Chow Fun Express

Extremely bad service, I wanted some lomi and the cook was asleep!!! Not a good place to buy some delicious soup. Please don’t go here they have really bad service.

Just got done eating the rice and pancit combination with langonisa as my item. The pancit was good, and the langonisa had it’s traditional fillipino taste.
I also had the turon here, and it sucks big time. It was old and soggy. Maybe it’s just my luck that I got an old batch. :(

Best Pancit ever!!! Lots of toppings — kikiam, fish ball, etc. It’s the best thing to bring for pot lucks! Everyone’s always asking who made it. I wanna lie sometimes and say I made it. Haha!!!

Alright, well I’ve been a customer here for several years now. Most of the time, I’m pleased with my orders, but today I have a different opinion.
Most often I order their pancit. I’ve ordered their bihon, sotanghon, a mix of sotanghon-​bihon …today, I ordered a miki-​bihon.
On usual occasions, their miki-​bihon is what it states, a MIKI-​BIHON. Today, the bottom half was all bihon, and there was hardly any meat. Instaed, there were a few strands of miki, lots of cabbage, and when you move the noodles around, there were a few shrimp and fish balls.
It’s very disappointing to receive an order like this, especially when I’ve ordered this so many times in the past. All your food should be made consistent. If you can’t make the order the way it’s supposed to be, then say so, so I can order something else. If I wasn’t so far away, I would’ve taken it back for a refund.
Can you count on me for future business? Maybe, maybe not.
Geez, so so disappointing!

Came here on a Friday night around 7pm, they were out of pancit noodles, so I had no choice but to get white rice with my menudo and lumpia instead. Prices are reasonable, but overall quality of food, well, let’s just say I’ve had better.

I really don’t understand why this place is called Chow Fun Express. It makes it sound like it’s a Chinese fast food joint. It’s actually a Filipino turo-​turo (aka point-​point) restaurant. Basically the heat lamp set up where you point at the items you want in your combo. I usually go to Tita Celia’s up the street, but sometimes I want to get away from it and get a different kind of turo turo Filipino food. So yeah, I come here.
FOOD CONSUMPTION:
They have combos…1−3 item combos. I usually opt to go here whenever I’m craving Filipino menudo. For some reason, I like it here. They do seem to put lots of raisins in it though and I hate raisins. I suppose they give it flavor. One time I counted 40 raisins in my item combo… that’s a lot! But anyway… other items I get here is their vegetable lumpia, dinuguan (or however you spell it) and pancit. You can order different kinds of pancit that they will make for you. You can select the type of noodles you want. My preference is sotanghon which is a glass noodle… I like the texture of it. They also have mini bibinkas which are good when they are fresh. Tastes like the ones you get in the Philippines.
LOCATION/​CUSTOMER SERVICE
It’s right next to Popeye’s in the same plaza as CVS. Customer service is ok I suppose. Locations has about 6 tables that sit about 4 each. Nothing fancy about this place, but if you’re looking for Filipino fast food, you can get it here.
*Review # ⁴⁄₃₆₅ for 2015

I ordered a rice bowl with beef steak. They serve small portions and food is not flavorful. The rice was mushy and steak tasted like cardboard. aside from that they charge for debit card use and were stingy with the soy sauce. Save your money and go somewhere else.

Another Pilipino turo-​turo (food is laid out cafeteria style and you point to what you want) restaurant in Carson that I tried for lunch a couple of days ago. It is located in the same shopping plaza as CVS and Manila’s Lechon Manok and is directly opposite the Seafood city complex. At around lunch time there were a couple of people dining-​in and the restaurant looked small. After the lesson that I learned from Nita’s I first asked if they had Chicken Adobo. The absolutely confused server behind the counter first said no then actually bothered to check in the serving station and came back with a relieved yes. After this confirmation I decided to go with the two item combo ($ 6.50 + tax). I got a half rice and half noddle’s along with chicken adobo. For the second item I asked if they had anything in beef — well they did but that would be a dollar more. This looked like the tiered pricing that is in effect at Pinoy-​Pinay Filipino Fast Food in Cerritos but at $ 7.50 + tax would make it the most expensive two item combo in Carson. I decided to forgo the second item and converted to a single item combo ($ 4.99 + tax) which got me an extremely crest fallen look from the server but I just gave her my biggest smile. Obviously they are cash only and they conveniently skipped giving me soup with my combo which I have come to expect from such types of places.
Anyway coming to the food, it tasted just marginally better than my least preferred option of turo-​turo places namely Aling Delia’s Restaurant so that’s not saying much. Suffice to say that the chicken adobo tasted like canned chicken stew that you can buy from the supermarket, rice and noodles were fine. My concluding thoughts are that it is better to go to Manila’s Lechon Manok and get their two item combo which tastes reasonably good and does not have any beef surcharge instead of wasting time in Chow Fun Express.

Food is fairly good at reasonable prices. My favorite is their Miki Bihon, kikiam, tripe and bitter melon. Only downside is their lack of air conditioning, the flys inside and no ventilation. Every time my co worker and I go and eat there, we come back to work smelling like we worked in a restaurant kitchen for 12 hours. Also appears old and dirty inside. Need to clean it up and get new tables and chairs.

Chow Fun Express. Not to be mistaken for Chow King, across the street. This is a small Filipino restaurant in the same plaza as Blue Lotus and Tambuli.
Parking can be tight around lunch time but I was fortunate to find a spot right away. You can enter from either the front or the back and you can dine it, but I noticed that most of their customers that Saturday late morning, was all take out, just like me.
Order of Shanghai Lumpia and Pancit. I really enjoyed the Lumpia as they were cooked just right and was generously packed with filling. I didn’t have the Pancit but it was a balanced blend of meat and vegetables (don’t much care for when it’s tons of veggies).
Great prices but a little slow with their service. Was quoted that the order would be ready between 11:30 and 11:45. I didn’t walk out until just after twelve. Not that I was in a hurry, but I didn’t care to be sitting in a restaurant when I wasn’t eating because seeing and smelling all the food was making me feel starved.
I’d order takeout again and probably will opt for the Shanghai Lumpias for my upcoming employee gathering.

So I finally went in to try the food I been a lil hesitant to try something different but to my surprise it was not bad you can order two three or more entrees with rice and their special house noodles I order pork cooked with shrimp sauce that was okay it wasn’t my favorite but I’ll eat it again I also had lumpia since I’m familiar with lumpia that was good and I did try their pork sausages that was a four star they have many other food options you can choose from the staffs are friendly and they explain what the food is if your not familiar with fillipino food so overall i would go again

GREAT FOOD and GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE. They are always so friendly and have a vibe to them that connects you like family. I wanted halo halo but they only had the bucu pandon (however you spell it) and it was fabulous with chucks of coconut and bits of cheese, etc. Their fresh lumpia was delicious! Prices are great and not overly expensive.
Perfect place, homely vibe, and friendly service.
I live in Long Beach and would drive all the way down here for fresh lumpia, since GEMMAE sucks in all of the above qualities that Chow Fun possesses.

Chowfun has one of the best tasting pansit miki-​bihon around Carson, Long Beach, & Lakewood area… reasonable price too…

We always order the pancit from here. They are the only place where the include kikiam as an ingredient. we always buy the eggrolls for our parties too. we always call them in advance, so there’s no hassle.

This is a typical «turo turo» (point point) place where you can get a combination of two entrees with rice. I’ve never been here before because I usually patronize the other Filipino restaurants in the area when I get a craving for this type of cuisine.
Since I try to stay away from pork which, unfortunately, happens to be abundant in Filipino cooking, I was limited in my choices. I settled on the chicken adobo and pinkabet which is a mixture of vegetables. The chicken adobo had a slightly different taste than usual. I suspect it’s because Chow Fun is a Chinese version of Filipino food and they probably use different spices when they prepare this dish. Well, I wasn’t really a fan of it. And besides, there was hardly any meat on the chicken. I don’t know where you can get really skinny chicken but they managed to find some that probably died of starvation.
The pinakbet was average tasting as well. Usually, when ordering this dish, you are offered a little side of «bagoong» which is a shrimp paste used as a condiment to spice up the dish but I didn’t get any offer here.
Most restaurants also customarily offer a side of soup as a palate chaser due to the strong tastes in this type of food. When I asked about it, the server seemed hesitant but relucantly offered a side of the soup from one of the soup dishes. The soup was pretty tasteless as well.
Overall, I wasn’t very impressed with the selection nor the preparation of the dishes I had here. I’d probably continue eating at the other eateries in the area for Filipino cuisine and suggest that others do the same.

What?!? No one has written a review yet of Chow Fun? I haven’t written a review of Chow Fun yet either?!? No way! Hahaha…
I thought I’d written a review of Chow Fun a long time ago but I guess haven’t and so now is the time to do a review. My family and I have been going to Chow Fun for years. It’s such a convenient place to go to for a quick to-​go meal.
Chow Fun is a Filipino-​Chinese food place. I believe it is owned by the same folks who own Tambuli market. They sell all kinds of great food. My favorite dishes include the orange chicken (large chunks of chicken, not just all flour) and the egg rolls (both the fried and the crêpe kind are delicious). I’ve actually discovered new dishes for my Vegetarian Lent diet and I now have new favorites: They are the mustard greens, the eggplants with tofu and the tofu with brown sauce :). All the combos come with you choice of white rice, fried rice or noodles (flat noodles or glass noodles).
If you don’t want to get a combo, you can do a special order of their noodles. You can mix and match the different kind of noodles. Our favorite is the miki-​bihon. This noodle dish comes with slices of kikiam –deep fried ground pork.
Aside from the noodles, you can special order soup dishes. There siomai soup is on sale now.
They also have some desserts and snacks up by the register. Steamed buns, Sesame balls and Ube Halaya (purple yam dessert).
Back in the day, they used to serve boba drinks (This was actually my favorite place to get boba — because they would make it out of fresh fruits…) but they don’t have this anymore. (Hmm maybe someone will read this review and bring it back… hint hint hehe)
It’s really a pretty good place to get a quick meal. They also give a healthy portion so you are sure to have food to last at least two meals :).