Wang’s Place

Nice little place that doesn’t get the recognition they deserve. They just added 6 new taps totaling 15 drafts. Full bar with good vibe, and a great Chinese-​American fusion menu. They also own the space next door so, Tuesday is comedy night at 8:00, karaōke night on Wednesdays at 8:00 as well. Occasional live performances during dinner hours. Great little place!!!

This restaurant lacks in service. The bartenders are the servers… It’s very annoying. The food is ok. The happy hour is a good deal! Dumplings are big and pretty tasty. Chicken meals have a little too much sauce on them, overpowering.

Newer to Monrovia and checking out the Chinese food in town. We had Wang’s tonite and we were very disappointed with our meal. We are hopeful that the owners can learn from the review. They and their staff are terrific.
We ordered Peking duck egg rolls, original fried rice and orange chicken. All the dishes were very oily and over salted. The spices were non existent with medium heat. There was very little meat in the rice and the egg rolls were greasy and mushy inside. I hope the next time we try Wangs it will be much better

Not sure what happened to this place. I heard dad retired and a son took over unfortunately it is not as good as it use to be. Some of the best dishes are no longer on the menu. My advice? Skip this place and try something new

tried lunch there this afternoon with friends, 2÷11÷16. heard good and not so good. service was friendly, but only one server for the whole lunch «crowd». tried the veggie egg rolls, oily, the filling was nice, but the wrapper was falling apart. egg flower soup, average, nothing interesting about it. we ordered kung pao chicken, orange chicken and mongollian beef. one out of three was eatable. the kung pao had some flavor, the chicken was mushy. the other dishes were interchangeable, the sauces were salty and bland at the same time. how do they do that? tea was good. and the white rice was stale, dried out. big disappointment. once you’ve had good Chinese food, you don’t settle for blah.

Wang’s is Monrovia’s best kept secret. I think I have been there about 500 times since they reopened. Its like a magnet, I keep getting pulled in for the tasty food and good times. Chrystal, Megan, Victoria, Erica and Brooke are all great. I can’t say enough about this place… stop in and say hi. You’ll love it.
Kevin

more like a 3.5÷5 stars!
let me preface this by saying, i actually like this place. there’s nothing wrong here.
i came here due to the 12 for 24 special they got going on. they have the deal on Unilocal,groupon and living social. i’d recommend getting it on groupon and or living social, since those sites typically have 15 or 20 percent off codes you can use.
i went with everyone’s suggestion and got the butterfly shrimp and kimchi duck fried rice. both items were good, however the kimchi fried rice was a little dry.
the butterfly shrimp is full of flavor, and i recommend getting it!
the person working there is nice, but it was also weird that we were the only ones in the restaurant on sunday lunch.
the only thing weird about this place was the smell i first encountered when i walked in. you get used to it, but the first time it hits your nose it’ll catch you by surprise.
so… this place is also a bar too. i might come by and bar hop around downtown monrovia and check this place out at night.

Got the Unilocal deal $ 12 for $ 24 of food. Came for lunch. The egg drop soup is soooo delish! Ordered the kung pao chicken and mongolian beef and we had steamed dumplings too. Big dumplings by the way. Hot tea was not too hot though. It’s not how it used to be. Chicken was good and tender. Try it at least once.

I ate here before during the day… I was lucky I came during the day.
The food is good the bar atmosphere is nice and they have a wide selection of very exotic beers. So naturally I want to come back but I’ve tried this place twice after 9 o’clock and they’re either completely closed or they tell you the kitchen closed at nine. I complained that the kitchen closes early despite being open till 12 they serve liquor for three hours without serving food… Irresponsible. When questioned why they close at nine the manager told me they been doing it for 30 years… Well newsflash things and times change people want to eat after 9 o’clock especially if you’re an Asian restaurant that advertises being open till midnight at least have your kitchen open till 10 or at least 11 especially for to go orders.

This has got to be the worst Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley. The owners should be embarrassed to be serving food like this where the market demographic is rich with Asian clientele. They were awful when they operated as «Wang’s Palace» on Myrtle, and now that it’s «Wang’s Place» the only thing that’s improved is the new dining room with an open-​concept bar (now located off Lemon), as well as the bar menu itself. The one thing that needed a total reboot when they moved was left completely untouched, and that is their menu. Have a drink from their improved cocktail menu, but don’t eat the food!
Why you ask? Even for Americanized Chinese food, which is what I think they are attempting, it is completely gross! I read another review about how great their dumplings are… YUK! Yeah, they are big, but they look and taste bloated, like it was left in the boiling water too long. And it’s 90% bloated, carby, noodle and 10% overly-​salted pork filler. Can you say MSG? And similar observations can be made about other dishes like their sweet & sour pork, where it’s 90% fried batter and 10% pork… I kid you not! This Chinese kitchen is big on fillers and skimpy on the meat. And their flavoring sucks ass too!

This is one of my favorite places in Monrovia. The atmosphere is cool, the bartenders are super cool the food is great (My regular dish is the Shrimp and snow peas in garlic sauce and they have Karaōke on Wednesday night. What more could you ask for? What about 6 more… Well, that also just installed 6 more taps. so they beat me to the punch on that one.

We eat here on occasion when going to the movies down the street. They’ve been running a bunch of ads about their new menu, Bao & Beer, so we stopped in to try out the new menu. We only stopped in to get a light late lunch snack. We had the wings, duck rolls, tempura long beans and pan fried pork dumplings.
Pleasantly surprised, particularly after so many low raking reviews. I am hard pressed to understand why, we loved everything. The dumplings are ginormous and as good as it gets, the duck rolls light, flakey and amazingly tender tasty duck, the tempura almost transparent the way it is suppose to be if authentic. Lastly the wings, as usual there’s drumsticks thrown in, the wings were great but the drumsticks were a little tough and chewy. Other than that, we enjoyed our afternoon snack and look forward to going back for dinner.

Worst Chinese food I’ve ever had! Never again! If I could I would have given this place less than half a star. The noodles were bland, the orange chicken had no orange flavor and the honey walnut shrimp tasted old with very little honey. I was so looking forward to a nice Chinese dinner but instead got… not sure… hesitant to call it Chinese. Choose another place!

First and last time coming here. Order the Peeking Duck fried eggrolls, Peeking Duck and kimchee fried rice with egg and Three Ingredient stir fry delight. The egg rolls were ok, nothing really to jump up and scream about. As for the fried rice, didn’t taste any kimchi and most of the duck meat I got was burned or very dry. As for the three ingredient stir fry, the rice was semi warm and some of it was hard like it was yesterday’s rice and the rest was barely hot. When we told the server, she brought the manager over and her excuse was that there is a big vent over where the food passes to go out and that could have caused it to be cold. Really??? If it sat there for just a bit it wouldn’t be barely warm and the rice hard and dry.
Service was ok but for the money… I’d rather go somewhere else.

My bf and I went in for dinner 2 days ago. We ordered the Peking duck baos. They were delish. Although my bf said it had just a tad too much sauce, I liked them like that. Our entrees were General Tso’s chicken and pan fried noodles. Both entrees were excellent. Next time we’ll have to tell our server not to add the side of white rice to our chicken dish if we’re having the noodle dish. I’m sure they can substitute it :)
Okay, now for the real treat… Their Guiness bread pudding! No need to say anything further. Even if you don’t have room, eat the ice cream section and take the rest home. We had our leftovers the next day for lunch and it was still very good!
We had a sweet server too. She remembered us from a while back, great memory!

Vegetarians don’t waste your time. My family seems to like this restaurant so I wouldn’t necessarily write it off if you’re a meat-​eater, but I have no input on that front so who knows. I ordered the «crispy tofu» bao (it’s not crispy) and the tofu stir fry and was extremely underwhelmed. The tofu in both dishes was completely tasteless-​I mean the kind of tasteless you’d expect from a chef who’s never touched tofu before-​and that’s pretty bad if you’re only going to offer one vegetarian entrée. In addition to the flavorlessness, the stirfry had a total of 5 small triangles of the protein amidst mounds and mounds of cabbage.
The most egregious part of this experience, however, was that there were bits of chicken floating around in the stir fry signaling careless kitchen practices. Eating out as a vegetarian, I try to turn the other way and pretend my food wasn’t prepared on the same surfaces as meat so I’m not particularly uptight about it… but when there are chunks of meat in my food it really throws it in my face like the restaurant is saying «We know you ordered this but like, we don’t give a you-​know-​what what ends up on your plate».

Nice place in a walkable part of old Monrovia, very quaint.
Menu is somewhat limited, staff was awesome
One downside is that the quality of presentation of the food seems to have decreased.
The same menu items (Peking ducks) from
August 16 and Sept 7 (2014) look much better than they do in 2015.

Being a big gastropub fanatic, and a chef, I must say, Wangs is amazing! My husband and I came in on a hiccup. We were going to go to The Salad Bistro, before picking up our kids from a sleep over. We parked right in front of Wangs, and noticed they have a brunch menu, where my husband can have breakfast, and I can have lunch. Then we noticed they also have a nice craft beer selection, so we said «let’s try it».
Our waitress was Victoria, and she definitely knows how to make you feel like you’re at home. I ordered the Lynchee Mimosa (what’s brunch without mimosas right?), and my husband ordered a Belgium beer from Pacific Plate Brewery, as well as the duck breakfast burrito for me, and bacon and eggs for my husband.
Normally, I don’t do breakfast burritos, due to them always being greasy, and sloppy, but the duck was calling me. Let’s just say, that was the first breakfast burrito I was that there wasn’t anyrhing LEFT! the eggs were cooked to PERFECTION. Again, as a chef, your skill is known on how well you can cook eggs (its not as easy as people think, let’s just say that). The duck was phenomenal. My husband’s hacon was
. It definitely tastes home smoked, and they put it on a grill, not a flat top (I’m grilling my vacon from now on!). His eggs, always over medium, were the PERFECT over medium EVER! We will definitely keep coming back. Old Town Monrovia keeps showing us reasons why I’m so happy to have moved out here. Keep it up Wangs, you’re doing something awesome.

When I lived in Monrovia years ago, my then-​new bride introduced me to Wang’s. It was unlike any Chinese food I had enjoyed before, at least in the vein of Hunan-​origin dishes converted to Americanized, paper-​box Chinese food. Several steps above the usual battered, fried, and slathered food if eaten before, this had a quality and a freshness that set it apart.
We only ordered delivery or take-​out, the lady on the phone was practically unable to communicate in English anymore than I spoke Mandarin, and all was rough with the world. A long menu, including one of my favorites: Grandma’s Tofu.
That’s mostly gone now. But seems new ownership snuck in while I was away. They shrunk the menu, upped the prices, and hired new chefs that might well have worked in the USC dining hall behind the Chinese food troughs, if the flavor is any evidence.
There’s more grease now, less «light and fresh.» Old Wang’s had the distinction of being satisfying for hours; the new place leaves you hungry again in 45 minutes.
Style points for the good looking young lady serving as hostess and closing the deal on take out… But I don’t know if this is now a Chinese restaurant with a bar, or a bar that serves Chinese food.
We ordered orange chicken, Grandma’s tofu (they offered to make it off-​menu, which was cool), Kung pao chicken, hot and sour soup, and beef with broccoli for the kids. It was all pretty good, but not toe-​curlingly amazing anymore.
The leftovers are in the garage fridge, and after strongman the scale and drinking water all day, I’m trying to sweat off round one at the gym before tackling the styrofoam food boats again. Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of the kids will find it before me.
Sorry new Wang’s, I miss the old stuff.

I LOVE THIS NEW WANG’s!!! It is different than before & change is hard but good!!! Is Wang’s different than before??? Yes it is! The name is different as well, now Wang’s Palace :)
I have had just about Everything on the menu & have not been dissponted!
The Service is Awesome!!! Crystal, Lauren & the entire staff is Amazing. Im here several times a week & I love it & I am not easily impressed.
It is different than before in a good way & I hope the locals that have been coming for years embrace these changes & STOP leaving bad Unilocal comments on a change that happened a year ago.
They no longer deliver. Get over it! :)
Good Job Wangs Palace & Happy One Year Anniversary!!! Thank you for the changes & Excellent Service