When’s the last time I ate chinese food in the city not in chinatown? I’m not sure if that’s ever actually happened. Mandarin Palace is a random chinese joint near rittenhouse. And you know what? Their food is damn good.
The crab rangoon. I’ve never had these before, although they’re typically found in menus at chinese joints in america. Who wouldn’t like deep fried cream cheese and crab wrapped in wonton? I love cream cheese. I love crab. I love fried wonton. Put it all together, I say!
General Tso’s chicken… served with egg roll and fried rice.
My chicken with asparagus, fried rice, egg roll. I don’t care how unauthentically chinese this is. I love me some americanized chinese food. Even after the crab rangoon and soup, I ate all of this.
And how can you not love a restaurant who hangs this type of art on their walls?

When it comes to an easy meal out near home, SangKee is always one of the top choices. The last time my mom and I stopped by, they had brand new menus with a fancy and colorful cover. It doesn’t matter what day or what time I go to this place. It’s always busy! And it makes sense, because their food is always consistently good.
Here’s something I’d never tried before in all of my previous visits – the fried shrimp dumplings. These suckers are hot, stuffed with yummy shrimp, and serviced with a sweet and savory dipping sauce.
My mom got the whole bronzino with ginger and soy sauce. This was a huge whole fish! Neither of us expected it to be this big. It was light and flaky and fresh. The sauce was a little boring and bland, they certainly could have kicked it up a notch. But it was well worth it. My mom got several more meals out of the leftovers!
I always like their big broth noodles bowls, so I mixed it up from my usual and got the stewed beef with udon noodles. The meat was tender and strong with 5-spice flavor, and I’m a total sucker for thick udon noodles. Service here is always good.

On a night with one of those horrendous downpours where you can’t see a foot in front of you, I ended up having dinner with A in Paoli at Le Saigon. It was pretty deserted on this weekday holiday. I hadn’t been there in years, and it certainly seems the menu has changed. There’s actually pho permanently on the menu now, which is a nice plus! And there’s also many more dishes that seem straight up chinese. These dumplings were pretty standard pork filled steamed dumplings. These were good, but nothing special.
A always gets the lemongrass chicken at any vietnamese restaurant she goes to, so she went with that again. She liked it just fine.
It was too humid for pho and I wanted something different, so I got the sesame tofu. It was basically like sesame chicken, only with tofu triangles. It was pretty good! When it got cold, it wasn’t nearly as good because the tofu got pretty hard and too chewy, but otherwise, it was a good base for the sweet and savory sauce. Service was just fine. We don’t have that many options for vietnamese food in the burbs, so this is a pretty good one.