Panda Express

My kid asks for this place as a treat, and on its better days I get it. The food is consistently decent, kept warm, served fast by kind people, and there's something genuinely sweet about watching the crew greet each other warmly when they clock in. That work-family feeling is real and I respect it. Orange chicken, chow mein, the standards land.

The management, though, doesn't match the line cooks' hearts. During dinner rush I watched the front-line women look lost and overwhelmed while the back guys laughed it up with no urgency, and a manager named Vincent sat at a table chatting up a new hire while the place buckled. Two a la carte entrees ran me eighteen dollars and the whole order fit in one hand. Good food, shrinking portions, leadership asleep at the wheel.