with shellfish. Yum.

Gross.

Hot and Sour soup and vegetable egg rolls with plum sauce. Most standard American Chinese restaurants only have 2 things on their menu that I can eat: the proverbial Buddha’s Feast and Vegetable fried rice. Boring and bland at best, mushy and nasty at worst.

In Los Angeles, there are lots of vegetarian Chinese restaurants that have delights so wonderful that I have often swooned. Hot and Sour soup, Mushroom soup, Tofu and vegetable Soup, Sweet and Sour Soup, Corn Soup, and all sorts of amazing and wonderful combinations of tofu, fake meat (that is similar to chicken and beef) noodles and rice and vegetables all put together into stir fries and hot pots with hot spicy barbecue flavored sauces and spicy garlicky sauces and tangy sweet and sour sauces. I am drooling just thinking about it now.

@shego : WTF is strawberry chicken??
@WillWorkForChocolate: I grew up on Wonton Egg Drop… I don’t eat pork really so I don’t do wonton soup anymore but it was SO good.

@seazen_ See, if @SamIAm lived in Boca Raton, FL he could go to the kosher chinese place and still have wonton.

Whoa, @JLeslie: a. I’m a girl! hehe, and b. what is this about kosher Chinese in Boca? I just got back from there, it’s like a 3rd home.

@SamIAm strawberry chicken is like lemon or orange chicken. It’s really good.

Henry’s Special from Hunan in San Francisco. Chicken, shrimp, scallops and vegetables with hot bean sauce.

@shego: interesting! I’ve never heard of that. Are there pieces of strawberry in it?
@zenvelo: Which Hunan??

@SamIAm yes. The lady who makes it out here uses strawberries from her garden to make the sauce. It is worth trying, if you can find a place that makes it.

Kung Pao chicken over brown rice.

@SamIAm

Props to you for choosing brown rice. :-)

@SamIAm I like the main one on Sansome at Broadway, but the one I go to for lunch is on Commercial between Montgomery and Kearney.

@SamIAm Orchird Garden the food is good not great. Although, I have only been there once years ago, so not sure how it is now.

@SamIAm You might be interested in this link

Sweet and Sour Pork
Mu Shu Pork
Garlicy Eggplant
Shrimp Chow Mein
Won Ton Soup

damn, why did I answer this question. Now I am hungry!

I’ll skip the meal and just eat crab rangoon if it is made the way I like it. The wonton needs to be light and crispy, not too greasy, and the filling needs just the right amount of sweetness to satisfy me. Add a lot of sweet and sour sauce and you have an extremely happy lady.

@zenvelo: that’s so funny… I was just assigned a temp job across the street from there. I assumed you meant another one because that one is in the middle of no where! Too funny. I yelped it today because it’s super fast for me to grab lunch during work.
@JLeslie : thanks!

@lifeflame I echo your sentiments.

I would just like to point out out that most of what has been named in this thread is not real Chinese food, but what I like to refer as “Asian style western food”. I have never even seen a so called “egg roll” in my entire life, and I assure you Chinese people do not eat “General Whoever chicken”. That is equivalent to saying Taco Bell is Mexican food. This is not to say that Asian style western food is not legitimate, but I hope you realize that it’s not “authentic Chinese food” (a term which is quite broad since Chinese cuisine varies widely with region).

Anyways, one of my favourite dishes is Hainese chicken rice and Hong Kong style Borscht

Crispy “seaweed”
Shredded duck in pancakes
Beef in black bean sauce, with fried rice.
Shrimp chow mein

Probably not all in the same meal… >.>

I’m really boring. My favorite is Shrimp Fried Rice. I always get a little container of those extra crunchy cashews they use in some recipes, and add those and some soy sauce to my rice. YUM. On the side, two orders of Shrimp Toast.

@chocolatechip Yeah, we Americanize everything, even food. My husband always says there are no fajitas or hard shell tacos in Mexico. Well, now there is, to accomodate the Americans.

Hot and sour soup, honeyed chicken, chicken lo mein, egg foo young

A roll of Tums.

Spare ribs and mushu pork. Heaven!

Kung Pao Chicken hands down, though the recipe seems to vary from place to place (some make it better than others). I always ask for it extra-spicy.

I love special Foo Yung even though it is really just a glorified omelette! I love prawn toast and seaweed as well.

reading all the answers, i realize I forgot Mongolian Beef.

I also am a real lover of Thai food.

When you look at what the Chinese people eat, the people who work at the fast food places, it’s a bowl of rice with something really basic, like some fish or chicken. No sauce, no nothing.

I’d like to point out that I think I prefer the Americanized version of Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese foods to “authentic” Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese foods. When I’ve seen Asian people eating the normal food that they prepare for themselves, I see a lot of fish heads, eyeballs and other things that, to me, are just revolting.

@WillWorkForChocolate Perceptions can be misleading. Most Asian food is actually quite conservative. The strangest thing I can think of that might be unappealing to Western people would be the fish heads in Chinese cuisine, and even then, you only eat the meat of the cheeks, which is considered the best meat of this fish. There is no eyeball consumption.

If you order an entire plate of steamed chicken at a Chinese restaurant, they will often leave the head on the plate, but you don’t eat it.

Of course, whenever you hear about Asian cuisine, it’s always the most revolting stuff, because nobody is going to make a big deal out of fried rice, but it’s definitely not the norm.

@chocolatechip my uncle was treated to what he called Chinese BBQ chicken when he was in country during WW2. The live chicken was chopped up into 1 inch strips with a cleaver. Guts and feathers and all. I think I prefer my chicken plucked before it is cooked.

Unless the locals were just trying to gross out the American sailors, which is entirely possible.

@lifeflame
I agree with what you say (sort-of).
I forgot to mention that I only really like nice asian restaurants because lower class ones tend to be, well, fake, or at lesat not as good quality. If it IS takeout, then yes lo mein.

Is it too late to add that the Chinese dish I would most like to take out is Lucy Liu? hubba hubba hubba

@chocolatechip Actually, I ran a massage business out of a nail salon for about two months, and while I was there, I had to leave very, very frequently at their lunchtime because the ladies would sit there, eating this concoction that I dubbed “spicy fish head”.

They were eating this stuff in a bowl that was fish heads and rice, smothered in this foul smelling hot sauce, and they ate the whole fish heads, eyeballs and all. I was pregnant at the time and had to choke back the vomit every time I smelled that dish. That’s why I was only there for two months; they quite literally “grossed me out”.

I like hot and sour soup, and moo koo guy pan. What is moo shu pork? I don’t order stuff that I am not familiar with, so would really like to know.

@Skaggfacemutt Moo shu is usually thin pieces of pork with veggies, usually a lot of cabbage, but some places do it with carrots and others, usually a julienne type cut for the other veggies, and it is in a saltyish brown sauce. Customarily you eat it with a “pancake” which is like a soft taco shell, but very thin, and served with plum sauce which you put in the taco with the moo shu and roll is up to eat. I guess more like a wrap or burrito than a taco if you are American. I like the moo shu just with rice no pancake. You can get it with chicken if you don’t like pork, or some other meat.

The veggies are not typical “chinese” veggies, not little corns, or brocolli, not stuff like what you might get wth hunan or sechzuan.

moo shu pork is fabulous! It’s a cabbage and pork mix, wrapped in a pancake covered with plum sauce.
Good eats!

@filmfann: is that what that little sauce is? Plum sauce???

@JLeslie: I get veggie moo shu and it’s delish!

@SamIAm Yup. Perfect for Moo Shu or Duck.

@SamIAm Sure, good point, you can get veggie.

@JLeslie That sounds wonderful! I am definitely going to have to try it.

Egg Foo Young
Mongolian Beef
Sweet and sour shrimp
Sticky rice

Great, I want this meal now :)

@Skaggfacemutt Did you ever get to try the moo shu?

ooo… I just had Chow Fun last night and it was INCREDIBLE! I wish I had never tried it because I’m addicted.

@SamIAm Haha. I think my husband feels the same way.

About Chow Fun? I had that and veggie Pot Stickers. I feel the dough stuck to my thighs between the two dishes but they were so worth it.

Yeah, he loves chow fun. My mom taught him to order it years ago. He orders it probably 80% of the time in Chinese restaurants that offer it. Many Chinese restaurants don’t have it. You’ll see my answer at the very top of the Q included chow fun.

hot sour soup
crab rangoon
veggie lo mein

Wow where do I start? Chinese food is my favorite food next to Indian.
Vegetable Lo mein, Curry Shrimp with Onions, Vegetable fried rice, Spring rolls, Shrimp and Broccoli, Sweet and sour Tofu with chinese vegetables, steamed vegetable dumplings, steamed shrimp dumplings and Vegetable soup with Mei Fun noodles. I’ll be adding to this list as I remember more favorites. Now I’m hungry.

suddenly craving Chinese food

I love Chicken and String Beans, and Lo Main. I also love Egg Drop Soup. I’m going to have to go now and make sure.