Bamboo House:
Pathmark Plaza Shopping Center 134-40 Springfield Blvd.,
Springfield Gardens 528-8288

Cuisine: Chinese

Open: Sun.-Thur. 11:30am – 11:30pm,
Fri. – Sat.: 11: 00am – 12:30pm

Every now and then you come upon a restaurant that takes you by surprise. I had that experience at the Chinese restaurant in the new Pathmark Mall.

Large, clean and inviting, Bamboo House boasts a menu of almost 200 items including appetizers and soups. The eatery, while not quite five-star, offers a good, quick, tasty meal at a minimum price. A pint of chicken chow mein is only $2.95 and a quart is $5.95; one pint of lobster chow mien costs $5.25 while a quart sells for $9.95; Fu young starts at $4.50 and caps at $9.95; Lo mien sells in quantities of half and pint.

The vegetable fried rice and fried fish I ordered were both generous portions and delicious. They seem to have found a way to fry rice without oil, since it was like no other fried rice I had ever had. In texture it is no different from plain steamed rice. With watercress, baby corn, carrot, peas and onion, it was perfect with fish.

The seafood menu served with white rice, is as much a feast for the eyes as for the palate. It combines shrimp with practically every vegetable in their inventory and in prices ranging (according to size) from $4.75 to $8.75.

Shrimp with Chinese vegetables, shrimp with mushrooms, shrimp with broccoli, shrimp with pepper and tomato, shrimp with snow peas, shrimp with lobster sauce, curried shrimp with onion, shrimp with eggplant and garlic sauce, shrimp with cashew nuts and lobster Cantonese are all available.

Bamboo House with its pink and green tiled-walls, offers a good hot meal at a good price. Though it does not offer wait service and frills, it does offer convenience, affordability and prompt service. Customers can easily have dinner before doing their shopping or they can do their shopping and then pick up dinner to go.

With mirrors on one wall and a mural-sized box-framed picture of a Hong Kong skyline with its American-owned company logos on each jutting building on the other, the place is a nice change of pace when you want to eat quickly, locally, conveniently and inexpensively. Portions are generous enough that you can even take home leftovers, and like I’ve said previously, that is always a good thing.

— Marcia Moxam Comrie