peking restaurant / westminster – orange county, ca

Last month Jake and I made the return trip up to LAX to pick up my folks who were away in the Philippines for six weeks. My “reward” for going north and sitting in traffic is finding a new spot to eat at and this time around I decided we had to have Chinese food. I had wanted to go to Peking Restaurant when we went up the first time but instead we ended up at Britt’s BBQ (no regrets!). I’m glad we were able to stop in this time!

This place is totally just a little hole in the wall. It’s in an old strip mall with a few other Chinese restaurants, a Smart & Final and other little shops. From the outside, it didn’t even really look like it was open.

It didn’t look like a whole lot inside, either. Various Chinese signs and things with simple tables that are designed to seat a bunch of people. It was a Thursday evening and there was only one other couple in the restaurant.

Menu 2 | Menu 3 | Menu 4 | Menu 5

We started browsing through the huge menu, but I already knew a few things that I wanted. Our waitress came by and greeted us and asked us if she could start anything for us, such as the dumplings and beef roll. I said yes to both, of course – those were two things I wanted! We also got complimentary hot green hot with our meal, which isn’t shown because I totally forgot to take a photo of it.

[pan fried dumplings (10) – $6.95]

These are the pan fried dumplings. I’m not sure exactly which item on the menu this is, now that I look it over again.

I had just seen something like these dumplings on Faye’s blog when she visited Taiwan, so I was pretty excited to see these. They are freshly made when you order them, which is why they ask you when you sit down if you want them since they take a little longer to make. It’s pinched in the middle but not on the ends and pan fried on the bottom.

The filling was a mixture of pork, chives and other delicious things. It was pretty crisp on the bottom and the rest of the wrapper had a lovely chew to it. The filling was delicious as well – good stuff, man. Jake and I were pretty happy with these.

When we were eating them, too, our waitress came over and saw Jake was about to dip his dumplings in soy sauce and she said, “No, no, no, you use this!” and gave us another sauce to dip into.  She was looking out for us, man.

[roast beef with green onion pancake roll – $5.95]

I just called these “beef rolls” but I think from the menu these are listed as “roast beef with green onion pancake roll”.

Um, can you say mouthful? Yeah, let’s just go with beef rolls. That’s shorter.

These are totally different from the beef rolls that I’ve had at 101 Noodle Express and other places. The “pancake” was thicker and had a bit of a crunch to it. I really liked the texture and flavor of the thicker roll. Instead of crap tons of cilantro and onions (which I like), this one just has bits of green onion in it. There’s also a sweet sauce that’s inside of it, and I think the sweet sauce it what really made me like it a lot (and perhaps one of my favorites)!

[combination pan fried soft noodle + hand made noodles – $8.95]

For their noodle dishes, you have the option of getting hand noodles for an extra dollar. As fit $1 little dollar would deter me. Hook me up with the hand made noodles, stat!

We got the combination noodle dish which had a mixture of beef, chicken pork and shrimp with bits of veggies (carrots, broccoli, bean sprouts, a few bits of cabbage here and there). The shrimp were big and plump – there weren’t too many of them, but I was glad to see they were large and fresh. The rest of the meats and veggies were yummy and the noodles had a good bite to them. Overall a superbly yummy dish! Made me long for someone with hand made noodles back in San Diego.

[country style chicken – $10.25]

The last dish we got was suggested to us about by the waitress – the country style chicken. This is a spicy dish since there are jalapeno’s all over this sucker, but if I was careful then I could avoid the spicy bits. There was also bits of basil tossed in that gave this dish a wonderful fragrance. It’s sort of like their version of salt & pepper chicken – but instead of those addictive wings, these are chicken pieces batter and fried in a super crisp and crunchy batter. Unlike the salt & pepper wings those, this dish is actually spicy! The flavor of the basil can be tasted through out – maybe the basil was fried with is. In any case, this dish was a winner in our eyes.

Our waitress actually told us we didn’t need any rice after we ordered all of our food. “You’re already getting noodle, you no need rice!” she said with a smile. Jake disagreed after she left, commenting that he really liked rice… but he let it go. Our waitress made sure to check in on us every once in awhile and told us that this restaurant had been open for 31 years! Jake and I thought it was truly a little diamond in the rough and want to take our other friends here sometime in the future (FOODIE ROAD TRIP, what what).

After we left Peking Restaurant, we went to Randy’s Donuts again since we still had a little time to kill. We had enough cash (after I got all of the change out of my car because I was dorky enough to forget to get cash at the ATM) for three donuts. We got two of the crumb donuts we had last time and Jake got a maple bar filled with cream.

He let me have the first bite of the cream filled maple bar.

I took one bite… then immediately took another bite… and then just kind of stared at him because I didn’t want to give it back. It was like the best donut ever! And I never took a photo of it, so please just imagine it in your mind, okay? Thank you.

Peking Restaurant
8566 Westminster Blvd
Westminster, CA 92683
(714) 893-3020