Restaurant Review : Magic Wok in San Francisco, California

Magic Wok restaurant is a quick-serve Chinese food joint that serves up decent combination plates of all the usual Chinese favorites for around $5 per head. If you eat in, the meal comes with free tea, making this one of the better meal deals (from a sheer volume perspective) in the Civic Center area. It's generally only open for lunches, however.

The food is admittedly pretty generic and not of the best quality, but it's decent and you get some pretty good sized portions for the money. The restaurant is also clean, has a good number of tables and is fairly spacious, making it a decent place to sit and eat. It also seems to be a favorite of police officers on their lunch break, so you don't have to worry about any Tenderloin craziness breaking out.

As with most inexpensive Chinese places, any type of fried meat will be more fried dough than actual meat. If you stick with the roasted chicken and pork (healthier for you anyway) along with vegetables, however, you can do pretty well for a tummy-filling meal here at a budget price.