Honey Bee Asian Bistro

Are you tired of reading reviews that start with, "I went here because I had a Groupon I wanted to use . . . "?  I'm not, but I thought some of you might be.  So, anyway, I had this Groupon and I went to the Honey Bee Asian Bistro to make use of it . . .  I had read the pretty decent reviews and thought is might not be a bad idea to pick up a deal in this part of town.  We showed up about 1:30pm on a Friday afternoon.  There were only two other sets of customers in the restaurant.  The hostess immediately greeted and seated us.  She dropped off water and menus and we proceeded to wait for our server.  I took a little longer than I would expected, and when she did come out, she took the order of a customer who had come in after us first.  But, other than that, the service was pretty good.  Using the Groupon was a tad more complicated than usual, but not terribly so.

They were offering a special where if you send them a text, you get a free beverage with your meal.  That was kind of nice.  We ordered the Mongolian Beef, the Lettuce Wraps with Chicken, and the Tom Kha Gai soup.  I had a diet Coke, and my friend had a beer.  The Lettuce Wraps (Chicken, green peas, carrots, and bibb lettuce--enough for 4 of them) were probably the best part of the meal.  The lettuce was nice and crisp and was the right shape for the task.  The chicken and veggies were nicely seasoned.  This may not have been the best lettuce wraps I have had, but they were quite good.  The Mongolian Beef (w/ hoisin sauce, green & yellow onions) looked great, and was a generous serving. It had tons of onions and came with fried rice at no extra charge.  The sauce was pretty good, but much of the beef was on the fatty side, and this was rather off-putting.  The Tom Kha Gai soup was some of the worst I have ever had.  The paper menu said "Tom Kha Gai", but I see the online menu calls is "Chicken Coconut Soup" (Chicken, mushrooms and onions in a Thai styled coconut milk based soup).  This is probably more accurate.  I would call it "Thai inspired" if I were being generous.  It was not very authentic in flavor.  It had no heat and no sourness to it.  It was very bland and was 90% milky broth with some chicken, onions and mushrooms.   Its only positive aspect is that it was a rather large serving,  The irony, to me, was that from where I sat looking out the window of Honey Bee, I could see the Pearl of Siam in the distance, and found myself wishing I were eating there instead.

This place is blocks from my house we eat there more then I would like to admit. Sadly there food isn't always great some days it is out of this world good some times meh. I eat there all the time. I will continue to do so. I just wish they could keep things as good as they normally are. If you think it was a one time meh meal think again I would say maybe 25% of the time meh the rest really good.

This was such a nice restaurant with an interesting menu. It doesn't have many of your typical Chinese dishes. There are a lot of dishes that I would like to try someday. The service was very good. I am only giving it 3 stars because the food did not come out hot and it had a better appeal on the menu than it did on our table. I would like to give this place a second chance though.