Restaurant Review: Beijing Inn

Restaurant:

Address: 812 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Rating: (out of 5 stars): ★★
Style: Old school Chinese restaurant with old fashioned cocktail list
Food: Not that great but highly affordable
Atmosphere: Dated décor and random crowd
Parking: Street parking
Service: Leaves much to be desired
Price Range: Very affordable
Unique Features: Full Chinese menu and Japanese offerings as well as dim sum.

 opened in the mid-90’s and I remember classmates going there for dinner before catching a movie at the Bryn Mawr movie theatre. I hadn’t ever been but had heard good things about the food there. Years later, the reputation is slightly different but I had to check it out for myself. We went in for dinner a while back and while the Bryn Mawr movie theatre has improved itself and transformed into the I can’t say the same for the Beijing Inn.

Upon entering the restaurant you can tell that it has seen better days. The lovely glass chandeliers overhead have not been well maintained, the walls appear a bit dingy and the carpet is worn. Everything appears tired.

We ordered the seafood hot and sour soup for two, two spring rolls, shredded pork with garlic sauce and half a Peking duck with a side of brown rice. The hot and sour soup was fairly good. Brimming with vegetables, shrimp and a nice balance of both spicy and slightly tart flavors, the soup was also a pleasing consistency. A difficult soup to make, many restaurants serve versions that either taste like plastic or are overly hot and not much else.

The spring rolls did not have much flavor at all. While I could visibly see the shrimp and pork, the tastes were quite muted and I mostly tasted fried spring roll wrapper. As spring rolls are some of my favorite things to eat, it was a bit disappointing to try bland ones.

The shredded pork with garlic sauce was decent, but the pork was not shredded at all. I joked that it was pork blankets with garlic sauce. Each piece of pork blanket was bigger than my hand and as there were no knives on the table it became quite challenging to eat. The dish had plenty of vegetables which were cooked nicely. The thick and savory sauce was not bad. Had the dish been executed with some more care, I think it would have been more enjoyable.

The Peking duck was incredibly dry. I’m not sure how a kitchen can render one of the fattiest animals ever as dry as the dish we were served but it happened. I suspect that overcooking was the culprit. The skin tasted almost burnt in places and the meat was so chewy. They did serve the dish with plenty of steamed pancakes but we had to ask for more than one stalk of scallion and there were no julienned cucumbers.  The brown rice we requested never appeared and we got a bowl of white rice instead.

The service was lackluster, mistakes were made, incorrect dishes brought to the table, checks for other tables were brought to us, etc. Though everyone was quite polite, they all seemed genuinely confused. It appears to be a single family running all aspects of the restaurant including the front and back of house, which is taxing to say the least. The highlight of the meal was the check. For the amount of food we ordered, it was quite affordable. There was enough promise in some of the dishes to signify that they do know how to cook—it’s just a shame that lack of staff is jeopardizing everything else.