Sampan Chinese Restaurant

User Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Don't let the location fool or turn you off. This place is truly a hidden gem. I have NEVER had better chinese food east of Hong Kong.

You will not be disappointed and make sure you order from the authentic menu. But don't worry, even from the normal menu the food is hot, fresh, and amazin.

The Hot and Sour soup, dumplings, and fish in black bean sauce are great.

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User Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This is one of my favorite Winston-Salem restaurants. The wonton soup reminds me of my time spent in Hong Kong as a child. I would also suggest the flavorful Singapore noodles or the sesame chicken. Sampan has the best sesame chicken I have ever tasted...crisp-fried chicken with the perfect balance of sweet and savory in the sauce. The authentic menu also has a wide vaiety of choices. My favorites are the ginger beef, the napa noodle soup, the jade beef and the vegetable rolls. The Peking duck is not very good...certainly nothing like in Beijing, but everything else I have tried has been delectable.

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User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Just DON'T Do It!: I recently went here with a group of people for lunch. I was ready to turn around and leave the second we walked in the door, actually -- the restaurant smelled as if they'd tried to cover up the old/musty smell with some horrible chemical, and both odors remained. I nearly lost my appetite, but continued in to the dark, run-down dining room with the rest of my group.

Next, we were given sticky, stained menus by a surly waitress. After perusing the very limited selection of food, we all decided to order a different dish and sample from each other's choices. I personally ordered the Hunan Chicken, which is traditionally spicy, to satisfy my love for hot and spicy dishes.

However, when the food came I couldn't have been more disappointed. The Hunan Chicken was just a few small pieces of chicken, some broccoli, and some carrots floating around in some kind of unidentifiable brown gravy. It was not spicy in the slightest, which I guess I could have forgiven had the dish been tasty anyway -- however, it was reminiscent of that time I tried cat food when I was a kid. Looking around the table, I noticed everyone's dish looked pretty much exactly like my own, which was weird since, if you remember, we all ordered different things. I tasted a beef dish which was pretty much exactly the same flavor as my chicken (how did they make beef taste like chicken???) and a steamed seafood dish that had absolutely no flavor whatsoever (although I wondered if we'd get sick since around this time one of the employee's children, who'd been playing on the disgusting floor with his toy truck, went into the kitchen and touched counters without washing hands). There were other dishes, but I don't remember them... obviously very forgettable.

The only thing that looked different was the Peking duck, which was not good but definitely more edible than the rest of the dishes. Luckily, my husband and a Chinese man in our group had the foresight to order extra duck, because after a few bites of my Hunan Chicken I was too grossed out by it to eat and they ended up feeding me off their plates. They were probably grateful for someone else to horn in -- it meant they didn't have to eat as much of the mediocre duck.

And at the end of the meal we did not even get fortune cookies!! How dare they deprive us that fun after such torture of a meal?????

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