J G.
Yelp
Unfortunately, this tastes nothing like Chinese food should. I'm not sure what recipes this place is using, but the flavors are nothing like how Chinese food should taste, no semblance even close to correct flavors.
I absolutely love Chinese food. Almost 50 years eating it, I've tasted all kinds, and have had it in some of the best Chinatowns in N.America (NY, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Toronto). The base flavors are pretty standard everywhere, but they're nowhere to be found in the dishes at Overseas 101.
When I try a new Chinese restaurant, I test it with a few dishes that should be done well: General Tso's Chicken, Kung Pao Chicken, Lo Mein, fried rice, hot & sour soup, egg drop soup.
Fried rice, Lo mein and the soups are basic Chinese food staples, that in my opinion are a good measure of whether a place is good. If they can't do the basics, then the rest will likely not be good either.
Today I tested Overseas 101 with my list of dishes.
The good: egg drop soup, hot and sour soup, wonton soup, and the vegetable spring rolls had a decent flavor.
The not-good: all else
Fried rice: this was not fried rice at all, but was just white rice with brown coloring and nothing else that fried rice should contain. The flavor didn't taste like soy sauce, so I'm not sure what the brown color was from. At a minimum, basic fried rice should have rice, eggs (scrambled/ swirled in), peas, onion, soy sauce. This "fried rice" was none of that, so it went straight into the garbage.
Lo mein: I got the Chicken Lo mein. It contained chicken, cabbage, onion, carrot, zucchini. What it did not contain was Lo mein noodles. Instead, it contained thin noodles resembling ramen noodles. It had no flavor at all of what Lo mein should taste like. This dish too was not good enough to eat beyond giving it a few bites to taste, so it went into the trash too.
Kung Pao Chicken: The contents were fairly close to regular kung pao (chicken, peanuts, green pepper, carrot), although this one also contained mushrooms and baby corn. I have no idea what the flavoring used in this dish was, but it was not a regular Chinese spice. It tasted kind of like a too-burned chili pepper, which overpowered the whole dish and was off-putting (my first reaction was "yuck"). The flavor was nothing like standard kung pao and not spicy at all. This dish too went right into the trash.
General Tso's Chicken: the contents were breaded chicken, 6 tiny overcooked pieces of broccoli, 2 slices of zucchini. Not a single whole hot chile in the dish. The sauce was a very sweet watery brown sauce, not spicy at all. I'm not sure what this sauce was supposed to be, but it was certainly not General Tso's. You guessed it, this too went in the trash.
The dishes came with crab Rangoon and spring rolls as sides.
Crab rangoon: these tasted like they were just cream cheese. Crab Rangoon should have a filing that has crab, cream cheese and green onion. These had only one of those ingredients. In the trash they went.
Spring rolls (vegetable): these were light and crispy, and had a decent flavor. Not great enough to eat all, but good enough to eat one.
I opted to get a different side soup with each dish, so I could try a few.
Egg drop soup had a pretty good flavor. It tasted like they had a light chicken stock as the base, contained a good amount of egg and tofu chunks, and I could taste there were some corn kernels in it too.
Hot & sour soup had a decent flavor too. It had a good amount of the regular content: egg, bamboo shoots, tofu, chili oil. A bit more vinegar and soy sauce would have made it pretty good.
Wonton soup had a nice fresh vegetable broth. It had lots of bean sprouts and some julienned zucchini, and they sent a good amount of wonton strips.
Of everything I tried, the soups were the best. Everything else went in the trash. An expensive and disappointing endeavor.
So, my search continues for good Chinese food in the Springs.
