China Bowl Restaurant

China Bowl is the Chinese restaurant in the little plaza at the corner of 200 Street and 40 Avenue, the one with the McDonald’s and the gas station, right on the edge of Brookswood. It describes itself as family owned, and the company behind it, China Bowl Restaurant Ltd., has been registered in B.C. since 2010.

The kitchen cooks two styles side by side: Cantonese (lemon chicken, egg foo young, chow mein, wonton soup) and Szechuan, which on their menu means the chili-red items like hot bean sauce prawns, orange peel beef and Szechuan-style spicy chicken. Spicy dishes are marked, and there are a lot of them.

What people order

The menu runs well past a hundred dishes. The ones the restaurant puts front and centre on its own site are beef and broccoli, breaded lemon chicken, pineapple sweet and sour pork, hot bean sauce prawns, wonton soup and spring rolls. Ginger beef fans will find it as “house dry ginger beef”, marked spicy, with a ginger chicken version next to it. Fried rice and soft chow mein run about $16 a large plate, and most beef and chicken dishes are about $20 to $21. Seafood is a few dollars more.

Reviewers often mention the vegetarian choice, and the menu backs that up: there is a full vegetable section (garlic and spicy string beans, eggplant in hot chili sour sauce, four kinds of tofu dishes) plus vegetarian foo yong and fried rice.

Feeding a crowd

This is where China Bowl earns its keep. The set dinners scale from two people ($43.99) up to eight ($159.99 and $169.99), each a spread of spring rolls, rice, noodles and four to seven mains; the eight-person version includes ginger beef, lemon chicken and chicken foo yong. For one, there are three combination plates at $20.99. They also cater larger events if you call ahead.

Good to know

• Evenings only now: the restaurant opens at 4:30 pm every day. Some older listings online still show lunch hours; the restaurant’s own site is the one to trust.
• Delivery is free within 5 km of the restaurant with a $38 minimum before tax; past that, pickup it is.
• There’s dine-in too, and the plaza has its own parking lot.
• Prices on the website don’t include tax and can change.