May Wah Restaurant & Tavern

Tim and I since moving back to Buffalo from Chicago have been on a hunt for a good solid Chinese restaurant. We were very spoiled in Chicago because that restaurant was a block away from our apartment. Even though May Wah is not down the block or even in the same country it is hands down the best solid Chinese food in the area. Yes Ming Teh is wonderful but it is pricey and not what I want on Wednesday night. So let’s get started. We had the fried dumplings and while the waiter openly admitted they weren’t made on premises that they were made in Toronto, they were absolutely wonderful. The % of dough to meat was perfect. They were crispy pan fried, not thrown in the deep fryer. We also had the Crab Rangoon. I am very picky about my Crab Rangoon. These were good, not great. I like my Crab Rangoon with little hunks of celery as well as green onion. These did not have that but they were serve hot and crisp. We had the Won Ton Mein soup for 2. It had a wonderful hot broth, with well formed dumplings, slices of pork and loads of egg noodles. I liked that the waiter came over to asked if we needed more broth. Many times you run out of broth with this type of soup. We had Chicken Vegetable and Almonds. It was Chicken Almond Ding. He asked if we wanted any spice. I said medium. Tim loves heat. I don’t mind but I never had this dish spicy. Well, it was wonderful. Hot and tasty. Not too many mushrooms. Had green pepper but it was big enough I could pick it out. The other dish was a ground pork and tofu dish which Tim requested hot. It carried the heat well. The heat enhanced the dish.
May Wah has a full bar. I had a very well made Whiskey Sour. Tim had Labatts Blue. The beers are all bottled no drafts. We live in Allentown so while May Wah isn’t down the street if the bridge traffic isn’t bad we will be frequent customers.

I tagged along to a farewell lunch for a family from my church who are moving to another province. (Safe trip, guys! Miss you already!) To be honest, the fact that we were the only people in the restaurant made me wonder how good the food was going to be.
We ordered the meal for 8 (plus a couple of extra wonton soups and egg rolls, since there were 10 of us). The soup was good, the plum sauce for the egg rolls is in little jars right on the table (one side of the dispenser is plum sauce, and I was warned that the other side is a particularly hot mustard, and not to get them mixed up). The rest of the items in the set meal made for a nice variety: chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, fried rice, chow mein… sort of a sampling of the standard menu you find in Chinese restaurants in Canada. (I didn’t get to try the lemon chicken, and if you’ve been following my reviews, you know that I want to go back and try that, but you can’t have everything the first time, and as it was, we ended up with a lot of food left over.)
The service was attentive and friendly, although that may have been conditioned by the fact that the guy who led us there clearly goes there a lot.
The cost (for a *lot* of food) worked out to a little over $ 12 per person, which is pretty good these days. (Nobody ordered any alcohol. I do think, in retrospect, that I probably should have at least tried the tea, but the day was hot enough that I wasn’t really interested in anything except the water, which was repeatedly topped up without me having to ask.)
I can’t explain why the place was essentially empty for a Sunday lunch. Granted, there are a lot more Chinese places in Fort Erie than I would have expected, but May Wah is certainly a worthy choice. There are still a few places to check out, but right now, it’s my prime candidate for a place to take a gang of friends.

May Wah is just a quick hop over the Peace Bridge into Canada and it is always a fun adventure going through the check points. The restaurant is right on the Niagara River and there are windows to view the river and the U.S. side. Very nice indeed.
We ordered a couple of soups, the Phoenix nest, spicy beef and chicken and a few other items. All of the food was excellent and we enjoyed the «dudes» working there who are couple of nice guys.
Definitely worth a visit when in the area or coming back from a day at the Falls.