Mandarin Bistro

I visit family in Thousand Oaks a few times a year and eating at Mandarin Bistro is always a must for me. The dishes I recommend are: the sesame "pocket" with pork and pickle filling (like a flaky Chinese pita), the spicy noodle soup (comes with shrimp, pork, and cabbage in a delicious broth, the Taiwanese-style rice noodles, and the double mushroom tofu clay pot. Most of all, I crave their Shanghai-style stir-fried rice cakes because it's hard to find a restaurant that has this on the menu. Their version is so yummy and has only gotten better over the years. If I lived in the area I would come all the time!

Bbq sreamed pork bun Pig feet clay pot Dumplings Clay pot was warming, rich and full flavored with tons of pork and delicate tofu. Everything I had was impressive. Be sure you ask for the traditional menu. Pork bun was very large. Dumplings were so well flavored.

Wanted to try different food so we came here. Ordering online was easy but first thing I noticed was this place is $2-3 more per dish than the usual Chinese places I go. The food was ready fast which was a plus. We got the garlic chicken, vegetable soft noodles and Mongolian beef. Immediately upon opening the beef we noticed it did not have any sort if dark sauce that all the other beef’s come with and the onions were under cooked. It just did not look appealing. It was fairly bland and I was not impressed but more disappointed with the flavor or lack of. The garlic chicken was crispy and good but spicy for a “garlic” chicken. The vegetable noodles were just okay. For the price I was expecting it to be more flavorful.

Excellent food. A wide variety of dishes, including seafood dishes. Dishes are served family style; meaning each dish serves 4 people. Each person takes a portion from each dish. Comes with complementary rice or fried rice.

We ordered on their website on Christmas, knowing it's a very busy day. We went to pick up our order and were told that it would be 45 minutes longer due to the number of orders. We were fine with that, and went home. We came back 50 minutes later and were told they had not started making our order yet and it would be at least 20 minutes longer. We talked with another customer that had put their order in the day before and had been waiting at the restaurant for an hour and a half, only to be told they hadn't started their order yet. We ended up leaving and had leftovers at home. We will never patronize this restaurant again.