Ever since I've been working in the city of Martinez back in 2002, I've been coming to this restaurant. Just like Chef Choy.., it's your typical generic Americanize Chinese food; but it's very flavorful, the quantity is decent, the staff is very fast, efficient & friendly. There's a couple reasons why I prefer this local Chinese restaurant over the rest. Their lunch specials has one of the lowest prices in the East Bay. Even though their prices have gone up over the years, it has been infrequent and it wasn't that much of a raise. Their meat portions seemed to have increased the last few times I've ordered their Broccoli Beef, so I don't mind them raising the prices.My favorite attribute about China Gourmet is that they are the only Chinese restaurant that I know of that actually packs a soup whenever you order their Luncheon Special to go! All the other Chinese restaurants that I go to in the East Bay, never packs a soup whenever you order takeout. You can only get their soup if you dined in. Therefore.., I normally call in and order ahead of time, so I can just pick up my lunch to go.

This place used to have the B-E-S-T hot and sour soup around. However, the ownership has changed and so has the chefs. I hope the new chef can compare to the old chef in quality.

chow mein and fried rice are amazing. they'll even take the egg out of my vegetarian fried rice. vegetarian egg rolls are also always delicious.

Came in before our New Years shindig.. Service was great.. but then again, the restaurant was empty. The dishes were tasty, service was friendly.

Ah, I've been slacking on my (ex) Elite duties. Alas, I had not received the email to renew my Elitedom, and so I must push forward in being a good Yelp citizen!---So disappointing. Oh so disappointing.So I just moved into the area about a month ago, and yesterday I had a hankering for some local, dirty Chinese food. Since I live near this plaza, I drove and circled the strip mall hoping for a Chinese restaurant. BINGO! It was near the Japanese restaurant. Old 80's decor? Check. Pink folded up paper menu? Check. Typical items and dinner specials? Check. I was so happy I've found my local dirty Chinese restaurant.I ordered the 2 mushu pork dinner special with chow mein instead of steamed rice to go, and with tip it ended up being $12.00. I went home and excitedly opened up the package.First off, they give you a lot of food. I was really happy. The smells of salt and msg were rising to my nose (disclaimer: I don't know if they REALLY use msg... just saying). I dug my chopsticks into the mushu pork, filled my Chinese wrapper with black sauce and filling, wrapped it up and took a HUGE bite. Bland. I made it so I had to finish it.Well, at least I have chow mein. Took another huge bite! Bland. This can't be. I started eating the mushu pork on its own without the wrapper. Bland. And actually a little sour. It seemed like they made it a while ago.Okay, let's eat the egg roll. Crunchy, good. Bland, ugh. What about the soup? SUPER hot (like they microwaved it). Very bland, despite the plentiful amount of egg. After a while, I just kept stuffing chow mein and mushu pork into my mouth, as if the more I ate, the more flavor I'd discover at the bottom of the styrofoam container. Alas, the blandness continued throughout my dinner, and I ended up throwing half of it away. I remember right before I left, the guy at the front asked, "Soy sauce?" to which I answered, "Uh.. no thanks." Now I know why.So sad. So disappointing.Maybe it was an off night. Maybe I just got the wrong items. I'll come back later to try their chicken fried rice, the basis of how I judge all Chinese restaurants. We'll see, China Gourmet! We'll SEE!

Let's face it, everyone who works in the area goes here because it's somewhat quick and reasonably priced - but the food's nothing to write home about (the soup sucks-too much msg-, and everything is heavy and greasy, minimal meat, lots of onion, celery - the cheap filler veggies) and comes back to you an hour later) and the woman "Owner/Manager" is definitely not worried about customer service, since they're usually fairly full during lunch. I was chatting while looking over the menu and decided to try something new - I'm usually good at watching out for the spicy emblem, but not this time. My twice cooked pork arrives, I take one bite and realize it's spicy, signal the only person in the vicinity-the female mgr/owner and say, "I didn't realize this was a spicy dish & I can't eat it, can I trade it for something else?" She says, "Now it's wasted to me, no one else can eat it, it's not my fault you order wrong thing, ...? More ?