Lin's Gourmet

Without a doubt, I can say I've had better Chinese take out. Lin's Gourmet was anything but.

We were driving through the area looking for a quick place to eat. We saw the 4 star rating and figured it was better than stopping by a fast food joint. In hindsight, fast food would have been better. We ordered the shrimp lo-mein, triple delight (it was actually called something slightly different, but essentially is what everyone else calls triple delight, i.e.- shrimp, chicken, beef with vegetables), and shrimp with broccoli.

Even though we ordered to eat-in, everything was packaged to-go. That just makes my needles on my enviro-meter instrument cluster go haywire. The 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse Recycle) is supposed to help your bottom line. Anyway, I'm not docking any points off for that, since they did seem to figure out how to recycle the 5-gallon bottled water dispenser by filling it with tap water. Though I can't normally tell or care to tell the difference between bottled water and tap water, I could tell easily it was tap water. But hey, I'm actually a proponent of tap water. It's a water cooler and the water was cold. Thumbs up for that.

I do begin to take away stars for the quality of the food. Shrimp lo-mein was a-okay. The noodles is what I expected, but the small shrimp was a little bit too soft/mushy. Otherwise a-okay.

Triple delight was terrible. I already mentioned the small shrimp wasn't that great, the chicken and the beef used is not the kind you buy the from the grocery store. It's some kind of highly processed meat that looks and tastes nothing like the real thing. We didn't even bother finishing the triple delight. It always pains me to leave food, because I always think of the poor starving children, but I think even they would be highly suspect too. LOL. I didn't much care for the carrots in this dish either. They tasted a bit strong and bitter.

The biggest turn off had to be the white rice itself. You expect it to be "white" right? Much of the rice appeared to have dark imperfections including one big black piece of "junk". I also noticed one of the small black specks was a tiny gnat or something like that.

Everything adds up to be a less than a-okay Chinese food experience.

I tried the triple delight.
Lots of yellow rice...very light on the shrimp and everything else.

They do include a single spring roll which was a nice surprise.
It was just OK on my 1st try...but sometimes that's all they might get.

I've eaten here at least a dozen times in the past month. Each time, it's the same guy that answers the phone and works the front desk. "Okay, ten minutes" he says, but it's ALWAYS ready in five--lunch time or any time. They really don't mess around. I strictly get the Sweet & Sour Chicken Lunch Special, so I can't attest to the quality of the other items. The fried rice is obviously not going to be hibachi joint quality, but it's still yummy. The egg rolls are delicious. The chicken is ALL WHITE MEAT and amazing every time--never gamey or tough. They always put napkins in the bag, as well as a fork and more sauce than you need. Not to mention it's incredibly cheap--less than $7 and you're stuffed. I mean totally stuffed. Anyone that gave this place fewer than five stars, you should try the sweet & sour chicken.

Lin's Gourmet of Ladysmith is totally off the hook, and a wicked-good deal. Again, the chicken used in the sweet & sour is delicious and legit.