Quincy Dynasty

Tonight we had dinner at Quincy Dynasty, located at 47-49 Billings Road in North Quincy. This place came recommended by some non-Chinese friends of ours. They seem to offer more Szechuan-style food (as opposed to many of the other places we've tried, which specialized in Hong Kong-style food). They offer both eat-in and take-out service and we ate in.

To start, this place seems to be geared towards the American crowd. Our reasons for this assumption were first, that there weren't any chopsticks available, and also, they didn't automatically serve tea, there were many gringo dishes on the menu (like "Chicago-style chow mein") and that it came recommended by our American friends. :)

We ordered vegetable spring rolls as an appetizer. Then I ordered "Four Treasures Vegetables" with white rice, and we ordered chicken lo mein for Annie. For Ian, we ordered off the kids' menu (seriously! The first Chinese restaurant we've been to with a kids' menu!). He got Peking ravioli and chicken fingers. Jim remembers ordering Spicy Mongolian Beef, but I don't see it listed on their menu now, so I'll just say that it was a spicy beef dish. We also ordered tea, once we saw that they weren't going to bring any out.

The food came out very hot, of course, so Jim and Ian had to work on cooling it down:

(In the above photo, you can see three out of four of the dishes we ordered ... just Annie's is missing).

Jim was very impressed with the food; I wasn't as excited. Both of our dishes came with a heavy sauce, which may just be a trademark of Szechuan food. While my food tasted OK, it wasn't anything special. However, Jim thought his was great. He also ate Ian's Peking Ravioli, which is one of Jim's favorite Szechuan appetizers.

Other good points about this restaurant are, obviously, the kids' menu, and also the service was quite good. Our waitress did not speak a lot of English but she was very attentive. Also, the kids did venture to try the food. They mostly ate rice, but they both tried their dishes, which is very positive! They also loved the tea.

On the down side, parking could potentially be a problem, particularly if you arrive after 6.  We got there at about 5:30 and actually found 2 spots right out front, but by the time we left, there were a lot of people looking for parking. Also, I'm not sure this place was as clean as I would've liked. There was food under our table from a prior patron. Not so nice when Ian threw his straw on the floor. We knew he'd freak out if we didn't give it back to him, but didn't really want him putting it back in his mouth. (Jim wiped it off and returned it to him).

All in all, this place was a mixed bag. Not sure if we'll go back.