9 Dishes to Reconsider Before Ordering at P.F. Chang’s

There’s your local Chinese place down the street, and then there’s P.F. Chang’s: that behemoth of Americanized Chinese food, that fancified, corporatized version of the mom-and-pop shop that was so many Americans’ first glimpse into a food culture not their own. It’s a Chinese restaurant chain you might have gone to for a special occasion or a casual night out when you didn’t feel like cooking. Perhaps you’ve celebrated birthdays there or posted up at the bar drinking too-sweet cocktails after a particularly messy breakup.

Whatever P.F. Chang’s means to you, there’s a good chance that if you’ve visited the restaurant often enough, you have a go-to order or two that always hits the spot. But what about all the other options on the menu? Some of P.F. Chang’s offerings are delicious, but others are … not so much. We’ve read the reviews and done some tasting ourselves to determine which dishes you should be cautious about ordering if you want to get your money’s worth at the Chinese-inspired chain. These are the nine dishes you should think twice about ordering from P.F. Chang’s.

We love a hearty beef dish, but the Mongolian beef at P.F. Chang’s is just not what we’re looking for. First of all, it comes with a sweet soy glaze that is simply too sweet. Yes, Americanized Chinese food may be known for that signature sweetness, but this amount of sugar is just over the top. If you like that extra-sweet flavor profile, you may think that you would still consider ordering this dish. Once you take a bite of the flank steak, though, you’ll realize that’s a mistake. The steak is quite dry, with a chewy texture that’s a far cry from the rich, buttery experience you hope to have when you order steak. Flank steak can sometimes be somewhat tough, so it doesn’t surprise us that that’s the case with this dish.

Then there’s the lack of veggies. Green onions are included in this dish, but they’re so overloaded with that sweet sauce that they become too soft and limp, offering barely more than a negligible amount of green and freshness in the finished dish. In fact, if you ask us, it may just be one of the worst dishes on the menu.

Fried rice is one of the most common, basic dishes you can find at Chinese-inspired restaurants. Since P.F. Chang’s can be a bit pricier than other more casual Chinese spots, we don’t know why you would want to order that here specifically when there are other, perhaps more interesting dishes on the menu. If you are craving fried rice specifically, though, it may seem like a safe order at P.F. Chang’s. According to some reviews, though, it’s not worth your time or money to check it out for yourself.

One customer described the fried rice at the chain as a “room temperature lump.” The best fried rice is fresh off the pan, still steaming hot, with oil creating a crispy coating on each individual grain of rice. Apparently, that’s not what you’re going to get from P.F. Chang’s fried rice. Another reviewer noted that their fried rice from P.F. Chang’s wasn’t cooked evenly and that there were some pieces of rice that looked seasoned and fried, while other clumps of rice were completely white and unseasoned. Unless you’re looking for clumpy, room temperature, or unseasoned fried rice, we’d suggest you stick to another carb source when you visit P.F. Chang’s.

P.F. Chang’s may be known as a Chinese restaurant, but the chain serves dishes inspired by other Asian cuisines as well. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that you can also get pad Thai from the restaurant. However, if you really love pad Thai and are hoping for a positive noodle experience, then you may want to avoid this dish. One unhappy diner described it as the worst pad Thai they’d ever eaten. Others have complained that the dish came out bland, even after they had ordered it extra spicy.

If you tend to like less-spicy dishes, then you may not have a problem with this pad Thai. After all, everyone has different taste preferences. But if it’s a dish you order often and you’re picky about the way you like it, you may want to skip out on this noodle-based dish and choose something else from the menu. Better yet? Just make your own pad Thai at home.

P.F. Chang’s crispy honey chicken feels like it could be the poster child of Americanized Chinese food. The crunchy breading, super sweet sauce, and slight chewiness of the meat all remind us of classic takeout. This version of the iconic dish, though, is not exactly what we’re craving when we decide to go out for Chinese food. So, what’s the problem? When you get this dish, you’ll likely find that the pieces of chicken are all stuck together. We expected the sauce to be sticky, but this is going over the top — it’s hard to even pick up a piece to eat without taking the whole dish with you.

Plus, the chicken-to-breading ratio is not good here. Sure, sometimes, super-breaded chicken can be delicious, but when you barely get any meat in a bite, it’s going to feel disappointing. That’s exactly the case here. Once you take the sauce into consideration, it’s all over. It’s supposed to be sweet, of course, but the sugar content in this dish is just overdoing it. The sauce also makes the fried chicken bits unpleasantly soggy. Ultimately, there’s very little about this dish that’s redeemable at all.

When you want a light start to your meal, you may head to the soup section to find something nice and brothy. If you order the wonton soup, though, there’s a good chance you’re going to be disappointed. First of all, this soup isn’t exactly what we would expect from a typical wonton soup. In addition to the savory broth and wontons, this soup contains shrimp, chicken, and mushrooms. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not quite as light as you may be expecting if you’ve had wonton soup from other Chinese restaurants. Those extra ingredients feel a bit random, if not objectively unappealing.

However, those extras aren’t very well executed either, with some claiming that the flavor is average at best and doesn’t actually contain much meat at all. With very little shrimp and chicken, it feels like those additions are really just a last-minute attempt to make the dish more filling when they really don’t offer much in terms of flavor. Plus, the wontons are kind of saggy and sad without enough fillings to create the plump, juicy pasta pocket that most people want in a wonton soup. Check out other appetizers from the restaurant if you want to get your dinner started on a more delicious note.

Anyone who loves heat knows just how good a spicy chicken dish can be when it’s done right. Unfortunately, though, the spicy chicken at P.F. Chang’s is absolutely not doing it for us. First of all, this spicy chicken is made a lot less spicy by the super-sugary flavor profile it possesses. A slight sweetness can balance out an especially spicy dish, but the amount of sugar that’s in this dish kind of drowns out any more interesting flavors that the dish has going on.

We have the same problem with this dish as we do with the crispy honey chicken. That sticky sweet sauce creates a super soggy breading, which offers less crisp and more chewiness. And when you take the breading away, the chicken inside just isn’t that flavorful — it really depends on the sugar and chilies to brighten it up and make it more interesting. Although this dish seems like it has a lot of potential, it’s definitely not something we’d be excited about ordering from the chain.

Perhaps one of the most well-known appetizers on the P.F. Chang’s menu is the chicken lettuce wraps. We certainly understand the appeal: It’s a relatively light starter that packs a lot of flavor in a simple bite. What’s not to like? But if you ask us, you should probably think twice about ordering these lettuce wraps. First of all, some report that they come out looking pretty sparse. You may get plenty of lettuce, for example, but if there’s not a lot of the chicken mixture there to stuff those lettuce leaves with, what’s the point?

Others admit that the lettuce wraps taste good, but they reveal another reason why they’re not one of our top picks: Chicken lettuce wraps are so, so easy to make at home. It doesn’t really make sense to pay a premium for a dish that you could easily make in your own kitchen in only about 10 minutes. Sometimes, it’s worth it to pay for convenience, but in this case, we suggest fulfilling your chicken lettuce wrap craving for your own kitchen on a day when you need a super quick and easy meal.

Here’s another meaty dish that’s — you guessed it! — super sweet. It’s the beef with broccoli, and it’s prepared in a ginger garlic sauce and served with green onions and steamed broccoli. It’s … fine, but nothing you should really go out of your way for, if you ask us. The beef is quite tough and difficult to bite into, which makes the bite-sized pieces it’s cut into feel like a moot point. There’s too much sauce on it, too, which will leave your rice drenched if it ends up touching your other food. And if you get this dish cooked the same way we did, you’ll find that the broccoli is sad and wilted, like a wet rat that showered under a sticky sauce.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. One reviewer simply described the dish as very average. That might fly when you’re trying to make a quick frozen dinner, but when that’s how you feel about a restaurant meal, you know you probably ordered the wrong dish.

If you’re the kind of person who always wants to order spicy dishes when you go out for Chinese food, then the Kung Pao beef at P.F. Chang’s is probably at the top of your list. But if you have a relatively high spice tolerance, then you may find this dish kind of bland. Despite the Sichuan chili sauce, some say that the dish really isn’t that spicy at all. For people who tend to like milder dishes, this may not be a problem … but then again, those people probably aren’t ordering a dish that’s advertised as being spicy.

And that’s not the only issue this dish seems to have. Some have also complained that it’s too salty, even going so far as to say that the dish tastes “horrible.” Of course, a salty dish isn’t always a bad thing, but when it has no balance to it, it can be hard to enjoy more than a few bites. There are better, more interesting bites on the menu for spice lovers.