Critic's Review
In the model of old time Chinese take out restaurants there's China Panda; about as no frills as it gets. It starts with a difficult to get into parking lot, and a walk around the building to a glass door on Davie Blvd.
I placed the order online, but as always, I didn't use my actual phone number, because I get enough spam calls without getting the latest menu changes texted to me. The girl mentioned that my phone# didn't work, and my order wasn't close to being ready. I surmise that she called to confirm and when she couldn't reach me she didn't put the order in, because I had to wait quite a while for the food. As long as it takes to cook what I ordered. Not a good thing, are they worried they won't be able to sell the rice to someone else if I don't show up?
One good thing about ordering online is that you can specify what sauces you want, so you don't get 4 soy sauce and no mustard; the opposite of what I want. The food comes in a smiley bag; just as it did in 2009, the last time I was here.
I ordered pork fried rice, steamed dumplings and Mongolian beef; a lot of food for $23; 2 full meals at least. This exact order was $20.41 in 2009.
The dumplings looked nice with thin skins; the thick doughy ones are highly undesirable.
The fried rice was a bit short on pork and was missing key ingredients like bean sprouts and egg.
This is not Mongolian beef; they substituted a boatload of white onions for the expected green onions with very sparse scallion for show. This was beef with onions.
Better to fill with onions than carrots or bamboo shoots, but this isn't what I wanted.
The dumpling had an unexpected filling; usually these are filled with a grayish pork mixture; not sure how this got it's brown color.
They didn't taste normal, but they weren't terrible. I ate 3 of them and will eat the rest another time.
I didn't have time to cook (and I didn't have any green onions), so I just made a bowl with what they gave me. The fried rice was dry (freshly wok'ed fried rice should glean from the oil and be a little "wet") and the meat was very low quality. In NYC we used to joke that you could hear the meowing from the kitchen in Chinese takeout restaurants. Not sure that this met that high standard.
Conclusion
The reason I didn't order the lunch special, which would have been half the price, is that you usually get sub par food in the special; particularly the fried rice. But I got sub-par food anyway, with missing key ingredients that are important to the dishes I ordered. Chinese Fried Rice is an egg dish; making it without eggs makes it just rice, particularly when there's very little pork in it.
The lunch specials are very cheap, but I can't recommend this place is you're craving Chinese food.
Review 9/17/09
China Panda Take Out and Delivery is just that; a chinese storefront where you can pick up chinese food; or have it delivered. There are no tables, and if there was, you wouldn't eat here. Its a hard place to get to; located on the south side of Davie Blvd just east of the railroad tracks. But of course there's no U turn, so if you miss it you have quite an adventure getting back.
There's a lot of reasons to like China Panda. An order of steamed dumplings, pork fried rice and Mongolian Beef was ready in 10 minutes. Insructions for extra condiments were fulfilled properly. The tab? $20.41. And the food was quite good. It's difficult to mess up Mongolian Beef, the ratio of meat to scallions is important. It was a pretty good version.
As dumps go, this is a dump extraordinaire. They do deliver also.