On Superbowl Sunday 2007 we decided to give Ming's Restaurant in Los Banos a try. We had been to this establishment once before and had not been overly impressed but it had been over a year and we decided to give them another try.

Name Of Establishment	Mings Chinese Food Restaurant
Address:	435 W Pacheco Blvd. Los Banos California
Phone Number:	209-826-3653
Website:	Unknown
Prices:	Moderate to low
Date Of Review:	2-4-2007
Check out the Official Merced County Health Inspection of this Restaurant - If that link isn't working try this link (note: these links are slow to load)
Our Overall Numeric Rating
Summation Opinion:

Ming's is a small to mid sized place located on Pacheco Blvd. in a cinder block built structure it's not a bad-off looking place but it does have that dated and worn look to it. Upon entering the restaurant we were immediately struck by the number of signs that have been posted by the owners. These signs proclaim among other things that the floor is slippery when wet, that the place does not accept checks or certain other payment types, that there are no refunds or exchanges, and that absolutely no outside food or beverages are allowed and that there will be no exceptions made! Okay! There were several others as well. An unusual welcome in our experience to be sure.

Upon arriving we noticed a little stand holding menus on it (along with another sign or two - one saying please wait to be seated) and a waitress called out to us to go ahead and sit anywhere we liked.

The dining room is a decent environment but nothing special. White painted cinder block walls are decorated with the usual Chinese restaurant knick knacks and the wall above our booth had some old gold toned mirrored tiles.

The menu looked promising. It is actually fairly extensive with about 15 or so categories of goodies to select from as well as 8 combination plate type meals and about 6 'gourmet dinners' to select from.

Our waitress arrived after a couple of short minutes with some water and asked if we anted to order beverages. We decided to keep it simple and we ordered a couple of the combination plates.

I ordered a number 5 which came with BBQ Chow Mein, Sweet and Sour Pork, Pork Fried Rice, and Fried Shrimp. My wife ordered a number 6 which came with Fried Won Ton, BBQ Pork Chow Mein, Pork Fried Rice, and a fried chicken wing.

While we were waiting I made my way to the restroom and I was pretty unimpressed. The place really needed a good scrubbing in general and the cabinetry on the wall that held extra rolls of toilet paper was obviously old and it was quite dingy. The sink was stained and the mirror was etched with graffiti.

Our food arrived and it smelled really good. The plates were put before us and my wife's food looked really good. I had decided not to pay the extra 40 cents to have my Chow Mein fried up Chinese style, not knowing what the alternative was. My chow mein reminded me a lot of the Chung King stuff you get out of the can. Well that was my fault. The rice looked a little 'different' too.

My wife really seemed to like her Chow Mein. The noodles had the slightest touch of brown to them with pieces of ham and vegetable mixed in. She thought it had a good flavor and wasn't too greasy. She thought the rest of her food was run of the mill. One of the chicken wings was terrific, but the other was quite greasy. The wontons were also greasy and were a little over browned. She thought the rice was fine, but seemed to be lacking the "traditional" egg that most fried rice dishes seem to have.

As for me, well I was not impressed with the chow mein or the rice. Again the chow mein was my fault because of how I had ordered it but the slimy texture was not what I had hoped for. I only ate about 1/4th of the chow mein the rest going home for the children to have for lunch the next day. Similarly I was not wholly impressed with the rice. The rice had an unusual flavor that was not bad but just was not quite what I was expecting. In addition the rice did not have that semi-sticky texture that I prefer. My sweet and sour pork was just average. Nothing bad here but nothing to write home about either.

I made a point of stealing some food from my wife's plate. I tried some of my wife's chow mein and that was an order of magnitude better than mine. It was not the best I'd ever had but it was pretty good for the price. I tried some of her fried chicken and that was tasty but the piece I had was greasy.

The real gem of the meal was my fried shrimp. Now this is probably not something to rave about usually but in this case I was really very impressed. The fried shrimp was flat out FANTASTIC. These were perfectly cooked in a tasty batter, they were not greasy and they were just all around superb. I'd get a to-go order of these shrimp to eat by themselves any day.

The service was decent. Not as doting as I prefer but the waitress was nice, had a friendly smile, and was pretty good about keeping sodas filled. We did have to flag her down once after a bit of a wait, but all in all she was pretty much on top of things.

So the long and short of our experience at Mings was a real mix. My wife liked her food a bit better than I liked mine, but neither of us was inspired to make a rapid return and in my case I would probably select another place to eat. I was not at all impressed with the restroom cleanliness and the myriad of signs as you walked in seemed a bit unfriendly to me. On the other hand the shrimp was fantastic and the service was pretty good.

Specific Opinions By Reviewer One
Overall Rating :	lowered because of the bathroom
Food:	1 real gem (shrimp) but the rest was so so
Service:	generally good but could have been slightly more attentive
Decor:	nothing special
Price/Value:	Sodas cost 1.75 nearly 1/3 of the cost of my entree
Bathroom Cleanliness:	poor but not filthy
Romance Factor:
Family Friendliness:

Specific Opinions By Reviewer Two
Overall Rating :
Food:
Service:
Decor:
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness:		Not Observed
Romance Factor:
Family Friendliness:

Please feel free to post your respectful opinions of this review and this restaurant on our discussion forum.

Reviews in this section are simply personal opinions. We are sharing these, our experiences and opinions as a means to further discussion in our Los Banos Forums section not to promote or discommend any particular business. In fact we absolutely encourage our readers to make a personal visit to each of the restaurants we review and form your own opinion which (if it is respectful and honest) you are encouraged to post on the Los Banos Bulletin Boards where you are also welcome to discus OUR reviews.

More About Our Los Banos Restaurant Reviews

In this section, the staff of Our Los Banos .com shares our personal opinions on the restaurants that we patronize in the City of Los Banos. We would like to stress that we are not professional reviewers, that we have had little or no training in the food arts, and that we are simply expressing our own personal views and opinions on particular visits that we made to the establishments under consideration.

Subjectivity. We make no pretense of the fact that we are not objective. As with art, food is a subjective experience subject to personal opinion and even whim. Some people love a particular artist's work while others can not stand what is put on canvas. Picasso comes to mind. Similarly people's appreciation for a particular chef's abilities are uniquely their own. While our tastes are very eclectic and we enjoy a tremendous variety of different types of food, we do not expect our readers will agree with all of our opinions and views. We DO encourage our readers to try each of the places that we have reviewed and then you can discuss (politely and in a positive fashion) your experiences and opinion of our review in the Los Banos Forum section.

Merced County Health Food Facility Inspections Site

Finally, we strongly encourage our readers to make use of a truly wonderful online resource we discovered last year. Merced County has put together a very cool Food Facility Inspection website which discloses the results of the County Health Department's last few inspections of each restaurant. The results are sometimes quite fascinating and are always interesting. Beware however you may not want to eat at certain places once you read some of the more dramatic entries. We at Our Los Banos .com very much appreciate and support the county of Merced putting these Department of Health food facility inspections online for the public to see.

Return to Los Banos Dining
& Los Banos Restaurant Reviews Listing