Little Dumpling

VERDICT: Another Las Vegas Chinese crap-fest.

I often complain about the Chinese food in Las Vegas as either being crap or too authentically full of chicken beaks and moth balls.  This is just crap.  Although, to its credit, it is cheap crap, which is a nice twist.  I'm used to paying through the nose for crap in Las Vegas.  I thought this little place might be different with its slick look.  Just look at that font on the sign...trendy!

 

It already broke one of my rules:  I never eat at an Asian restaurant that serves food from more than one Asian country.  Chances are that they can only cook one well or even cook neither well.  I can't speak for the Thai food, which there wasn't very much of, but I can say that the Chinese food is bland.  I had the Kung Pao combination.  The shrimp was obviously low quality and not fresh with its overpowering fishy taste.  Overall, I've had more spice from a carrot than was in this flavorless Kung Pao.  Little Greg had the strawberry chicken, which appeared to be deep fried bread stuffed with small nugglets of chicken, covered with store bought strawberry glaze.  That's right, I called them nugglets; they were way to small to be considered even a nugget. 

 

I forgot to mention that flavorless fried rice.  The soup was super thickened and tasteless.  The hot and sour soup was like eating hot gelatin spattered with sparse egg whites.  The corn egg flower soup was like eating hot corn-flavored gelatin spattered with sparse egg whites.

In the way of a compliment sandwich, I must say that the crab rangoon appetizer was deliciously yummy.  By the way, this is an open-faced compliment sandwich.  There is only a compliment at the end.

Pick Up Stix

UPDATE: R.I.P. Pick Up Stix, now out of business.

VERDICT: You have to know what to order at this Chinese take out, then it is good.

Las Vegas has a lot of Chinese restaurants.  I love Chinese food...who doesn't.  The problem with the Chinese food in Las Vegas is that it is too authentic.  It tends to appeal to Chinese taste buds rather than American, so what you end up with is more fish heads and chicken feet than chop suey.  Chop suey is actually American in origin, so if you can find a Chinese restaurant with chop suey, they cater to American tastes.

The Chinese restaurants here either smell like moth balls for some odd reason or they use a spice that makes everything taste like old, wet straw.  I'm being harsh, of course, I'm sure there are good Chinese restaurants, but I'm seriously done experimenting for now.

So, in comes Pick Up Stix....a chain.  The very thing that I want to rally against.  This chain though has good Kung Pao Chicken, no fish heads, and only uses spices I can recognize.  The first time I went, however, I hated it.  I had the horrible orange peel chicken.

There are three types of "tasters" in the world.  50% of people are "regular tasters", 25% are "super tasters", and 25% are termed, "non-tasters".  This happens to be reflective of the number of taste buds that are on the tongue.  As the name implies, super tasters can taste more and non-tasters taste very little at all.  I am a self proclaimed super taster.  I can determine if a cow has been grain fed or grass fed by the taste of milk.  So, I have this to say.  People that like orange peel or anything with citrus zest are non-tasters.  It is like eating the most bitter, inedible garbage.  It's just horrible.  There's a reason everyone throws the peel out.  Everytime, I see someone adding zest to food, I just cringe.  Pick Up Stix adds strips of orange peel.  Silly Pick Up Stix, that goes in the trash.

The other thing to avoid is the sweet and sour.  It has lemon peel.  Blah.

Everything else though is good and fresh.  The vegetables tend to be a little undercooked, which I like and is better for you anyway.  Avoid the teriyaki.  I've never had it, but I've seen people complain about it and it goes against my rule of never ordering Japanese food from a Chinese restaurant.  Wednesday is wonton Wednesday and all cream cheese wontons are 25 cents each, so try to go on Wednesdays.