Zoe’s Chinese Restaurant

I went there with friends because we ran out of places to go to for spicy chinese food. This place to me had decent chinese food, although my friends from Hunan, China were not impressed with the level of spices or heat level of the dishes, and preferred the other restaurants of similar styles at Brookline and Cambridge.

This is a family owned and operated Chinese restaurant with an extensive menu that features both authentic Chinese dishes and americanized Chinese dishes.
While they do take-​out it appears to me that they primarily deal with dine-​in patrons. The dining room is casual and very comfortable and quite large, approximately 20 tables, ranging from 2 tops to 8 top round tables. We come here for lunch at work often and walk in with between 2 and 8 people and are always seated promptly, if not immediately.
Service is quick and to the point, but friendly, and certainly efficient. Ice water, and hot tea (gratis) are provided as soon as you are sat. The waitresses have learned that I like extra hot peppers and that is also brought before I even order which is a nice touch. The food is also very fast to come out (often under 5 minutes).
My experience here is limited to dine-​in lunch (but my experience is extensive, I’ve eaten here 50+ times). The lunch menu is as follows. You get the choice of: (eggroll or 2 crab rangoons) + rice (steamed or fried) + Soup (Hot and sour or egg-​drop) and choice of approximately 30 main entrees. Lunch special’s range from $ 8.25 to $ 8.95 and have selections for Vegetarians and Meat eaters as well as fish and shrimp dishes. My personal favorites are the Mala Style fish filet (szechuan peppercorns and hot chiles with fish, scallions, and celery), mapo tofu with minced pork, and Eggplant with Garlic sauce. The entire menu is available at lunch as well if you want something else.
I would encourage you to try Zoe’s. In the dozen’s of visits and dozens of dishes I have tried there only one or two which have underwhelmed me (both were «baby shrimp» dishes). The food is fresh, consistent, and quite delicious.

My favorite restaurant in Somerville and the best Chinese food around! Don’t let the name fool you, this is terrific Chinese food, both the American classics and more regional specialties. Big portions and will make it nice and spicy. Get the smoked tofu with celery if you’re vegetarian, and the spicy cumin lamb if you’re not (or weak-​willed, like me). Sometimes I order delivery and eat leftovers for days.

I regrettably have to give Zoe’s a rating of 1 star because I typically wouldn’t do this. My husband and I have 4 kids and we order from here all the time and the food has been ok. Service is great. I was disappointed to order $ 60.88for New Year’s Eve and to throw it all away because it was disgusting. In addition to many other items, we ordered 2 rice and 1 Lo mein. All of which were not fresh and smelled sour. When we tried it, it tasted like was old and tasted rancid. We ended up throwing away the food and not letting our children it. E had to go to my parents for dinner.
We called to complain the next day and the lady that answered, Tina stated that they only had 1 Asian cook that night and apologized. I said okay, that’s not my problem. I was shocked that they would sell old food to customers on one of the busiest days of the year. I will not be ordering from this restaurant again.
Stop using old food to sell to your customers! It’s illegal and disgusting. I threw it all up.

This place only service REAL Chinese food, I am so glad I found a place. Ordered fish fillet with chili miso sauce for only $ 20, it was really good, also is cheap if compare other Chinatown restaurant. This place is clean and good service.

I’d give five stars, but I’m not enough of an expert to make that meaningful. Zoe’s has the best Chinese food I know of; I’ve had both American-​Chinese and traditional Chinese orders here and loved them all.

I’m a regular here, usually I get takeouts when I cannot think of anything else to eat. I’ve tried at least half the things on the menu and I have to say everything I’ve tried is really salty, greasy and smells bad when they get cold.

I have ordered take out from Zoe’s twice and have been quite satisfied both times. The food is always ready crazy fast, it’s pretty cheap, and it’s great! The servings are large and can easy be shared among two people. Definitely a good option for takeout.

This place is fantastic and it has become my favorite chinese place in Cambridge. Their delivery is very convenient and efficient. The portions are a little large, however, so an order of fried rice and an order of orange chicken feeds 2 people, or can serve as two meals if you have a fridge.

Oh wow. I’ve lived around the corner from Zoe’s for 3 years, but never tried it because I didn’t think the menu was very vegetarian friendly. However, after a recommendation from a friend I tried the cold sesame noodles and the smoked tofu & celery. I threw some vegetable ravioli in there for kicks. The prices are good, the portions are enormous and the food was so fresh and tasty! The dumplings were some of the best I’ve had, fat and chewy. The noodles had a wonderful flavor, a little greasy (I think the sauce is mainly sesame oil) but not too bad. The tofu was excellent, with fresh sliced chilis in the sauce. I’m glad I finally gave this place a try… and so should you!

Maybe it’s the fact that I came here late about an hour before closing, but the service and the Chinese food here that I got ended up being subpar. We ended up ordering five different dishes from the menu and only ended up receiving four (at least the waitress made an effort to correct the order once we told her). Furthermore the steamed whole fish with chili pepper ended up being excessively oily. Not only could I see the oil droplets from a cursory glance at the dish when it arrived, but my mother also ended up complaining about it as well. The taste of the dish was really just really underwhelming … literally no seasoning in the fish fillet that was in the dish even though it was chock full of chili peppers. My favorite dish was probably the eggplant with garlic sauce, which was the redeeming factor of the night. When you have the best dish being a vegetable dish and not a meat dish, there’s usually something that needs to be fixed. At any point, I don’t really have much motivation to come back …

Decent Chinese restaurant. Had most of the staples including steamed fish, spicy beef, pork, shrimp. Their veggies can be hit or miss, make sure you check and see what’s fresh. Their eggplant is tasty. Most dishes, particularly the spicy ones, go well with rice. We did order a breaded shrimp dish (similar to tempura) that I thought was too ‘breads.‘
We had a large party (13, 2 kids) and the staff was pretty accommodating. Will be back. If you’re looking for a Chinese fix, not a bad way to go.
For next time: noodles, scallion pancake, sour and spicy soup (provided there’s no pig’s blood).

Very authentic Chinese Cuisine. They have Chuan Cuisine and Hunan Cuisine. Both are delicious. I like it so much!

I’m usually not a fan of Chinese food (too greasy, too salty, all the same) but i quite liked Zoe’s.
Spring rolls were super crunchy, hot and tasty. Service was prompt, water was filled and refilled. Tea was tea.
I ordered Vegetable Chow Foon which was pretty solid, nothing AMAZING but good. The lady had the orange chicken. I don’t eat bird, but tried some of the sauce and wow was it orangey. I think there was actual orange peels in the dish.
Discount if you pay in cash, so that’s cool. Over all I am a fan and I would recomend this as not a bad american chinese food resteraunt.

I so wanted to love this place: my husband and I frequently pass by Zoe’s on our way to other dining options in the area and decided to finally give Zoe’s a try this past Friday night. The service is excellent: when we entered, the staff greeted us warmly and immediately showed us a table next to the window. They were very friendly with warm smiles which just made us eager to order our dinner: good service is a sign of good food, right? SO WRONG.
We ordered Hot and Sour Soup, Mapo Tofu, Salt and Pepper Crab, and Shumai off the Dim Sum menu. The Hot and Sour Soup wasn’t too bad but the rest of our order was a total disaster. The Mapo Tofu, which was worthy of an Instagram picture, was not worthy of our palettes: it was just tofu cooked in red, hot, salty oil. The Salt and Pepper Crab was not any better– it was like biting into a salt lick. We were just downing glasses of water and eating the white rice just to remove the saltiness from our mouths at that points. The Shumai were small, white frozen ones you can find at HMart, not the ones you would get at a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown. So not worth ordering.
When you pay with credit card, they charge you additional 5% of the transaction fee. That’s fine, until you notice the print on the receipt, «PRE-​TRIP PRICE» which is the price of your meal + the 5% surcharge. Um, so if we paid in cash the pre-​trip price would be 5% less? Other restaurants don’t differentiate tip amount based on whether you pay cash or card so why would you, Zoe’s?
This place gets two stars for good service and really great ambiance but unfortunately gets docked three stars for the main purpose of a restaurant: its food.

Small place so it fills up fast if you want to dine in, but let’s be real you’re probably doing take out which is super easy.
They do the classic really well — honey boneless spare ribs and their spicy sezchuan dumplings are just delicious. My wife and I get an order of the dumplings for each of us… they’re that good.
The orange chicken was very solid, and any other dishes we’ve ordered have always been good. It’s now our go-​to chinese place and definitely better than changsho in my opinion. Also they give a discount on take out if you pay in cash.

Pretty authentic spicy-​restaurant considering the lack of spicy food in Boston.
Ordered 2 appetizers and four entrees in total. Yes, most of them of pretty spicy with really bold flavor. So come prepared of eating lots of rice or drinking excessive water. :)
Appetizers: beef tendon in chili sauce and dumpling in chili sauce, the chili sauce was good, dumpling wise is mediocre as the dumpling wrap was too heavy (sure I can tell it’s homemade).
Entrees: like the pork tripe with persevered veggies, and the Hunan style pork is also pretty good and spicy. Don’t like the deep fried pork intestine, too oily. And their daily special-​fish fillet in chili sauce tastes bland and is super oily.
Overall, a nice option to have if you are craving for spicy food.

I used to love Zoe’s. Last year their roof collapsed and they recently opened back up. We ordered from there once since and I don’t think that I will be going back. Nothing that we ordered was good. We ended up throwing everything away.
The dun dun noodles were mooshy
the rice tasted burnt
the chicken was chewy
the green beans were over cooked
There is on street permit parking.

Ohhhh the deliciousness. How lucky am I to live so close that I can feasibly tackle the entire menu in the next year?
The façade is now recovered after a tragedy of the restaurant closing last year for renovations.
The food is still delicious, the dumpling divine, and for cilantro lovers, their salad of scallions, cilantro and baked tofu is the BIDNESS.
Also word to the wise, the smaller your party, the shorter the wait.

Thanks to Unilocal recommendations, we ordered the following dishes for delivery:
— Ground Pork with Sichuan Long Beans
— Lamb with Cumin & Spicy Sauce
— Dry Diced Chicken with Hot Chili
— Pork Fried Rice
— Peapod Stems with Garlic
— Steamed Juicy Pork Buns
Everything was delicious and arrived within an hour. My favorite was the ground pork with pickled long beans. The juicy pork buns are xiao long bao /​soup dumplings — not bad for delivery, but probably better in the restaurant. Nevertheless, I was extremely pleased! Will definitely order from Zoe’s again.
Ps: Leftovers get significantly spicier the next day!