It’s hard to drive down the streets of Wichita and not run into one of the many fast-food Chinese restaurants in town. Those options don’t do much to separate themselves from the competition. I was in the mood for Chinese food recently and wanted to make it a point to visit a restaurant I’ve never been to and a much better quality than the typical $6.95 specials you always see. In browsing around the restaurants in Wichita, I came across Lee’s Chinese Restaurant on west Kellogg. This is a restaurant probably 90% of Wichita has seen while driving down Kellogg. Little to my knowledge, they’ve been in operation for over 30 years. I finally had a chance to make a visit.
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625 W Kellogg Dr.
Wichita, KS 67209
316-942-8822
Monday – Friday: 11am – 2:30pm / 5pm – 10:30pm
Saturday: 11am – 10:30pm
Sunday: 11am – 10pm
Facebook
Website (Menu available online)
Cash/Card Accepted
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Their menu can be found online and there’s also a copy of it posted at the end of this blog. On the weekdays during lunch time, Lee’s has a buffet for $7.25. Any other time, you have to order off of the menu. Lee’s is also available for dine-in, carry out and delivery.
My brother and I stopped in over the weekend to each try Lee’s for our first time. While browsing through the menu, it’s large. There’s so many options to choose from that there HAS to be something on there for everybody. Whether it’s beef, chicken, pork, seafood, duck, vegetarian, chow mein, you name it, they have it. To start our lunch, we went with the hot & sour soup, crab rangoon, and BBQ pork ribs.
I’m not a big crab rangoon fan so I left most of the sampling of that to my brother. He was disappointed with it as it was almost as if there wasn’t any crab in it. Maybe it’s because we were spoiled with really good homemade crab rangoon growing up but there wasn’t much to it. The BBQ ribs however were really good. We both enjoyed the sauce on the ribs feeling it wasn’t overpowering and had a bit of sweetness to it. The ribs were slightly on the tougher side but that didn’t deter us from enjoying them. As for the hot & sour soup, it was just ok. There was a bit of an awkward fishy aftertaste to it which felt really weird. The winner of the three appetizers was obviously the ribs.
For lunch, we went with the Szechuan Pork (spicy pork sautéed with finely cut bamboo shoots, yellow and green onions, in Szechuan sauce) and the Sha Cha Duck (spicy special marinated, boneless duck meat cooked in Sha Cha sauce with bell peppers, celery, and carrots). When you order your meals, there are three levels of spiciness to choose from. We both went with the medium in fear that the hot maybe too hot on our first visit.
The meals came out family style with each of us getting a bowl of rice.
We quickly dug in and I believe both impressed right off the bat. Neither of the meals tasted as if it were overcooked which can commonly be found at the fast food Chinese restaurants. We were both quick to comment on how delicious the sauces were; it really added a nice little kick to the meal. The Szechuan sauce had a thicker texture to it and just tasted so much better. If you really love spicy food, you may want to go for the third level of spiciness. We went medium and ended up wanting more heat to our meal which may have elevated the flavor. My brother really liked how perfectly cooked the vegetables were. They were tender but still had some crispness to them which kept them from being too limp or soggy. With the large portions, we were both able to share out meals with each other and have plenty left to take home for dinner.
Our lunch dishes were just fantastic and left us really happy with our orders. The time it took for our apps and entrees to arrive were quick. Our drinks were also never empty; they were quick to come by and refill our glasses. There were two servers walking around constantly helping each other help which was nice to see. While the portions are very big, most menu items run around $9.50 – $14.50 which is signficantly higher than your fast food competitors but the quality is much better. So that’s something you’ll want to consider when going into Lee’s. Otherwise, this is one restaurant we would definitely recommend to everyone.
Here’s the menu in case you’re interested.
Happy Dining,
Eddy
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