Wok and Roll

I don't know if Wok and Roll's food tasted better going down or coming back up. Seriously. To be fair, since this wasn't the only thing I ate all day, it might not have been the cause of my stomach misery, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that it was.

Wok and Roll is located on ChinaBlock in a building most famous for being the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and company stayed while conspiring to kill Abraham Lincoln. Now, it's a combo Chinese-Japanese restaurant that conspired to kill my intestines.

We started our adventure with steamed dumplings which looked promising enough until we took a bite.

Inside it was about 90% dough and 10% filling. If you're wondering if your eyes are deceiving you, they aren't. That really is corn inside the dumpling. For those who like boring American veggies in their Chinese dumplings, there were peas too!

Next up was the Szechuan Chicken which promised to be spicy but lacked any real kick.

We also tried the Chicken Chow Foon which had pleasantly thick and hearty noodles but was missing flavor.

Sorry Wok and Roll, I don't think I could return after the rough "wok" home I had. For those of you with a cast-iron stomach who are looking for cheap eats late at night in a historic building, good luck, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Second Thoughts From B

Paired with our recent trip to Odeon Cafe, which you can read about here, this was a less than stellar culinary weekend. Thankfully, J salvaged it by cooking the tried-and-true childhood favorite, chicken broccoli casserole, for Sunday night's dinner. But back to Wok and Roll...

So I'm the one with the cast-iron stomach but even putting aside J's time praying to the white porcelain god, I still wouldn't advocate for a return trip. You might be thinking that this is just my Chinese food snob coming out again, but it isn't. Truth be told, I do enjoy Americanized Chinese food. As long as no one is trying to say that the Orange Chicken at Panda Express is authentic, I'm cool with it. I've even come to accept that Chinablock serves Americanized Chinese food no matter what language the street signs are written in. However, Wok and Roll is just not very good food. Take your pick, Americanized Chinese or authentic Chinese... either way, it was bland, uninteresting, and just plain bad. Our friend who guided us to Wok and Roll summed up the experience thusly, "This was much better when I was drunk." We summed it up by paying him to take home the leftovers.