Hunan Lion

Hunan Ripoff. I order take out and find that my orange chicken is going to be $ 13.13 Alright, I don’t mind paying that for good food and this is the Tysons Corner area. I’ll have mine with fried rice. $ 7.15 extra??? What? I decided to just stick with the bland white steamed rice. China Wok down the street charged $ 2 to make your white rice into fried, but $ 7.15? Okay…
So I walk into this beautiful place and I am greeting warmly by a man in a suit. I’m here for take out. «Outside and around the corner.» What? So I go around and into this 4×4 torture room with a heavy door and the backseat of a car for a couch to sit on. This place is a little odd.
The orange chicken was good, but not $ 13.13 good, and definitely not good without fried rice. I probably will not be returning and will try another place.

I JUST LOVE THIS PLACE – just because of good food!
The first thing I tried out was Moo Shu Pork – mmm…just delicious…
They have their house-​made pancakes for it, that is just so yummy! Their filling was wonderful too!
Overall, this place is just great! :)
I will come back again to try out other foods on the menu.

Hunan Lion is decent. There aren’t a lot of great Chinese choices in Tyson’s Corner (that I’ve found, anyway), so you sort of make due with what you can get. Don’t bother to dine-​in here, it’s like a dated library from the seventies. You’re just waiting for some chick named Cleopatra to kick down the wall and yell Shazam!
But carry out is efficient, they have a side entrance so you don’t have to deal with lines or navigating people. You can park right there at the loading dock, too, so you’re in and out in five minutes flat. The only dish I really can say I like, and it is barely Chinese food but does taste pretty solid, is the Diced Chicken with Fresh Hot Peppers. Some coworkers are big on their combination fried rice. But really, Hunan Lion is just a generic Chinese Shop for us whitebread Americans to grab a $ 5.95 meal at lunch.

We had a company lunch outing here last week. I work with a few folks who /​know/​authentic Chinese, and they almost bailed when they read the sign in the lobby that read (in Chinese) something to the effect of «we have sold out and we don’t serve authentic Chinese food anymore.» The food was okay, but the sign was absolutely accurate.

This is Chinese food from the 90s, when society at large thought that Chinese food ran the gomlet from beef and broccoli to crab and cream cheese wontons. Hunan Lion serves pretty decent food but is not authentic Chinese food by any stretch of the imagination.
Our meal began with potstickers, which were filed with meat but rather doughy. The entrees included chunks of steak smothered in gravy with mushroons, large breaded shrimp with walnuts in a creamy sauce and fried fish with pineapple and green peppers in a sweet and sour sauce. For dessert, the owner made us Bananas Foster table-​side. The setting is serene, the service attentive. For gussed up Americanized Chinese food, this is a viable destination but for those who decry such things — run!

This restaurant could be so much better… the food is mediocre and caters to non-​Asians that do not have a clue as to what good Chinese food is. The interior needs renovations.

Update: 1−5−10 — We have just found out that the Hunan Lion has closed…
We had been to them mid last year and thought that the quality was lower… Maybe that’s why it closed down?
The waitstaff and décor are quite amusing, but the food is consistently good — at least the same dishes that we order each time (our favorites!) The broccoli & garlic is excellent — never overcooked, the spicy beans also a great dish fresh, tasty and crunchy, as is the General Tsao’s chicken and the shrimp with walnuts. While I don’t know what «authentic» chinese food tastes like, a guest of ours who lived in Singapore & China has told us that it is one of the more authentic meals he’s had since he’s been in the USA.
(PS — for the first time, we recently ordered take out, and my recommendation is only eat in the restaurant. The food doesn’t transport well in plastic containers — and the General Tsaos Chicken and Shrimp with Walnuts lost their crispness and the veggies were soggy.)

Fantastic orange beef. Tasty food at reasonable prices. The service was very attentive, almost too attentive. I wasn’t sure if they were going for a fine dining feel by having a small army of waitstaff, but it did result in constantly full beverages. Overall, we had an excellent experience here.
UPDATE: we went here again, and the orange chicken was even better than the orange beef, but the service was even stranger than last time. We were seated without being given menus. Someone came for our drink menu, but disappeared before we could ask for menus. All in all it was about 10 – 15 minutes before we got menus at all. Then the tag team of waiters brought some sort of lime apéritif while we were still eating our appetizers and soup. But then again, they brought us an apéritif for our $ 9.00 dinners – so not bad, just wacky.
IMPORTANT NOTE: It doesn’t say so on the menu, and they are (sadly) almost impossible to detect, but peanuts or peanut oil are used in the egg rolls or hot mustard. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone with a peanut allergy risk coming here. I also noticed the sauce that came with my dish was peanut based unannounced, but at that point I was primarily concerned with whether or not my husband was going into anaphylactic shock.
Any place that tries to kill my husband loses 2 stars.
P. S. My husband is OK now, but will not be returning to Hunan Lion. The orange chicken makes us sad about this.

Chinese Cuisine
Ok, no bias review for the fact that used to know people that was a partner at this restaurant, but they do have good food. Another one of the few places in the DC/​VA/​MD metro area which serves good food. The restaurant décor is more suited toward business lunches and dinners, but do not let that fool you. Good service and food that is cooked quite well is what you will find here. I recommend trying the orange beef and the Peking duck.