1st Wok Chinese Restaurant

We absolutely love this place. Try anything in hunnan and you will never be disappointed.

Excellent service. Ambiance is ok but food is excellent.

I've been eating here since i was a kid. Its family owned and everyone that works there is friendly and thy make you feel right at home. I'm not a fan of the decor but, the food is whats important.

Very important note: My 4 stars is for "Americanized" Chinese Lunch, not some sort of generally comparitive rating.  Also, the address on this place should be Bloomington. It's on the 494 strip (south side) just west of the airport/Mall of America.

Now...that said...perhaps dinner is different, but although I've been going to 1st Wok for years and years, I've never been there for anything besides lunch. And lunch there is old-school, simple, Chinese-American inspired food cooked in woks.  Most everything can be categorized into the white-ish sauce or the brown-ish sauce.  There are a few dozen different options, but they aren't going to be too distinct from one another.

The reason for the 4 stars is that the food -- again, for what it is -- is fresh, hot, and inexpensive. It's incredibly consistent year after year after year.  With the fast food lunches inching up towards $8, 9, 10, a cup of wonton, hot-sour, or egg drop soup, a huge pile of white or fried rice, and a large portion of main dish for $6-8 seems like a steal.  Especially since the vegetables are very crisp and fresh.

You can get a small dish of their "chili oil" if you want spicy. They will also cook your meal spicier if you want (not really my thing).

It's kind of a dive, but the service is friendly to an extreme and if this kind of food appeals to you, you'll leave satisfied and it's a great value.

One other note: 1st Wok gets extra credit for being a standout in a swath of the Twin Cities that absolutely sucks for food options (aside from Andale, the nearby Kebab place and a couple others).