Panda Wok - Wheaton

Lowkey best Chinese food spot in the whole DMV stamped

My hidden gem for Chinese. Everything is cooked a la minute, meaning the proteins and veggies on your dish will have at most 10min in the wok, so if it's a little bland, make sure to coat it in its sauce, which will have most of the salt.I hope they don't give in and overly salt their dishes just like every other restaurant out there.

The vegetable fried rice was very dry and lacked flavor. I ordered takeout, went home, and had to season the rice, to make it edible.

Ordered a variety of food for mostly-vegetarian family. The good: they closely followed our special requests online and the food was pretty good overall. The not so great: The spring rolls are mostly wrapper with almost no veggie filling, and the TVP (fake meat) entree was gross. Its probably not fair to compare that meal element to Vegetable Garden or Yuan Fu, but at Panda Wok the veggie 'meat ' is just small slimy slices of obvious TVP....they don 't even try to make it look or taste meaty.

Panda Wok is a GEM! The prices are simply unbeatable and the quality is second to none. Every time I try a new Chinese place (American Chinese that is) I order the pu pu platter to get a taste of their appetizers, pork fried rice as an essential dish, and usually some noodle dish. I think that’s a fair sampling of what an American Chinese place should be good at. And Panda Wok knocked them all out of the park. The pu pu platter was amazing for $13. Big meaty ribs, big meaty and well fried wings. Nothing was greasy or over fried. Excellent all the way around.I really judge a place by its fried rice, and again Panda Wok shines. You won’t find the obviously frozen bag of peas and carrots some places throw in their leftover rice. Onions, carrots, etc, hand cut, well seasoned and mixed perfectly with the rice. The pork pieces were substantial and again well seasoned. Great fried rice.I tried their wide rice noodles with chicken and again, couldn’t be happier with it. Sometimes noodle dishes can get quite oily, but not at Panda Wok.I also appreciate their kitchen set up; wide open and in view from the counter. You can see nothing is premade, that each chef individually seasons their creations by hand, eyeballing the amounts, the mark of an excellent chef that knows exactly what they are doing and has been doing it for years.Seriously the best American Chinese I’ve had in the entire DMV area.