Jack's Chinese Food

I have to apologize to my husband for scepticism. I love good Chinese food (western style, in this case) and hate bad stuff, so generally if I find a good place I keep going until it stops being good. Not a lot of risk. I let Bernard talk me into trying a place near us one time and it was so bad (think chafing dishes of dehydrated rice that looked several days old) it re-enforced my doubts. When Bernard suggested we try a new place last night I was rather rough on him. But urbanspoon's 92% like out of 68 reviews swayed me - and I am sure glad it did.

Jack's Chinese Food was great. It is located at the intersection of Interurban and Wilkinson roads in behind the co-op gas in the little strip mall that has the Max's. You can access it off of Interurban a bit up the road from the intersection at Wilkinson; or you can cut through the gas bar to get there. It is a small place with only 15-20 tables, almost all of which were full last night, and several big brown bags of take-out left while we were there too.

We had a 2 year old, a 10 year old and a 13 year old with us. The 10 year old chose to get a "dinner for one" plate that he very much enjoyed - though he could only get through about half of it. It arrived super fast and helped to keep the two year old happy with some toodles (that is 'noodles' for those of you not literate in toddler-ese). The rest of us chose to order together off of the menu.

We started with garlic dry ribs and lettuce wraps. The wraps were great and we didn't run out of lettuce or sauce before the meat and noodles. The dry ribs, not something I am a huge fan of, were crispy, not greasy and very garlicy - Bernard thought they were great and he is the one who likes them. We then moved onto Singapore noodles, sesame chicken and fried ginger beef. All the portions were typical to Chinese food and very tasty. The two high points were the fact that the ginger beef came sizzling on a cast iron dish and was delightfully crisp in it's sauce. The other was the sesame chicken, not so much for the chicken itself which was good but not extraordinary, but because of the broccoli that surrounded it. Nicely steamed, not overcooked broccoli which even the 2 year old likes and introduced some vegetables to our rather meat and noodle heavy meal.

The service was good. The one not so great issue for us were the limited drink choices for the younger set, no juice or milk, just water or pop. Though certainly this wasn't a problem for the youth with us!

Overall I would eat there again any time and I suspect that the next time we think Chinese there will be a debate of where to go as we will have more than one great choice.