If they hadn’t gotten the Best of Fresno award last year, I would say that EMW China Bistro is one of the most underrated restaurants in Fresno. But it did get the award, so now it’s just one of the most unbeknownst restaurants in Fresno. But how, you say, can a restaurant mentioned as Best of Fresno in Fresno Magazine not be bustling? Maybe we should ask the magazine if it carries any clout in the city it represents. How do I know that it’s not known very well in Fresno? People I talk to don’t really know where it is until I tell them it’s in the same shopping center as Tony Roma’s, because for some reason, people know about a rib joint that they haven’t been too since the 1990s, but not China Bistro. Even my friends don’t know about it’s definite existence. It’s like a vague memory. But I talk about it all the time, and they still don’t know it’s really there. Why? Well, my family owns the place.
Yup. But this isn’t going to be a post filled with blatant self promotion.
It is one of my favorite places to eat, although it’s not real Chinese food. It’s Americanized, like Panda Express, but it’s fancier and cleaner, and in this case, the lack of dirtiness does not mean it lacks tastiness. Now I won’t gush about the food. I eat there all the time when I come back from school, so I’ll just post some pics of some of my favorite dishes at the place.
The egg rolls here are petit and smoot, not like the pockmarked giants I’ve seen served at my school cafeteria. They don’t fill you up, but that’s not the purpose of appetizers. Not unless you count all those times I’ve eaten multiple orders of egg rolls for a meal because they were left over from one of my classroom parties. Not overstuffed or overly oily, I can always make room for an order before I move on to the main course.
I’ve been eating broccoli chicken since my parents were in the restaurant business, and maybe that is why I developed a love for brocolli. And maybe why I always had gas.
The chow mein is superior to fried rice because of its vegetable content: these are more than filler veggies, like peas, carrots, and onions. There’s usually sugar snap peas, cabbage, and broccoli hidden in the mounds of noodles.
Kung pao chicken is pretty spicy, but I’ve heard talk about giving customers the ability to kick it up with more spices and peppers. Although I’m usually a fan of burning my taste buds to the point of tingling numbness, I don’t need to with this dish because I enjoy the flavors, especially when rice soaks it up.
There are other dishes that I’m a fan of, like the Mongolian san yan and fried rice, but I haven’t been able to eat there all that often lately. They (or we?) use white meat in all the chicken dishes, and don’t use any MSG in dishes–you know, the kind of thing the masses love to hear when it comes to Chinese place–but it doesn’t matter to me. I just like it. I can’t really describe it, but it’s just something I’ve come to realize after eating so many Panda Express/Rice Garden clones; maybe it’s family pride that places it up a notch on the taste spectrum. I’ll post pictures again when I get them, for the sake of having more food porn on the site.
East Meets West China Bistro 2021 W Bullard Ave Fresno, CA (559) 447-8399
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