Beijing City

This is where I go when I have homesick! Food are authentic and tasty, friendly service with clean and quiet environment, no need to drive to convoy now.

I crave this place! I have to make up excuses to go.
I get the:
sautéed mixed vegetables — I asked them to add tofu and baby bok choy and they gladly do that. Then I ask for their mustard sauce and homemade chili sauce. I eat with the rice it comes with and heaven! It can’t get healthier and more DELICIOUS than that! I have enough for lunch at work for 2 days and it tastes JUST AS GOOD!!! Great deal and fresh great food!
Get the word out — this place should be appreciated.
I wish I was eating there tonight… and tomorrow!

Good quality of Chinese food. I’ve been here a number of times and the food is pretty decent. Small place but staff is nice and food is good.

Took home the usual American Chinese dishes and tried the Spicy boiled fish which was really good. Overall good take out place. Prices are a bit on the higher side but better quality than most.

The food is superb. I wasn’t impressed the décor however. Bright lights… just not the atmosphere I’m accustomed to when out for dinner. It’s just noisy and bright but I can overcome that to enjoy their outstanding fare.

This is the worst Chinese food I have ever tried. We ordered a big meal and the only thing that was eatable was Kung pao chicken. Hot and sour soup was thin and tasted like soy sauce. There was no meat or good flavor to it. Mongolian beef was disgusting. I am not even sure if it was beef. Very bad quality, no flavor, not crispy at all. We couldn’t force ourselves to eat it. Orange chicken wasn’t horrible, but had too much flour and tasted as if it was reheated, not fresh and crispy. This was my worst experience with Asian food and I will not be going back there. Panda Express is a top-​notch restaurant in comparison to this.

I recently moved to the area after living further down the road for a few years. My wife and I love Chinese food so we were happy to find a good takeout restaurant so close to our apartment. I would have to say that I was very pleased with my order. The food tasted fresh and the portion of shrimp in my fried rice was very generous. BC will definitely be my go to Chinese restaurant for as long as we are in the area.

Awesome Schezuan Food! We have been here multiple times and love all their dishes. Never been disappointed. Our favorites are the hot and spicy chicken, pickled jalapeño fish, spicy boiled fish, cumin lamb… I could go on! Great find in Poway! They finally got their liquor license so they can now serve beer. Reasonably priced Chinese food.

This place is the bomb! We have always picked up food, haven’t eaten there so can’t speak for the service.
This place works well for weeknights when we don’t want to cook or when friends come over for drinks.
I recommend the seafood fried rice, black bean fish, King pao chicken, spicy chicken (spice can be adjusted), cumin lamb (make sure you tell them to cook the spices well, we had one time where the spices were uncooked), spicy ground pork.
Portions are small for the price.

A taste of home. Eating this made me really think of Flushing back in NY where there are loads of chinese food to eat. As well as some of the food my parents make. My favorite dish here? The cumin lamb.
I have a special fondness for the cumin lamb dish; back in NY, I loved going to the kabob stands on the streets to order a stick of lamb which they seasoned with cumin and spice if we requested it. It used to be $ 1 but due to the economy it rose up to $ 2 or $ 1.50. The lamb taste really varies from person to person. Some people like the unique taste of the lamb with the cumin while some do not like the taste at all.
I have only done take out here — and also came here mainly because my boyfriend raved about how it was decent for chinese food. We ordered the Cumin Lamb, Beef and Broccoli, House Special Chow Mein, and Sauteed String Beans. My cousin agreed with me that the House Special Chow Mein was good. And everything in takeout was in microwaveable material — per what it says outside of the box. Beef and broccoli was meh — not too impressed, it tasted a bit watered down but also might be because I was chowing down the cumin lamb before tasting the beef. String beans were another basic thing to get. Went in and ordered and waited for about 10 – 15 minutes. Great for a chinese food fix but slightly pricier as the area had very limited chinese places.

I owe the Unilocal community a lot. You guys have been so helpful over the years and it’s time I contributed!
In short, this place is great! They have the standard Chinese American dishes we all love like Kung pau chicken/​beef but also have some dishes you will not see at other Chinese restaurants that cater mostly to Americans. I would recommend the Dan Dan noodles, mo fu tofo and just about everything else on their menu! Me and my colleagues go to Beijing city at least once a week and are never disappointed. One warning, their spicy dishes (like Dan Dan noodles) are truly spicy so if you are not into the heat, stay away from their spicy dishes. If you love spice, your gonna love it here.

My wife and I frequently eat in Convoy, but since moving to Rancho Bernardo its a haul to drive out to Convoy and battle the crazy parking nowadays. So its been a delight finding Beijing City as it has the same quality food but a lot closer.
We had the green beans, husband and wife, fish in spicy bean sauce and it was all fantastic.
Service was fantastic.

I’m so happy I don’t have to drive to Convoy to get my spicy Chinese food fix!
I had the Deep Fried Chicken (with dried peppers) and Broiled Spicy Fish — it was delish!!!

Totally unexpected to see an authentic Chinese restaurant in Poway. This is a clean Chinese place comparing to average you find. The service is great; more than you would expect from a Chinese place. Food is awesome! I got Kung Pao Chicken lunch special for $ 7.99 today. I can’t complain anything at all. If you are locals to this area, this is where you go for Chinese food, period.

This is THE ORIGINAL Spicy City. 北京麻辣成. Anyone from SD would know what I’m talking about. They opened back in 2000 and ended selling years later. They were bored with retirement and opened this little joint a year ago. The owner and staff are from Beijing so you don’t get the overwhelming Sichuan flavor.
I was chewing through the chefs special green beans with such nostalgia. The flavors were not overly pungent, while the green beans maintained a good crunch. And needless to say the ants climbing on tree was on spot. Finally I had to ask who the chef was, and low and behold I found a home-​cooked meal by the OG Spicy City chef. You will definitely recognize the owner. She looks exactly the same as 15 years ago except she wears glasses now.
So thankful we stumbled upon this place tonight ! Check it out of you are looking for legit Chinese food in the middle of … Poway ! ;)

We were surprised to find a authentic style Chinese restaurant in Poway so we tried this place out. The inside of the restaurant is pretty clean and there were some Asian families dining there that night (good sign, right?)
Someone told me that this is run by the same owners as Spicy City and I can believe it. Some of the dishes like the beef noodle soup were soaked in chili oil and really brought the heat.
I did enjoy most of the dishes but I did have some issues. The mapo tofu had very little ground pork and was almost purely just sauce and tofu. Also, surprisingly I did get some what of an Americanized feel to a few of the dishes. Like when there was broccoli in the noodle soup and regular white mushrooms in sizzling beef plate. Not really big deal but interesting.
I think the biggest issue for me is that the dishes are somewhat pricey for the size of the dishes. You don’t get a huge quantity of food but each entrée will cost you $ 12-​$ 14.

I decided to go out on a limb (you’ll get the pun in a second) and order the Ants Climbing Tree, which turned out to be a massive bowl of glass noodles with ground pork. What the menu didn’t convey was that this dish was incredibly spicy. Other menu items were marked «spicy» and this one wasn’t. Maybe this dish wasn’t considered spicy by Beijing City standards. Maybe the chef just got a little heavy handed on this one. Maybe I’m just a wimp.
Good food. Hefty portion. Just would have appreciated a heads up on the heat.

After a busy day visiting the Safari Park, we headed south to go home and find a new dinner spot. The Unilocal app’s bookmark section reminded me about Beijing City. I thought… ohh… I hope they have dumplings!
Well, upon arrival I was a little disappointed by how empty the restaurant was on a Sunday night. Obviously it’s a sign when there’s only one other party there, but we decided to give it a shot.
Sadly, there were no dumplings on the menu! What kind of establishment is this? (There was some kind of wonton soup though.) As my date informed me, this place is focused on Sichuanese cuisine, so I went with mapo tofu which turned out to be just average for my taste buds. It was sufficiently spicy, but the bits of ground pork was practically non-​existent. Initially I thought it was missing, but I was informed that it was there.
As of right now I’m undecided as if I’ll return or not. The food wasn’t horrible by any means, but I want my dumplings!

I came here with my immigrant Chinese parents this weekend because of the good Unilocal reviews and because it was by the owners of Spicy City in Convoy, which is a legit Chinese restaurant we used to frequent.
However, I was very disappointed with the quality of the food and am surprised there are such good reviews here. We ordered three noodle dishes that we have had countless times at other restaurants and they were seriously substandard, and the portions were quite small for the price.
Zha jiang mein ($ 8) is one of my all-​time favorite Chinese comfort food dishes, and this was the worst I have ever had out of the countless restaurants where I’ve had this dish. It had NO bean curd, just meat and there were literally ten little slivers of meat in it. Also, it was made with salty bean paste only, the laziest way to make this dish. Normally this dish is supposed to have a wealth of sweet and savory flavors — I should know since as a home chef I have mastered my own recipe over the last 15 years. The worst was that the noodles tasted like they had been cooked already and then thrown into hot water. They were tepid and didn’t taste fresh.
We also ordered spicy beef noodle soup ($ 9). This dish is supposed to have beef that soft and tastes like it’s been slow cooked. They used the square chunks of beef that you would buy in an American supermarket for beef stew. The soup had a light flavor that I actually liked but overall the dish was not teeming with the bold flavors I usually except from this dish. There was a ton of American broccoli florets in it, which tasted terrible as this dish is normally served with spinach and/​or bok choy. There were a few strips of bok choy in it. It just tasted like the ingredients had been thrown together without really melding together their flavors, and this was also the case with the zha jiang mein.
The only dish that was half decent was the combination chow mein ($ 10), which was like a Shanghai soft noodle. It had a lot of shrimp and they cooked the beef and chicken properly. It was a bit pale and didn’t seem to have much soy sauce in it. There were some seared onions, but it didn’t have that bold flavor that you get from cooking with a wok, so I wonder if they just prepared it in a regular pan. It was served on a small 8-​inch plate.
It’s possible that you have to order there meat dishes here and that they don’t know how to do noodle dishes. They seemed kind of pricey at $ 13 given how small our noodle dishes were.
Overall my impression was that it didn’t seem they have a very good chef in the back. I definitely felt like I could make all these dishes at home better.

For all you hard core foodies out there, this place will make you smile if you like spicy food. The original owners of Spicy City in Convoy now opened Beijing City in Poway! So if you’ve missed certain dishes at Spicy City, you will more than likely find those dishes here at Beijing City.
Beijing City is located in a small strip mall. Sorry but I think sis said there was a barber shop or something next to it (that’s how I found it as there were quite a bit of small stores in this strip mall).
I ordered (and don’t judge b/​c I’m a fatty patattie):
SPICY BEEF (SESAME & PEANUTS) $ 7.99
Now THIS is the dish my best Friend and I used to demolish at Spicy City. It’s similar to their Husband & Wife appetizer except there’s no tripe in this dish. There is a distinct ma-​la taste to this dish that we used to love so much. I’m not sure if the dish changed but the spicy beef wasn’t as mind-​blowing as I had remembered. Maybe my tastes have changed as I’ve gotten older (it has been years since I’ve had this dish). The dish is still spicy and the generous chopped peanuts really bring this dish to life. But, something just seemed to be missing.
GREEN ONION & TOFU IN SPECIAL SAUCE $ 4.99
So this was THE dish that sis and I used to look forward to at Spicy City many years ago. It’s basically diced up cold tofu tossed with green onions. I always thought the special sauce was sesame oil and, don’t freak out, MSG. Unfortunately, the dish tasted bland that day. I’m not sure if they forgot to add the ‘special sauce’ as listed on the menu or perhaps I just couldn’t taste much of it. But it needed some sort of salt (or MSG, I don’t care). The leftovers for this dish tasted pretty good the next day when I added sesame oil and salt to it.
GARLIC PORK $ 7.99
This is another dish that I dearly missed when the original owners sold off Spicy City. I didn’t really want to order another appetizer as the apps here aren’t exactly cheap. But sis and cousin kept texting me to try this item so hey, who am I to argue.
There’s an insane amount of minced garlic with the pork belly (aka bacon) in this dish. This item is served cold so if you have a hard time eating cold sliced pork belly/​bacon, I’d avoid this appetizer. This was probably my favorite dish of the meal as the sheer amount of raw garlic makes the pork belly spicy. The pork belly came out a bit warm so I assumed they boiled the belly to order and then slather the garlic sauce all over the dish before they serve it. I would easily be a Vampire killer if you asked me to make out with, ohhhhh, let’s say Edward Cullen the hottest vampire in the entire world after I ate this Garlic Pork dish.
KUNG PAO CHICKEN LUNCH SPECIAL $ 7.99
They have daily lunch specials and this is the one the owner said she liked the most. The lunch special board didn’t mention that the specials came with rice, an eggroll, and steamed veggies. I thought the lunch specials were just the listed entrees offered at a discounted price ($ 7.99). There wasn’t as much kung pao chicken as I had hoped but what chicken was in this dish was pretty good. The kung pao had the standard water chestnuts, carrots, peas, and peanuts. You can see the dried red chili peppers but I didn’t find this dish to be spicy at all.
So the total was $ 31.28 for 3 appetizers and 1 lunch special. I guess it’s not a miserable total as I had enough leftovers for two small meals. BUT, sis and I both agree that the prices of most items here are pretty high (considering their location in this older strip mall as well). $ 7.99 for an appetizer dish was a bit steep for me. I was eyeing a Shrimp with Asparagus dish but nervously shook my head no when I saw the $ 14.99 price tag.
Service was great and Lucy, the waitress, was super nice and knowledgeable. It was great catching up with the owner and I hope to be back with my family for dinner soon.