For a little dinner break on the way back from Arizona, we stopped in Rancho Mirage to hit up the grandparents for a meal. They thought Chinese food sounded good, so we headed to Lotus Chinese Restaurant to see what they had to offer. The place was pretty full when we arrived, so I assumed it must be pretty good despite being in the middle of a desert. We grabbed our seats and got a look at the menu, which was pretty typical American Chinese fare.
After a short perusal, I decided to get the kung pao chicken. This is definitely an unvegan favorite that rarely seems to have vegetables. This one was a little unique, having water chestnuts in it, which I’ve always thought were awesome (despite not actually being a nut).
Unfortunately, rather than add a new dimension to this dish, these water chestnuts proved to be the undoing of my dinner. Hot damn there were a lot of them. So many, in fact, that they overwhelmed every other ingredient in this dish by at least 2-1. Not only that, the water chestnuts and chicken were cut so similarly it was hard to tell the difference just by looking. I found myself digging for chicken for lengthy periods of time and still coming up shorthanded. Then when I did actually find chicken, I was still disappointed because the sauce just wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very spicy and really had very little flavor aside from some saltiness.
Oh well, I’ve never really thought I could get good Chinese food in the desert and Lotus certainly has not changed my mind.
