Chong Qing Mei Wei Szechuan Restaurant

We liked the garlic sauce egg plant. The hot pepper chicken was very dry. We picked up food and it sat on the counter with no lids. (Soggy) It was odd. I think it’s sort of a hit and miss place. A different time we visited some friends and they had picked up takeout from here and it was way better than our previous experience. Probably better quality food if dining in. We might try it again.

First time here because my BF really likes the spicy fried tofu. I thought it was just okay and it gets super spicy like 3 bites in.
I got the yunnan noodles… only other place in Irvine that has this that I know of. This place has many different flavors for it like chicken or shrimp or assorted. I thought the flavor was meh compared to spicy city and they make it differently but the type of noodles are the same.
We also got cold appetizers. We got pig ears, cucumbers, and seaweed. I thought the pig ears and seaweed were really good but the cucumber was not so good. It tasted like it had been sitting out for a day.
Service was a bit lacking. Their table placement is very awkward and it’s hard to walk around and the servers are like burrowing through the sea of chairs. I had to ask for ice water twice…
But if anything I feel like the prices are reasonable.

Service here is terrible. My wife went here to get something to snack on. The cashier gave her the wrong change, and then yelled at her. Very awkward and stressful experience! Beware! The food is just so-​so. Never to go back!

I love their eggplant with garlic sauce. Great Szechuan joint in Irvine. Too bad I got sick with shrimp entrée so as much as I love the eggplant dish I won’t be coming back here cuz I got sick pretty bad.

The side dishes here are really good and my favorite part of the restaurant. I also ordered the soup bowl with lamb and fish which ended up being pretty close to a chile pepper filled bowl of soup without enough salt for added taste. I thought this place was just okay for Szechuan food overall.

Had take out food. of course take out food is not as good as eating in. but good food will taste great at home.
the spicy Tofu dish. watery and not the Mah Poh Tofu as expected. The green beans. OK. The shredded pork also OK… kun Pao Shrimp soggy and not chrispy chicken with sauce. Yes. I know I took out the food and so chrispy might be a bit hard to do. for a Szechuan specialized restaurant. did not find the spices to be there. it is not only about red chili hot. but anise, and other spices not present in the food. lacked any dimension in their seasoning.

The service here is terrible! I’ve come here a few times and I always see 5 or 6 waiters hanging around in the back area near the kitchen on their phones doing absolutely nothing.
The manager or whoever (old man with glasses) at the cash register is even worse. He needs to learn how to manage a restaurant or even yet, take some lessons in customer service. I called in an order for kung pao chicken (which is the only reason why I would ever come back to this place) when I came in to pick it up at 1:30, I asked if rice was included.(I know one of the chefs working there and he had told me that it was $ 1 for rice after 3pm) He said no, it’s $ 1 extra for rice. And I said «Since when? I just talked to someone today and he said it was $ 1 after 3pm.» He made up some BS and said ‘Oh like 2 months ago, the rules changed. And who told you that, what’s his name?” I gave the guys name and he says «No, no one here by that name.»
I mean, $ 1 for rice is not a big deal, but it’s the principle. As a Chinese restaurant, rice should be given with each entrée. Who eats kung pao chicken without rice? And if it’s not given, your customer needs to know that prior to ordering.

This is not your average/​typical Chinese restaurant. Don’t expect to get orange chicken etc.
That is not why it gets a 3 star rating though. The food does come out fairly quickly, but the service in general is lacking. It took asking 3 different servers to finally get some waters at the table. Many reviews will say the food is really spicy, but I did not think it was over the top. The rest of my family said they felt it was hot, but not over the top. Many dishes come caked in chilies.
One key flavor that was common among many of the dishes was the use of vinegar. While it is a nice accent flavor, it soon became overpowering. Given the loaction, you can find some better Chinese food near by.

Like spicy?! Come here. Trust.
Order the spicy fish and beef pot. And the fried cubed chicken. So legit

Cubed Fried Chicken with peppers. Seriously fantastic. The rest of the food is good too, but the chicken is bomb.
The restaurant is on the corner so it’s easy to find. Most of the tables are square with seating for 4 or 6 if you squeeze. Not too many tables for a huge group.
My girlfriend and I go to a lot of spicy/​Szechuan style Chinese restaurants and I like this one the best because they don’t overdo it with the Szechuan peppers (the ones that make your mouth go numb like licking a 9-​volt battery).
Parking can be a little difficult here during dinner hours, but there’s usually parking on the other side of the supermarket.

OMG. I think I may have found my favorite Szechuan place! Spicy, spicy! LOVE, LOVE! Ever since I had my first Szechuan meal in Florence, Italy of all places, I could not get enough of spicy wings in wok. It haunted my dreams and I kept searching for it. For once I have a craving, I must SATISFY it!
Alas. Spicy crispy cubed chicken man! It was the closest thing I could find to the spicy wings. They were so crispy and doused in chiles.
Even though I’m super far away from Irvine, I’d make the drive for these!

We went for lunch during weekdays, was not that busy, a few empty tables.
We came with 7 people, were seated on a small table. We asked for a bigger table and got denied, they insisted the bigger table is for party of 10 (table for 10 can probably fit 8 max!!!). The whole time we were eating, the workers had some attitude when we asked for help (water refill, rice refill, etc)
Some of us paid the bill with cards, and when the owner (?) came back with the card, he was standing next to us the whole time, watching us to see how much tip we put. We were a little uncomfortable but signed it anyways.
Tips were not included in the bill, so we gave 16% and he complained that the tips were too low. Service were bad, 16% is more than what we should’ve given. Won’t come back

Simple reason for five start:
Good food. Regular price.

The food was spicier than normal the last time I came. I think they either use spicier peppers now, or are using extra peppers for filler in the dishes.
Hot and sour soup left a weird after taste — tasted kinda rotted; however, I’m not sure if this is how szechuuan hot and sour is supposed to have a «stinky tofu» effect. Probably won’t order this again.
My favorite dishes here are still the fried tofu cubes and salt-​pepper pork spareribs. Everything else is kinda meh (duck, mapo tofu, soup).

We’ve been coming to Chong Qing Mei Wei for years. At one point it was our favorite Chinese restaurant in Irvine. Then it went downhill and we didn’t come back for a while. The restaurant became good again in the last two years. Recently they’ve been a little inconsistent.
We’ve experienced the following on an «off» night — cold dishes tasted different and strange (rancid and sour), fish tasted fishy and mushy (not fresh), intestine tasted funky (they didn’t wash it properly so it still had who-​knows-​what in it), vegetable being super oily and no salt added, and missing ingredient in hot pot.
We have a slight feeling that it’s repeating the downhill phase from a few years back. I hope they don’t. When they were good, they were really good!

Small space, came around 2:30 on a Sat. super packed! Was excited to try the food seems like this was the place to be. Food was OK, nothing spectacular. The spicy Dan Dan noodles was super salty and not very spicy. I had to add vinegar to thin out the sesame paste a little. The spicy and sour wantons were pretty good, tons of chili oil so the sour part of the sauce helps break it up a little. It’s not that spicy tho, jus looks hot. We got a 3 combo cold dish on the side, flavors are pretty standard, good sized portion. Would be a good option if your buying to go for a quick dinner. The sauteed eggplant was one of my favorites but I still feel they are heavy with the salt. I was pretty thirsty after my meal. Overall its OK, would not make a special trip out here. Servers were nice even though it looked like they were dealing with a prolong lunch rush, kudos to them.

I’m a huge fan of spicy/​Szechuan Chinese food and this restaurant always satisfies that craving. It’s in the corner of a plaza with many other Asian restaurants so it’s easy to miss, but thanks to Unilocal,I found this gem. This plaza is very restaurant dense (along with a grocery store) so it’s difficult to find parking during prime lunch and dinner hours.
I’ve never been to Szechuan, but I’ve had this regional cuisine many times in Shanghai and this place comes very close. Get the spicy hot pot (I order this without intestines), twice cooked pork belly with leeks (anything pork belly is good here), spicy eggplant, and spicy fried spare ribs. Basically just order everything spicy. I came here with my vegetarian aunt once and discovered that their tofu is really good too. Dinner service doesn’t come with rice so you’ll have to order separately.
Service dining in is good. The restaurant is small so you won’t get neglected. There were two incidents where I was a bit frustrated with the service for take-​out. One time, I encountered an employee who didn’t speak a drop of English and couldn’t explain to me what the ingredients were for a dish. Another time, I order a spicy seafood hot pot over the phone and had my boyfriend pick it up on his way home from work and we ended up with a non-​spicy seafood hot pot.

Disclaimer: I cannot tolerate spicy food.
But I really enjoyed my experience here!
You have to try some spicy food when you visit Chong Qing. Did you see the pictures of the spicy dishes? Looked so good. Because I can’t tolerate eating spicy food so I procrastinated visiting this restaurant. But no more. We went on a Friday night and the wait for 2 was about 20 minutes. The lamb with cumin– so flavorful! Yes I had to be careful to get rid of the pepper seeds on the lamb and eat the lamb with a lot of rice. But it was so good and so worth the trouble. So good that we took the left over pepper home so we could recreate the dish at home. Haha!
Ok. I was not brave enough the first time so we got a non spicy veggi dish and a cold appetizer dish. Next time I will suck it up and order from the spicy speciality dishes! I will be back.

Hot peppers galore,
but careful of the peppers,
dey wreck your bowels.
…haha, IF you make the mistake of actually EATING the red peppers directly, which my hispanic friend did. Warning… the peppers are to flavor the food only. DO NOT eat them directly.
Chong Qing is a standard dinner spot for good Szechuan food in the Jeffrey/​Walnut plaza. It’s located in the center of the big 3: the other two being Chef Chen (for their wonderful clay pot) and SW Seafood and BBQ Restaurant (for family get-​togethers).
I absolutely LOVE their fried tofu cubes with dried hot peppers for $ 10.99. The tofu is lightly fried with peppers that give it a slow burn without being painfully hot, with a soft middle that provides an awesome consistency. The dish is also generously peppered with garlic and red peppers, the latter of which you should definitely avoid eating directly.
Their most popular dish is their hot & spicy fish fillet with soft tofu. It comes in a large bowl and almost looks like a soup. The fish is soft and spicy, the tofu is large and can be easily sectioned with a spoon, and the sauce is pretty wonderful ladled onto a bed or white rice.
One note of warning: it’s a bit of a waste ordering two dishes made with the Szechwan red peppers. The dishes will tend to taste the same, and it feels like you don’t have much variety. I’d alternate between one spicy dish, a veg dish, and a sweet or savory dish. It would be nice if they had multiple spicy dishes that tasted different from one another, but seeing how there aren’t any other decent Szechuan restaurants for miles, beggars can’t be choosers.

A solid 3.75 stars here (mainly for the food).
Once you step intho establishment you can totally smell the aroma of spices. The food here is spicy BUT for me it wasn’t to the point where my tongue went numb nor did i have to drink a gallon of water to redeem my taste buds back. What we’ve tried here so far were all bearable & pretty good! Lunch prices were a lil steep — so better order a few dishes & share.
: ESTABLISHMENT/​SERVICE :
CQMW is a pretty authentic chinese restaurant. Clean/​nice venue. Ok ambiance. Not a huge restaurant but there are table seatings from like two to 6/​8ppl.
The staff don’t speak much English either & don’t expect full on service for them either. We came for lunch after the lunch-​rush (around 1:15 pm) on a weekday. We never got our tea nor water refilled once. Service was just A-​OK. Thank gawd I know my chinese tho :) But their menu has pictures of their popular dish items so that helps alot of individuals to get a visualization.
: FOOD :
HOT & SPICY FISH FILLET w/​TOFU (⁵⁄₅)
— love fish fillet! A very tender & tasty dish.
CHONG KING HOT POT (⁵⁄₅)
— generous portions of the intestines! Yummmmmss: D
SPICY DAN DAN NOODLE w/​GROUND PORK (3.5÷5)
— you till get the «peanut butter» taste despite all the spices they threw in. not a bad
savory noodle dish.
WONTON TOSSED w/​CHILI SAUCE (²⁄₅)
— 90% all wonton wrapper filled w/​just 10% meat & drenched in hot chili oil! Not so
good. A&J or 101 Noodle makes it better.
: NOTES :
1) CASH ONLY if under $ 40 :\ I don’t suggest using CC here.
I would come back here to try their other food or even take it To-​Go. But their service needs major improvement tho…