Lakeside Asia Cafe

The spicy chicken popcorn was super good, as delicious as the one in China.
The spicy clear noodle was great as well which was my favorite dish.
I think it’s quite authentic Sichuan food but it’s a little pricy.

This is a great find. Their food is always fresh and delicious. The staff is friendly and helpful. We love their seafood green curry!

another great experience with delivery this past weekend — fast and awesome food. Keep up the great service and food!

I have never left a review before and for me to even try to leave a review is super rare. That is how much I truly believe this restaurant deserves more stars.
At first I was a little startled with how small the restaurant is but don’t judge a restaurant by size.
The menu is beautiful and the décor is simple and clean.
Their food is absolutely fantastic. It tastes authentically Chinese and they are great at capturing the Schezhuan flavor.
To get the best taste, you should eat in at the restaurant but the trip here is totally worth it.
I’m really not good at writing reviews but everything my table ordered was absolutely delicious. (this included fu qi fei pian, twice cooked pork belly, the chicken with chili that other reviews have included, and, more)
Overall a great experience, please give this place a try

If I ever move out of Reston, the thing I’ll miss the most is Lakeside Asia Café and their specialty dish Crispy Spicy Chicken with Chillies. Not to mention I can have a Thai iced tea with my Chinese food! Heaven! Service is great too I chat it up with the staff all the time.

My quest for good Asian food nearby continues. Weighing my options of terrible nearby Chinese cuisine, Lakeside fares slightly better and definitely gets some stars for ambiance when compared to the other nearby Asian places. I dined in this time (a few weeks ago at this point). (Sorry, delinquent on my Unilocal review for here) The only things that truly stand out about the food from this experience at this point was how salty my meal was and the little scoop of rice provided wasnt enough to break up all that salt. I wound up ordering extra steamed veggies to go, to help even out the meal and to slightly «healthify» it, and they were kind enough to throw in some extra free white rice for me but the food itself, was unfortunately really dissatisfying. This place just looks more upscale but the food is disappointing.

A-​OK is a great way to describe this restaurant. I have ordered delivery and pickup from here a couple times. They usually have things ready within 20 min of you placing the order.
We ordered combo fried rice, beef with broccoli and a thai dish. The fried rice was pretty good sized portion and a normal fast fried rice dice. The beef couldve been a little better but the sauce on it was pretty good. The Thai Basil dish was very disappointing. I ordered extra chicken and it came with quite a lot of meat which was good but it was very bland and not spicy at all. I had to add some of my own spices to eat it. Overall pretty good quick delivery place for Chinese and Thai though.

This restaurant was certainly outside of my radar until a gourmand friend of mine told me about it yesterday. Thank you Keiko-​san!
So I went here today for lunch to check out some of their Sichuan dishes.
First of all, the interior looked quite nice. Clean, woody and Chinese-​y. The Chinese man who explained us the menu was very friendly. We liked him a lot.
We ordered the following:
* Ma Po Tofu with beef
* Steamed Pork Belly with Pickled Mustard Green
* Shredded Beef with Green Pepper & Dried Tofu
Ma Po Tofu was very mild and both Ma and La were weak to my standards. But the tofu was soft tofu and very very soft. It reminded me of the Korean tofu soup.
The pork belly however was quite good. It literally melted in my mouth. It tasted so good with rice.
The beef was okay. Nothing special.
The rice — same as what most Chinese restaurants serve (except for Sichuan Village & China Star)
Overall, it didn’t exceed my expectations but I will still come back to try other dishes.

Very good Chinese food, authentic and tasty! Their menu looks fantastic, with vivid pictures on it. Unlike most of other Chinese, they offer a clean and cozy environment. I Love everything I order, and decided to have one more dish to go when I’m already full… However, their location is a bit far from where I live, otherwise I would go there much more frequent.

Order from the ‘Chinese’ menu for some real surprising and authentically awesome Chinese food — some of it numbingly spicy. Love the golden pork shoulder, fish filet in pungent and spicy sauce, and the cumin beef.
More Chinese restaurants should be following this lead with real Chinese dishes from the mainland and not just the typical Americanized food.

This is about the most authentic Chinese restaurant in the DC area. It specializes in Sichuan cuisine and is good with spicy dishes. But has none spicy or mild spicy dishes, which we ordered Friday night.

I must say that this is one of the most authentic Szechuan Chinese restaurants in the area. The double-​cooked pork was excellent and just as good as my mom makes it. My family was impressed with the authenticity of the taste of all of the spicy dishes, aka szechuan dishes.
Sweet braised pork is delicious with red bean paste, sticky rice and pork belly making a perfect combination of sweet and salty.
Their spicy fish pot with tofu (forgot the exact name in English) is always on the dot with the famous szechuan spicy numbing sensation but a really clean white fish and tofu. What more can you ask for?
The double-​cooked pork is exquisite and not just for the meat but for the perfectly cooked veggies including onions and leeks. It is perhaps my favorite dish just for the amount of flavors the veggies exude into the dish.

I popped in here for lunch one day. I ordered sesame chicken. Something about it tasted. .. off. I don’t know where my waitress was, so I couldn’t send it back. Finally, she reappeared. She asked if I wanted it boxed up. I told her I didn’t want it. She cared, I guess. But she also left it on the bill. Whomp. I may try again, as there seem to be OK reviews.

My coworkers and I were looking for a chinese restaurant to go to for our lunch break and we decided to go here. The place was a decent size restaurant, although during lunchtime, parking could be hard to find. Anyways, we were seated right away. Their menu has a wide variety of options to eat (typical chinese restaurant) where you have the appetizers, soups, rice, noodles, different meats, and dessert. They also have a Thai food section and had Thai Iced Tea, which I’ve been craving for a week. The tea wasn’t good enough, but not as great as one in a Thai place. The waitress we had seemed sort of new because she didn’t quite know what we were ordering out of the top of her head, but she was nice and polite, asking how the food was or if it’s too spicy, etc.
I ordered the Chicken Fried Rice but spicy. It was actually really good! However; I believe she gave me the dinner portion instead of the lunch (she obviously didn’t ask me which I wanted :/​). One of my coworker had the green curry pork and she said it was good. However; my other two coworkers ordered the Lo Mein and something else that was a chicken order. They didn’t quite enjoy their food as much as they hoped. The noodle was too chewy. As for the appetizers: egg drop soup and crab rangoon was delish!
Would I go here again? Yeah sure, it’s not the worst restaurant in Reston and they have a wide range of food to eat. Can’t judge the whole place when you only had one dish which turned out really well. And the service was nice so can’t go wrong with good/​polite service. They make improvements though, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and understand how hard it is to memorize the entire menu and forget little details, but I wasn’t completely mad since I brought home some leftovers.

This is the best Chinese restaurant in the Reston/​Herndon area. It’s always a challenge to find a good Chinese restaurant in VA. For a decent Chinese meal, I have to travel up to Rockville, MD. Even that, they are not comparable to what I’ve had in Cali or NYC. I had little expectation of this restaurant before coming here. The name sounds Americanized and the reviews are all average. But I was surprised how good the food is. First of all, I love that the menu has pictures which remind of of all the restaurants I have been to in China. Second, the Sichuanese dishes taste home-​made and delicious (I personally have been to Sichuan, China numerous times). So finding out there’s such a restaurant here in this area is a total joyful surprise.
For those who just want a quick bite, like getting Lo Mein or egg rolls, I suggest that Panda Express or China King would serve you better. If you are in for good authentic Chinese food, order the dishes in the first few pages of the menu to try.

This restaurant is the worst of it’s kind. This is the second time they have overcharged me for delivery for extras and they don’t deliver. They actually had the driver come back to pick up the order instead of fixing the problem. Poor service and management skills.
The food if you’re interested is ok. Nothing special. Try it for yourself and be disappointed with the service.
Looking at these photos do you see extra bak choy in my soup or extra vegetables in the rice container? Let me remind you that I did pay for extra vegetables.
I ordered the soup because I’m feeling under the weather. This is not the first time I asked for extra, was charged for it and was disappointed when it wasn’t in my order. This is the last time!
Worst part was the owner was really rude over the phone like I was trying to steal from them. Never again!

The portion sizes are huge for this restaurant. The cuts of meat and vegetables are thick, and the quality of food here is certainly above the grade of most Chinese restaurants. The menus are certainly unique, not only do you have the traditional chinese food menu in the back of it, but in the front of the menu are pictures of each item to give the curious eater some perspective. I went here with my kids and it was a great experience.
My only caveat is that I feel it is slightly overpriced. Its great quality food don’t get me wrong, but for what you pay I would expect a little more. Definitely take advantage of the lunch prices if you can for more of a discount.

I happen to be in town for business meetings and my co-​workers recommended this place as the spot to go to for Authentic Chinese cuisine. Working for a Chinese company and my coworkers all being from China I took their advice when they recommended the restaurant manager to order for our group. We started off with the Steamed fried dumplings and they were very good. I have been to China many times and they are just as good as you would get in China. Next dish they brought out was Sliced beef and tripe in a chili sauce served cold which was very good. My Co-​workers told me that they wouldn’t tell me what I was eating until after I ate the dish as I might not want to try it knowing what I was eating. So true but the dish tasted very good and I would order it again. Next they brought a plate of sizzling beef with onions and red peppers with a side of Sautéed spinach with garlic. The Meat was very tender and the vegetables were cooked to perfection. Very tasty I must say and the last dish was Fish fillet with soft tofu in a pungent and spicy sauce. Overall The food was amazing and I would come back next time I’m in town. We were the first group in prior to the restaurant opening and My co-​worker knew the owner. By the time we left the place was jam packed. The Service was very good and the manager kept coming to our table to refill our tea pot and make sure we were taken care of and brought extra Rice and napkins. Definitely a benefit to know what to order other than the normal American Chinese dishes.

Very abrupt and curt service. The food was fast and pretty good. Started with the fried dumplings. They were heavy but tasty. And then had the Ma Pao tofu. It comes out boiling hot. Not sure if I will be coming back.

Knocked down a star for service this time out. Two ladies out front just isn’t enough staff at 630 as tables started to fill.
Food quite tasty. Ask about items on the single page menu.