Restaurant Review: Triple Crown

 I needed a restaurant in Chinatown to take a friend who's visiting. Triple Crown had 4 out of 5 stars on TripAdvisor.com and offered lunch specials at a good price (i.e. around $7.50). When we arrived at noon there was a short wait, which often means the food's good.

The decor was outdated and to be kind the place lacked the signs of attention to cleanliness. But if you've been to China, you figure that means the food's great. Some of my favorite restaurants in Jinan couldn't pass the Chinese inspections. 

The menu was long and had a lot of dim sum and protein offerings, but as for vegetable side dishes there were just two options. I wound up ordering Kungpao Chicken and my friend got vegetable fried rice. We shared an order of pork baoze (buns) and what we thought was Chinese broccoli. The baoze were good. The Chinese broccoli was hard to eat, whether we tried with chopsticks or forks. The taste was average. 

My chicken was hardly the Kungpao chicken I've had in China or in any Chinese restaurant in the US. My friend's vegetable fried rice was ho hum as well. 

I don't know whether we would have done better only ordering dim sum. Our dishes were common fare that should have been more flavorful. If they can't do better, take them off the menu.

While we both had leftovers, neither of us asked for boxes to take the food home. That's a sure sign for me that a meal was subpar.

Avoid Triple Crown on Wentworth in Chicago.