The Great Chow

Our go-​to for the super spicy Chinese food.
Very hot, lots of chilies, chili oil, raw garlic, Mala heat. Sloppy, but that’s kind of what it’s all about. Can’t knock a sloppy Joe for being messy! Try the chili oil dumplings, and most of the other Szechuan dishes, beef noodle soup, and order off the chef specialties section. Don’t fear the heat!

Ordered 2 combination plates for delivery. Food was fresh, hot and delivered fast! Chicken teriyaki was made with thick pieces of chicken breast which were juicy and delicious. Beef teriyaki was fresh, tender and tasty. Chicken fingers were nearly perfect, as they were crunchy and hot. Not soggy at all. The only improvement was that the batter could have been salted or seasoned more, as well as a tad less greasy. The only thing I wasn’t impressed with was the rice. Do not get me wrong, it was good. but not as good as the rest of the food, which was stellar. The pork fried rice had almost no egg, and was packed with bean sprouts, like ALOT of bean sprouts… too many! Flavor was good though. I will definitely order from here again! One last thing, this delicious plate of food only cost 9.75 per plate, AND comes with a can of soda! Cannot beat that price!

The worst restaurant ever! If you value your life and like being respected, don’t go! The old waiter literally asked me to move the fk away from the table when I ordered a takeout and waited on the table when there was no other customer at all. And when we started to argue, a cook heard that and got out of the kitchen, he started helping the waiter quarrel with me without even knowing what happened ! And their boss was just standing there and watch. Btw the food sucks. Now I know why all my Chinese friends hated this place. It was like they could get more customers if I moved away from the table. Such low lives!

Got a take-​out order and the cumin beef tasted bad. The beef they used was definitely not fresh, it smelled and tasted nasty. Never again!

My family and I have been ordering from Great Chow for a couple of months. We also have eaten at the restaurant. The restaurant is not that appealing. It looks run down and needs some color. But the food is still excellent. Chicken fingers are fresh which you don’t see that much. We eat here at lease once a week. I highly recommend this place in Malden.

Food made with great care and nice flavor. I don’t feel thirsty afterward like in some other restaurants. Will go back to try more later.

We had dinner here last night and everything was delicious. We ordered all our dishes from the Sichuan section on the back of the menu.
Dan dan noodles — noodles in a red sauce, spicy with a curry-​like flavor, garnished with a few cooked greens and ground beef
Pork and leek dumplings, pan-​fried — nice and crispy on the outside, very tasty with ginger sauce
Cheng-​du spicy chicken — crispy deep-​fried bits of chicken with hot peppers, soooo good.
Chinese mushrooms over greens — very meaty mushrooms over baby bok choi. This dish is mild and was a great compliment to the spicy chicken.

Great chinese food, most of the menu items are not found on other take-​out and delivery places. Everything I’ve eaten has been delicious — twice-​cooked pork, dumplings, braised beef noodle soup, poached chicken w/​chili sauce. The baby bok choy w/​garlic was good but it was very heavy on the garlic (and I like my garlic) and lacking in flavor. What makes me very sad right now and why I’m taking away a star, is the fact that I ordered from here no less than 2 months ago through Foodler so I saw that the restaurant’s website has online ordering (sweet!) and at the top of the page says it delivers to my city (sweet!!), spent a while selecting my order just now and at checkout it says they don’t deliver to my area any more.
*SIGH* I hate it when restaurants do this, you had a good customer and you would have had a really big order from me tonight.

Always very good, but wildly inconsistent. I have to believe they’ve got two different chefs who have never met.
I always order the Orange Flavor Chicken. Sometimes it’s very spicy, with many big chunks of dried japonais chilies in it; other times it contains no chilies whatsoever and is devoid of spiciness (though still delicious). It’s nice when a chef can adjust the heat level to each diner’s tastes, but I just really wish there was a set starting point here!
The crab rangoons and fresh made (not corn syrup-​based packets) duck sauce are great. Only other disappointment is that you get 4 bites of broccoli with your entrée but can’t order it as a side dish.

This is the first time I have ever ordered food from a Chinese restaurant that didn’t include rice. We ordered a bunch of dishes to share with friends. At no point did the person on the phone let us know that none of the dishes came with rice. At least some of the dishes were pretty good.
Hilariously, most of the dishes came with broccoli. Broccoli is not the new rice. We threw away our menu. The hunt for good Chinese food in Malden continues.

So much Chinese take out cause my dad is obsessed. Weirdo. Anywho, I enjoyed this place but my parents didn’t. It was pretty empty on a weekday night but I figure they get more take out orders. The food is well priced and the menu is mostly Americanized Chinese but they have some more «traditional» items. We had beef chow mein, beef noodle soup, and tomato and beef. Not sure why so heavy on the beef that night.
The chow mein I really liked but my parents found it too salty. Way too much noodles and too little of everything else though. The beef noodle soup was okay, the beef they add on top after making the soup so it was still cold which is slightly off putting. The broth had a good flavor to it and the noodles were the perfect consistency. The beef and tomato was my favorite and the sauce went really well with rice. Comfort Asian food.
Overall a decent place. The food came out fast. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go here because there are pretty good places in Malden but I wouldn’t be against coming back here either.

First Sichuan restaurant in Malden area. I think the food is delicious and the price is cheap compared to other Sichuan restaurants in downtown. We ordered appetizer, three main hot dishes and a soup for three ppl and it was only $ 17 per person including tax (with NEU student discount). The owner is from and Hongkong and he is very nice. Will go back again.

So judging from the above rating you can see that I was fairly disappointed.
I ordered later in the evening at about 8:30PM and received my order at about 9:50PM. The order wasn’t humongous so the waiting time was a little bit silly. I wasn’t starving so I didn’t really let that bother me.
Ordered was the Shredded Spicy Beef with Peppers and Onion which came with white rice. Sounds tasty, bursting with flavor, NOPE. Just a blandness about it. Oily and boring.
Pu Pu Platter was very much enjoyed except for the Beef Teriyaki which you would need shark teeth and jaws to get through. Was like a dog chew.
Curry Chicken was average with other restaurants in the area and with that statement, overpriced. Doesn’t come with any rice or anything for the $ 10.95 price tag.
There is also additional charge for all condiments that you would usually find in Chinese take-​away. I paid an extra 50c for hot mustard and received one of the teaspoon style little cups. If you charge extra for a condiment the portion needs to be significantly larger than what other restaurants give away for free.
Over all I felt ²⁄₅ to be gracious.

I have to say, this is the best «Sichuan» food in Boston.
Taste it, and you will never regret.

I had a family bean curd and a fish filet in chili sauce, they both taste alright. The only thing to complain is I asked for no celery, but they end up putted celery in both of my order.

THE GREAT CHOW
Not to be confused with Great Chow (Japanese/​Chinese in Quincy & Abington), which it undoubtedly will be, for all of you Ohio State fans this is THE Great Chow. And based on our 5 Chowhound’s first visit, it is a serious new contender for Sichuan cuisine in the Boston area. Along with my old favs Sichuan Gourmet, Sichuan Garden, and Red Pepper, this is heady company for a restaurant that only opened in early December 2014 in Malden MA.
With easy free parking along Ferry St in front (1 hr), or further along the road, TGC has an attractive, light and airy, although simple interior, with widely spaced tables and a few charming paintings of flowers on the walls. Although I had to laugh at the specials menu, which is only visible from outside the restaurant (you will have to judge for yourself as to whether the statue of a menu-​wielding chef is actually Italian or Chinese).
Lunchtime on a Saturday was quiet, with only a couple of other tables occupied. But once the charming waitress, and then the owner, realized they had some serious Sichuan-​seekers on their hands, we were treated to some excellent renditions of our favorite Sichuan classics. Nothing very unusual, so hopefully the specials will move in a more exotic direction in the future. Note, they also serve a wide variety of the ubiquitous Americanized Chinese, but that wasn’t what we were there for, so I can’t comment on their General Tso’s.
We enjoyed:
1) Sliced roast beef & tendon w. chili sauce ($ 7.75)
~This is my standard-​bearer for Sichuan cuisine, the classic fū qī fèi piàn, served cold, and it compares favorably with Boston’s best from Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica. Very, VERY spicy, more moderate on the mala, light on the peanuts. Probably our consensus favorite, don’t order if you can’t tolerate the heat, and wait for your white rice to arrive first.
2) Sichuan Dan Dan Noodle ($ 5.25)
~Probably everyone’s favorite Sichuan dish, this was tasty, with noodles still having a bit of Italian chew to them, when they often don’t. Only moderately spicy and not very mala, and included some leafy greens. Not Dan Dan to dream about, like that at Han Dynasty in Philly, but decent enough.
3) Twice Cooked Pork ($ 10.25)
~Classic Sichuan, but only slightly spicy, so a welcome respite after the screaming fuqi. More veggies than many versions, but I like that. Not particularly smokey.
5) Cheng-​Du Spicy Chicken ($ 11.95)
~OK, this is another of my must-​order classic Sichuan dishes, and at Sichuan Gourmet, it’s one of the hottest things on the menu. Here it isn’t. Spicy, but not only for spice-​nics (don’t let the dried red chillies scare you off, which obviously you don’t eat). Normally this would turn me off. But this was one of the most tender and moist, yet still crispy renditions I’ve ever had (I remember a similar version at Han Dynasty, although they couldn’t do it consistently). Strangely, it was missing the typical green long hots, which usually provide a milder contrast with the firey deep-​fried chicken, and in this case were substituted for by bell peppers. REALLY good!
[As an aside, I don’t understand the name of this dish. AFAIK, it should be called chóng qìng là zi jī (Deep-​Fried or Dried Chicken with Chili Peppers), and Chengdu-​spiced Chicken is something else entirely. Does anyone know?]
6) Cucumber w. Scallion Sauce ($ 4.75)
~Another cold, and cool dish to relieve the palate. A very simple preparation with a dusting of chopped scallions.
7) Tiger Skin Peppers ($ 9.95)
~Mild-​to-​moderately spicy long hots (depending on your spice tolerance), quickly stir-​fried with a tasty caramelized onion sauce. I enjoyed the leftovers for breakfast today, lol.
8) Salt & Pepper Chicken Wings ($ 11.95)
~A special (thanks Italian chef guy!), crisp and tasty, but not particularly meaty wings.
9) Ice cream (complementary)
~The owner was clearly excited by our complements about their cooking, and kindly offered us a couple of plates of strawberry ice cream topped with whipped cream, cherries and jimmies. Despite being stuffed, this went over well.
We were also excited to hear they serve Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), the pictures of which looked quite delicate, as they should be but rarely are. However, by that point we were were stuffed and will have go back to try them.
$ 74 + tip for the 5 of us (incl $ 1.50 per small bowl of rice), leaving us stuffed with a few leftovers to take home.
If you are in Malden, THE Grand Chow is definitely a place to stop by, and if you are into Sichuan, It’s well worth a drive out of your way.
Main website:
Order online:

Food delivery from here arrived in no time. I ordered
The sauteed udon shanghai noodle and vegeterian delight with white rice it was good.

This new player on the Malden restaurant scene does not disappoint! The Great Chow will be my new go-​to fast food Chinese restaurant in the area, since Real Lucky closed last week.
The offerings are substantial and diverse; the usual suspects plus some Szechuan dishes. Portion sizes are generous and prices are low (we got more than 6 servings from about $ 30 worth of food — two entrees and two appetizers.)
The fried rice was exactly as expected (and not greasy at all!) I asked for tofu in my veggie chow fun, which was also garlicky and delicious. The takeout service was excellent: everything was ready by our arrival.

the service was friendly but the food is not that appealing compare to other chinese restaurants in the Malden Area. The style of the food is Sichuan style which is very very spicy.

We ordered take out and I will definitely go back. We had the crab rangoon which were okay, the beef and broccoli which could use a little more flavor and the seafood chow fun which was my favorite and the reason I gave 4 stars! I think it was a bit pricey but I would definitely go back for the chow fun.