North China Cafe

3141 Fairview Park Dr
Falls Church, VA 22042
(703) 560-1486

Visited: March 2010



Buyer's remorse times two! What the freak does this fat boy mean? Well allow me to explain.

I'm stuck in a building where the food court is made up of North China Cafe and another Italian Cafe. To call them both restaurants would be insults to real restaurants as they are just convenient fast food for us suckers that have an hour or less for lunch. Being a sucker for Chinese food, I tried out North China Cafe (NCC) yesterday and had their Kung Pao chicken.

Well the food was palatable, but the Kung Pao sauce was overly sweet and very very greasy. My stomach wasn't too happy with me for the remainder of my training class and I was burpin' up some funky smelling stuff.

Today, we had less than an hour for lunch. My thoughts of heading via car to the local Chipotle or Panera were crushed by the 45 minute lunch break and I knew I was once again at the mercy of the food court. The Italian place had a huuuuuuuge line and honestly, I hate bad Italian food. The next choice was NCC and I saw that they had Three Flavor Chicken (3FC) today which appeared to be a glossy version of General Tso's chicken.

I paid for my food, got the white rice and headed to the table to dive into my fast food. Holy crap NCC....the sugar producers called and they want all their sugar back! The 3FC was super sweet and I knew the reason...to hid all the MSG which was already making me thirsty. I wondered why they didn't just call this General Tso's Chicken (GTC) as it taste exactly like all the other GTCs I've had at other bad Chinese restaurants.

General Tso probably would roll over in his grave and would haunt NCC if they even THOUGHT about calling the 3FC GTC. Still, I hung my head in shame and still ate most of the 3FC and knew I had to write a review about this place. As the rest of my coworkers dined on their NCC dishes, we all agreed to make a run tomorrow to avoid the food court and to stay NCC free.

You know, sometimes its better to be late for a class than to dine on food that leaves you with bubble guts and a major sense of buyer's remorse. I'm still kicking myself for making the same mistake two days in a row. Let me tell you my friends, it WON'T happen a third time!

The only pro's of this place is that it's cheap. But mind you that if you don't have cash they'll quickly point to a paper sign behind the cashier that reads, "Minimum Credit Card Charge $10". Thankfully I played stupid both days and smiled which had the cashiers ignore this rule and ring up my under $7 charge.

So if you're ever in the area and are debating whether or not to eat at NCC....just GTFO and hit one of the many other nearby food establishments....time be damned!! :-)