Asia Express in San Francisco, California: A Restaurant Review

Panda Express is the standard of mediocre quick-serve Chinese food, and is generally regarded as a last-ditch or "what the hell, it's right there" sort of eating option. A restaurant should at least aim for exceeding Panda Express by a comfortable margin; when they are struggling just to pull up equal to it, you know there's problems.

Asia Express is appropriately located in the basement of the Student Center at San Francisco State University, appropriate because the basement level is some sort of attempt at knocking off the "mall food court" ambience, and Asia Express is clearly a Panda Express knockoff. The one place Asia Express has Panda Express beaten is the prices, and there only just barely. A combo meal here will cost you about $4 for one item with fried rice or chow mein, $5 for two entrees or $6 for three. Panda Express around here runs about a buck and some change ahead of that pricing structure. Inexplicably, they charge more for plain white steamed rice if you want that instead of fried rice or chow mein.

One tip: if you absolutely have to eat here, ask for the food "to go" even if you plan to eat in the Student Center. Orders "for here" get everything lumped into a smallish bowl that not only looks a lot smaller than the "to go" carton, but also means everything automatically gets mashed together whether you wanted it that way or not. Either way, for what you pay, the portion size is not generous.

All the food is kept hot in steam trays and it seems like they leave it out there for quite some time, at least judging by the hard, dry vegetables. Fried items pull the usual cheapo trick of being mostly fried batter and using some sort of cheap jelly for the "sweet" portion of the recipe. The selection is pretty crappy, as well - they've basically copied Panda Express's generic menu but axed a couple of items.

The only thing I'll even bother with here anymore is if I happen to get a carbohydrate jones while in or around SFSU, the onion pancakes (a regular fried potato pancake with some shredded green onion mixed in) and pot stickers are decent (if a bit overpriced at 95 and 75 cents respectively.) There's no other reason to go here, especially with the Stonestown mall right nearby, I don't understand why both this place and the whole Student Center basement in general were designed to replicate a crappy mall food court when there is a genuine crappy mall food court literally right next door. The service is also needlessly slow and standoffish, the older guy who usually does the serving looks like he hates his job and his life and has nothing but contempt for all the kids he has to dish out grub to. I guess I might feel the same way if I was stuck slinging hash in a lower-tier college food court but still, you could at least pick up the pace a little bit. Actually, don't bother - you're just hastening my indigestion after all ...