A friend and I ate here on a Saturday at about 4:00 p.m. The service was fast, and the food was prepared quickly, provided hot, and presented beautifully. I had the shrimp pad thai, and all of the necessities were there: grated carrots, ground peanuts, scrambled egg, lime quarter, etc. I've had pad thai at other local restaurants that were distastefully sweet after a few bites, but this pad thai totally hit the spot. Also, for what I paid, I was provided with a very generous portion (I had enough that I got full at the restaurant and had plenty left over to take home).
Review Source:This place does Thai noodle dishes well (I never venture away from Pad See Ew, but their other choices also look good). Â The food is reasonably priced and comes in large portions. Â It's located in a weird part of town, but if you like good food it shouldn't matter. Â The staff are very welcoming, and the food is prepared fast.
Review Source:Golden Wok is the best place to get your fill of Thai food on the U of I Campus.
It's cheap and the staples are great. The pad thai and the pad se-ew are filling and hit the spot. It never hurts to try the Thai iced tea as well.
Though Golden Wok occupies a pretty small area, it never gets too busy.
Mmm good. The various noodles they have are must gets! They also have excellent curries. If you are on campus, this place is a great buy. The building may be small and seem a bit dinky, but the food is excellent. I go here often and it is often one of my  go to's when I am eating out.
Review Source:Graduated from UofI in 2005 and i still get cravings for this place...that may strike you as odd, but I know plenty of other alums who have the same problem.
I recently got to go back to CU and of course had to make a stop, I think the prices may haev gone up a little bit, though i can't really remember. (Beef Pad Thai for about $8-9). Regardless, it was just as good as i remember.
Golden Wok is one of those small niche restaurants in Champaign. It doesn't get a huge amount of foot traffic through it and is located on the border of one of the sketchier areas in Champaign, but the food is good for what you pay for. A typical entree might be $8-9 (which is expensive for Champaign IMO). But you also do get lots of food. My favorite dish here is Beef Pad See Ewe which is the long noodles with broccoli, bok choy, and beef. Put a little siracha sauce on it and you have a really tasty dish.
The restaurant is family owned and they seem to be there all the time. They are really good about phone orders and being fairly quick about bringing dishes out, though sometimes they might forget something. You just have to have thick skin when going into the place, because you might not get the best service.
The downside of this place is that it just seems a little bit dirty. The tables are a bit grimey even after they wipe them down. And you have to clean up everything yourself. But the family is super nice and the food is good and there really is no Thai place like it in the Champaign-Urbana area.
Other popular dishes I see people get are:
Pad Thai
Red Curry
Green Curry
I give it 3.5 stars, but not enough to round up to 4 on the food alone.
Ah Golden Wok...this place has never dissapointed me. Â
Great place to get noodles, as others have mentioned. Â While I was down at UofI, I tried many of the dishes and was never dissatisfied. Â Their Pad Thai is no joke, and a killer deal if you get the lunch special. Â Other items on the menu are great as well. Â I've had Pad Kee Mao, Red Curry with Chicken, Shrimp Rolls, Shezhuan Shrimp, Kung Pao Shrimp and some others I can't recall of the top of my head (we ordered a huge family style meal once), but everything was great! Â Make sure you also try the Thai Iced Tea (easy on the ice) as well. Â On top of great food, the service is great! Â The people there are very friendly. Â
If that wasn't enough to convince you to check this place out, this may say something: Â When I graduated, I took my family (including aunts and uncles) all to this place after the ceremony, and they were all very happy with the food and service (many of them have eaten at '5 star' restaurants on business trips)
Next time I am down in Champaign, I am going to get some Pad Thai from here.
Food was priced average ($8-12), and my order came quick. This place is more of a counter order restaurant, so it's almost serve yourself. Anyway, my order came very fast, within a few minutes. The veggie and sauce mix was really tasty, but the meat (I ordered a chicken dish) was not too good. Â In fact, it tasted like turkey. Â I probably will not go here again. Â Also, the workers have a hard time speaking English. It was hard to understand them, and I was note sure my order was being communicated correctly to them. Â
The restaurant is also really tiny. Â Don't let it scare you away though. Â Try it out, it might suit your fancy.
This isn't the worst place for pad Thai, and trust me, I've been almost everywhere in town for it. My biggest complaint is this place is so dirty. I was afraid to drink the water, but thats just me. However, their Thai iced tea is pretty good. I can't say that I would go here again, but it was worth a try. Â Also, this place is pretty cheap( around $8 or so)
Review Source:I was pleasantly surprised!
The other two Thai restaurants in the area which I have eaten at were closed so I decided to give the Golden Wok a try due to its good reviews on yelp.
This place is really easy to miss because it is a tiny building that does not look anything like a Thai restaurant.
The restaurant was completely empty when we got there but while we were eating there was a steady stream of people coming in to order take out.
We ordered the Tom Yun Koong, Yum Nuau, and Jungle Curry.
Tom Yun Koong is a soup that is exactly the same as the traditional Tom Yum soup found at all Thai restaurants and it came with shrimp. Â The soup was delicious, but definitely not the best I have ever had. It had the prefect amount of heat, the shrimp were not overcooked, and the vegetables were nice and crispy.
Yum Nuau is a spicy beef salad. I always order this dish when i go to a Thai restaurant and I have to admit that this salad had some sort of different spice which was very tasty. Again, it was not the best I have ever had but it was deliciously unique. All the vegetables in the salad were super fresh and the quality of the beef was excellent.
Jungle Curry was very confusing though. It came in a big bowl with a ton of fresh vegetables and wonderfully seasoned chicken but the sauce was some sort of chicken broth with seasonings. I thought that they brought me the wrong dish but sure enough it was the Jungle "curry" that I had ordered. This was the first time I was served a curry dish which did not consist of coconut milk. It was very tasty though and I was not disappointed that I ordered it. In the future I will definitely always ask for the ingredients in the dish before I order it. Â
One other complaint was that the menus are very simple and do not have pictures or any sort of description of the dishes. This would be nice but not a big huge deal.
The service was excellent and the people working there are very friendly.
I would definitely recommend this place.
It is an obscure place away from the main campus area. I hadn't heard about it till the start of my junior year, and my oh my do I regret it. The best thai food on campus, and it is not even expensive. Pad Thai is my staple order and they make it well, really well. I love the Pad Kee Mao they make too. The portion size is large. And for around $8 it is not expensive at all
I don't have a single gripe about this place, apart from it's location. I don't know how, but this place needs to be better marketed so that people of CU can really see how good it is.
Y'know how sometimes in life we learn lessons in our heads but it never really hits home until much later?
The mantra of "never judge a book by its cover" became real to me the first time I dined at Golden Wok. It was a scene worthy of a movie - dramatic music, slow-mo closeups of pad thai flying everywhere, and fat tears of epiphany rolling down my cheeks to salt up my food.
Not that the food needed any more salt or additional seasoning anyway. In direct contrast to the squat (one could even go so far as to call it ugly) exterior, the dishes are pure decadence in your mouth. Yes, the pad thai is awesome but people, let's stroll down some paths less taken, shall we? Pad see ew is also good, though in my opinion, perhaps a bit too much sauce. My favorites would have to be the Golden Fried Rice (offered only on their Shining White Board of Specials) and the Beef Noodle Soup. The Golden Fried Rice is curried, pineappled, raisined, egged goodness. Sounds weird but the lesson here is "never judge a book by its cover", remember? The Beef Noodle Soup is perhaps a direct cousin of Vietnamese pho. I've never been quite sure whether to go ahead and give it the pho label because it just never seems quite..... pho-y enough. But irregardless of labels, its exactly what I find myself ordering when it's blizzarding and I just want some hot broth and flavorful noodles to fill me up. The curries are also excellent. Hell, just go ahead and order everything. I'm pretty sure you can't lose.
Could it get any better? Why yes, it can, rhetorical question asker. With giant portion sizes! Unless you're of the same breed as some of my male bottomless-pit friends, be prepared for leftovers.
Advice: noobs should go with an experienced G-Woker. It's a hidden gem - emphasis on hidden.
The reviews here are spot on. Â The best pad thai in C-U if not the best pad thai that I've had period. Â I remember eating here my freshman year when my cousin brought me here. Â I had a craving for some pad thai, so I decided to come here again. Â Ordered an order of shrimp pad thai. Â I usually order beef pad thai wherever I go, but I decided I would try something different. Â Very large portion, easily enough for two meals. Â Great flavors as well. Â My only gripe is that they left the tails on the shrimp, so I was faced with the option of picking them off, which is a pain or just eating the tails on. Â I went with the latter, which wasn't a big issue, but still undesirable. Â Next time I'll be ordering beef pad thai.
Review Source:Judging from its exterior (stale yellow wood siding, shady parking lot), I was sure I'd never eat at Golden Wok. Â I was even more suspicious of their advertisement of combined Thai and Chinese cooking. Â However, as I passed by one day, I noticed that the outside window declared that they served Hainan chicken rice, a traditional delicacy rarely mentioned outside of larger urban areas. Â I gave it a try, and now I swear by Golden Wok for my Thai cravings.
Champaign diners go nuts for the pad thai here. Â I'm also a fan of this popular noodle dish, but for my review, I'd like to pay homage to another favorite dish from this modest little store: the tom kha kai.
The tom kha kai soup comes in generous portions, with lots of chicken, soft mushrooms, bright chili flakes, slices of scallion, and a few pieces of ginger and lemongrass (shouldn't eat those last two, but at least they're testaments to the broth's beautiful flavor). Â Soups at Golden Wok are spooned over jasmine rice instead of noodles. Â This dish easily served as 3 meals for me, and is irresistible given its price ($7.35).
If you are looking for great Pad Thai, Golden Wok is the place to be. It is great. Also, if you are looking for a cheap lunch, they have some of the best lunch specials during the week. You get fried rice, an entree and an egg roll for $6. Not too bad at all. Definitely a great restaurant that I frequent regularly.
Review Source:Been here so many times. It became one of my to-go joint every time I go home from my clinicals. Love their Pad thai and Pho! The Pho is a little different in this place, its has more flavor in it than any other pho I've tasted, probably because of the celery. (Yes, celery) Best thai ice tea in town hands down!! I enjoy their Mongolian beef and Tom Yum soup as well! I love the service, they serve their food pretty quick. The only thing I'm concern about is the tray area is a tad filthy and they could've clean the area more often than leave plates their for some time. But who gives a damn... they got the best food ever!
Review Source:Really the best pad thai in champaign. It took me awhile to find a place with Pad Thai that looked like it was supposed to and this was the place! Their food is delicious and the owner is super friendly. I had some of their other noodle soups and it was fantastic! I have nothing to complain about. This was the place I've been looking for since I came here for school. This is what i miss! I miss REAL Thai and Chinese food and Golden Wok is excellent!
Review Source:Golden Wok is by far the best place to go for noodles in town. So far I've had their Pad Thai, Pad Kee Mow, Pad Prig Pow (not sure on this name), and Ho Fun and they were better than anything you can find in Champaign-Urbana. That's not saying a whole lot, but their Ho Fun is one of my favorite things to get when I eat out. Their curries are also pretty phenomenal, the meat quality isn't too great, you can tell that they buy their meat (except maybe for the duck) from the big commercial vendors but the curry itself is exceptional. If you do decide to go with the curry I'd recommend the Panang as it's not loaded with vegetables as the other variations tend to be.
The Thai iced tea is also quite good. Thai iced tea is one of those things that's almost guaranteed to be good anywhere you get it, but as Christina F. puts it, it's well worth the $2.10 if you want a nice sweet closer on your meal. Their lunch specials however are a little less desirable, as it's pretty much the same as every other Chinese lunch special in town with the staple Beef with Broccoli, Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, Sweet and Sour Chicken and the like, and it's honestly not very good. I've personally tried two or three chicken dishes for the lunch special decidedly giving the Wok another chance for redemption after each subsequently disappointing meal, but they failed to deliver, each dish being pretty much the same as the last but in a different sauce.
I also have to agree with the 2-star review that's also up here. The Tom Yum Khai wasn't very good when I had it. I ordered the Shrimp Tom Yum Khai and it tasted overpoweringly like shrimp and mushrooms, you could barely taste the broth under the taste of these two ingredients.
Overall though, I'm willing to give Wok 4 stars because if you know what to order, you're almost guaranteed to get a good and tasty meal.
My fiance's best friend is off the boat from thailand and knows the best little asian restaurants. When we were in town visiting him, he took us here on the way to a movie just for a quick bite to eat. Huge portions and very low prices. It seems like a family-owned business and they put their heart and soul into serving the customer. I wish more places like this existed.
Review Source:The other yelpers are right: Golden Wok has THE best pad thai around (and it's not even a thai restaurant, it's "chinese/thai," a combination I usually stay far far away from). Â Correction: Golden Wok has the best pad thai EVER. Â And yes, this is comparing it against not only the local places, but also every thai restaurant I've ever been to, and I've been to plenty. Â The reason why their pad thai is so good is because of the flavoring: A lot of other Thai places either don't have enough of it, or they have so much that it's overly sweet and/or salty and it becomes so cloying I can't ever bear to finish it. Â Golden Wok's pad thai, on the other hand, is done so well I finished it very quickly in one sitting...and as others have said, their portions are VERY generous. Â Besides the flavor, the noodles are also done well, not mushy and stuck together, and not undercooked, and overall the dish isn't too oily either. Â Four stars for the delicious pad thai all on its own; I haven't tried anything else there but we'll see how that goes...like I said, I usually stay away from "chinese/thai" places, but I feel like Golden Wok has earned my respect, if nothing else for their pad thai.
They have their own lot, so parking isn't as bad as it is on campus. Â Look out for the small yellowish standalone building; it's easy to drive past it.
I absolutely love this "hole in the wall" restaurant! I can always count on it to satisfy my appetite and craving for spicy Asian food. The owner and family is usually always there working away, it makes me happy to see his young daughter's pictures and school achievements on the wall while ordering. The prices are incredible and portions are more than fair...love it, love it, love it! I usually go for soups and noodles. :-)
Review Source:This is my favorite place to get pad thai in Champaign. It's incredibly yummy and a good deal considering how much they give you. Â I can usually eat it for lunch and still have more than enough for dinner. Their Thai Iced tea is also worth the $2.10 price. The food also comes out pretty fast.
Try to stop by during their lunch specials. It's an entree, fried rice, and an eggroll. Their fried rice is ridiculously good and their eggroll is perfect... they're stuffed with noodles inside.
Totally my favorite Chinese spot on campus! They offer so much food and just pile it on till the container gives out. Quality/Quantity? Who really cares when you're in college.
I appreciate the drive through aspect of this restaurant and they do have a nice daily lunch special for when I can't decide. The owners have always been really nice and throw in a few egg rolls for me and my boyfriend.
Try the Mongolian Beef as stereotypical as it sounds. The beef is tender, the veggies crunchy for the most part if you get it at the right time of day and for less than $10 a day, you can feed two college students. How much better can it get?
This is the best place to get pad thai. Â Really good flavor. Â They give you A LOT and it's not that expensive because it's not table service. Â Their curries are not bad either. Â I would recommend the Penang or the one that starts with a M.
I only gave it four stars because I know that their lunch specials (the ones that are specifically Chinese) are not always good. Â Plus, if you go in the summer.. it can be kind of hot. Â I have yet to try their beef noodle soups... but I am sure it's good.
This place is still my favorite pad thai place. Â It's got some flavors in there that I feel that other Thai places are lacking.
But let's talk about the duck fried rice. Â Though I do like the pad thai more than the duck fried rice, I feel that this deserves some special mentioning. Â It is delicious and is one of the best fried rice dishes that I've ever had. Â They pretty much took the chopped up roast duck that you'd typically find at Chinese stores and made fried rice with it. Â All the duck grease melds with the rice and it is awesome. Â Oh yeah, being chopped up means that there's bone in there too... to be careful about that.
Regardless, this is yet another must visit if you're in this area.
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