Dragon City
Dragon City is a neighborhood Chinese food option in the heart of Kettering, and so it can serve much of south Dayton with its delivery and pickup service. There’s about no online presence, but the menu is just about the same as every similar-looking place in town. There’s a definite convenience factor here, in that they deliver, but I don’t suggest the place if you have a choice.
Win Wok
A community Chinese food place serving the Blue Ash area of northeastern Cincinnati, Win Wok is a pretty simple place with a pretty simple menu of items intended primarily for takeout. There’s also a lunch buffet on weekdays for cheap. It’s a community Chinese place that is probably patronized by locals exclusively, but if you’re just dropping by I would say this isn’t going to be the kind of place you’ll want to try. There’s plenty of competition around here, and I’d say in both dine-in and take-out options, Win Wok is thoroughly out-competed.
China 1
There are innumerable corner Chinese food places sprinkled around south Dayton, but China 1 is probably best known as one of the few that deliver. It’s got the basic menu of Chinese dish favorites, all the favorites you would expect. The food here is good; you can probably picture what the dishes are going to taste like. It’s a safe option for some good convenient food; I think you’ll come to find it as a reliable option for a quick bite.
King Garden
In spite of being next to the Mall at Fairfield Commons, King Garden is actually pretty far out of the way to the average driver. Crammed into a little strip mall behind the mall’s movie theater, the restaurant is a modest hole in the wall run by a small family with neither flash nor expensive signage. Like many a good Chinese place, this one flies well under the radar. Instead, its local appeal in in convenience and frugality — Quick, filling Chinese food on the cheap. I can see the appeal that would bring you here a first time. You won’t want to come back for seconds.
China Village (CLOSED)
Springboro, Ohio has a lot of Chinese food. That’s unusual to say for a place which 10 years ago was an outlying suburb vaguely connected to south Dayton, but the population boom brought with it many new residents, and many restaurants to serve those residents. Outliving them all is China Village. While over half a dozen newer, fast food-focused Chinese places set up shop in town — sometimes as close as across the street — China Village has maintained its business model. It’s basically the only place in town that you can sit down for a low-key, quality-made meal. Yes, they do takeout, and yes, many other local places allow for dine-in, but this is Springboro’s only Chinese place that seems intent to focus on the restaurant experience first.
Young Chow
A quick Chinese takeout place at the busy Far Hills/Stroop intersection in central Dayton, Young Chow is simple and to the point. The food is quick, the restaurant is small and the place is always busy. The flavors here are simple and good By the way, this business is apparently unrelated to New Young Chow Restaurant in Springboro to the south.
Timmy’s Wok
Timmy’s Wok of Loveland, Ohio (which is apparently unrelated to restaurants of the same name in Hamilton and Dayton) is a small Chinese place for a small suburban Cincinnati town. It’s also a relatively recent addition, coming as the growing 275 corridor area has grown from a remote forest to a residential and commercial suburb of the city. Designed for fast, friendly and affordable takeout, Timmy’s Wok tends to cross my mind whenever I’m driving through Loveland. Is it good enough for a detour? Maybe. Just maybe.
Wok & Roll
Nestled in the Jeffersonville Tanger Outlet Mall off Interstate 71′s remote exit 65, Wok and Roll is the only Chinese food place you’ll see in a very long time.
It’s part of a food court in a mall I that is successful by some means I don’t understand. The town of 1,200 has literally nothing in it except the outlet mall, and there’s literally no reason for an outlet mall to be there. But it does well with such stores as Coach, Aeropostale and Ann Taylor. And then there are cornfields about a hundred miles in all directions. I think it’s halfway between Columbus and Cincinnati? And State Route 35 is there? Also Washington Court House is close? Anyway, I digress.
China Buffet
There are a lot of Chinese places in Dayton, and the generically named China Buffet could not be more basic. It’s got a big variety of dishes in its extensive buffet, but the place unfortunately leaves much to be desired. With bland dishes and uninspiring flavors, China Buffet is every bit as forgettable as its name. I love buffets and I’ve probably visited a few too many in my life. They have a definite charm. There are good buffets in Dayton, but this is unfortunately not one of them.
Mark Pi’s
As a growing chain of restaurants based in Columbus, Mark Pi’s has since branched out to Indiana and even California with around a dozen concepts and a growing number of locations. The place specializes in quick Chinese food in a casual and modern environment, with locations planted around populations of time-strapped people, such as this one at Ohio State University. The menu is relatively typical of a Chinese place and it’s packaged to-go, which definitely makes it the type of place that will attract a large crowd of people who want convenience regardless of what it tastes like.
