STlMealDeal

This week, we moved away from All-You-Can-Eat Indian buffets and decided to try a cuisine that has always had reliably cheap luncheon deals: Chinese food.

We headed out on Olive and decided on Wonton King. While there is a more formal lunch menu at Wonton King, the key is to turn the menu over to find the bastardized Americanized lunch specials & combos, which range from $5 – $7 and are offered from 11 – 2:30 Mon-Fri.

Each comes with fried rice and your choice of hot and sour or egg drop soup, but there are also 10 “Combo” menu items that come with both a fried wonton and crab rangoon (these are all priced at slightly under $6 and seem to be cheaper than the selections which do not).

Combo items include sesame chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce, empress chicken, beef pepper steak, hot braised chicken wings, sweet & sour chicken or pork, chicken or pork lo mein, and chicken/pork/beef or shrimp fried rice. If those aren’t your thing, don’t worry, there are 28 other menu items that come with soup/rice for roughly $5 – $6 including General Tso’s, Szchuan style beef, beef with broccoli, Kung Pao shrimp and Mongolian beef.

They also serve up a complimentary bowl of crispy fried noodles to start, and of course, a fortune cookie to end the meal.

Dim sum is available at lunch as well, although there are no prices next to the various items. We decided to test it out (for the readers, of course!) and ordered some pork buns and shrimp/pork shumai. We received 3 pork buns and 4 shumai for around $6. Not exactly a steal but not exactly a rip-off either.

Check out the full review after the jump…

The restaurant wasn’t exactly hopping but had a clean appearance, tablecloths on the table, chopsticks set out as the only utensils, and a decent enough number of Asian families dining to assure me that our pick was a-okay. Thankfully, the waitress noticed my friend giving me a lesson on how to properly hold chopsticks (I am uncultured and have never been able to master this skill) and slipped me a fork when she brought out some plates and our free fried noodles.

I have no idea what it is with Midwest Chinese restaurants and free crab rangoon, but I wanted that free wonton, so I opted for the Sesame Chicken and my friend opted for the Beef Pepper Steak – not creative or original but we figured we’d save the more adventurous choices for another time.

First up was the complimentary soup and I thought my hot and sour soup was pretty damn good. It was chock full of tofu, pork, mushrooms and other goodies and while it wasn’t spicy, it was extremely flavorful and a solid freebie.

We received our dim sum and meals at about the same time. My sesame chicken, which had been labeled as spicy, actually did have more spiciness to it than I expected. Definitely not spicy enough to deserve a warning label but it did add a surprising little kick. My friend’s Beef Pepper Steak, on the other hand, was surprisingly unspicy despite the warning label and could definitely have used an extra boost of flavor. The fried rice was alright though a little on the dry side. Luckily the sauce from my sesame chicken helped to disguise that fact. The fried wonton was good, as all fried things are, but the ratio of filling:wonton was a little off balance. I passed on the crab rangoon which has never been my thing and went for the pork buns instead. These things are super good – they tasted fresh, the bread was warm and fluffy, and while there wasn’t a lot of the pork filling, there was enough. My friend also enjoyed his shrimp/pork shumai which was stuffed full of flavorful meat, so the dim sum, despite being relatively expensive, seems to be pretty solid here, or at least I would definitely order those pork buns again!

All in all, our total bill came to just under $20 for two people, and the portions were large enough that I still have about half my entree left for when I find myself hungry in a few hours (though if you’re a large guy, you probably won’t have leftovers). This place is also conveniently located next to a Chinese Market so I stopped in and grabbed a bag of frozen dumplings & a bag of pork buns to go along with my leftovers (for all of $5 – I love Chinese grocery stores)!

Wonton King
8116 Olive Blvd
St Louis, MO 63130-2023
(314) 567-9997
www.wonton-king.com

Filed under: Chinese, Friday, Lunch Specials, Monday, Thursday, Tuesday, University City, Wednesday