Great China is a highly popular Chinese restaurant in Berkeley known for its delicious, family-style dining experience. It often has a significant wait due to its popularity, but customers consistently find the food and service to be worth it. The restaurant is recognized by the MICHELIN Guide with a Bib Gourmand for its good quality and value.
Customer Perception
Customers consistently praise Great China for its delicious food, generous portions, and excellent service. The Peking duck is frequently highlighted as a standout dish and a must-try. While some find the prices a bit high, many agree the quality justifies the cost. The restaurant is very popular, leading to long wait times, especially during peak hours. Parking in the area can be challenging.
Additional Details
The restaurant serves food family-style, encouraging groups to order a variety of dishes to share. It has been noted for its consistent quality and is considered by many to offer some of the best Chinese food in the area.
To minimize wait times, it is recommended to arrive before opening, especially on weekends. Reservations are advisable if available. Dinner service is particularly busy, with lines forming around the block at opening.
Peking duck is great with pancakes. Pricy but worthy the money. We also ordered eggplant with tofu, sadly was greasy and not impressed. Will skip this dish is possible. Overall, very authentic Peking duck.
We’ve eaten at a few Bib Gourmands in the past and we mean it when we say it: this place deserves a star. We had a reservation and the place was so packed it had a line around the block at the opening for dinner service. The wait was about 15-20 minutes from when they opened as they were working quickly to get everyone seated and setup. We were seated at their family sized tables in the back and the service was fantastic. We ordered quite a bit of food since we had a large party so here’s a list of what we got:
Pork dumplings 8/10 - devoured in minutes within our party, everyone loved it.
Salt & pepper spare ribs 10/10 - some of, if not, the best we’ve ever had. Perfect seasoning and chew to them.
Fried rice 9/10 - just delicious, nothing special about it and yet still amazing.
Ginger scallion crab 6/10 - seafood is not really our thing to be fair, but we still did enjoy the meat, the sauce was a bit of a miss though.
Duck bone soup 9/10 - unbelievably good, the cilantro and onion pack it with flavor and the consistency is great.
Broccoli, beef, and string beans 8/10 - a classic just done right, seasoned well and broccoli with a good chew; beef perfect texture and velvety.
Chicken chow mein 10/10 - perfect chew, perfect flavor. Would’ve ordered another if we weren’t so full.
Peking duck with steamed buns and flat bread 11/10 - on this scale an 11 denotes it’s the best we’ve ever had, just in case you thought we failed 1st grade math. Crispy skin and delicious, tender meat.
Great China is undoubtedly some of the best Chinese food we’ve ever had. Add onto the fact that it’s at a better value than other places and it becomes clear that this is a special place. The food itself deserves a star but sprinkle in the service and it begs the question as to why it doesn’t have one. More on the service actually, they were incredibly patient as we ordered many dishes with different requests and were on top of everything from refilling water and tea to removing plates. When the only issue with a place is the parking situation then you know it’s good. (Side note: parking is pretty hard to find and we saw a lot of cars getting tickets for invalid parking so keep an eye out). That shouldn’t deter anyone though as this place might just be worth that fine, half kidding. Do yourself the favor and come here at all costs.
5
If you come to this restaurant, and I highly recommend you do, keep in mind it is very popular and there will be a wait. The only question is how long. We were expecting to wait a long time, but we got there before it opened on a Sunday, and only waited about 10 minutes. We felt very lucky! We came here in a big group, which is definitely the way to do it because you can get a variety of dishes. Everything was absolutely delicious! The Peking duck was our favorite. But we also liked many other dishes. The only dish that I would say was not fantastic was a fried rice, but that could be just my taste, because someone else actually liked it. This is a really terrific place to come with a group for delicious Chinese food. Highly, highly recommend.
4
Food is pretty good, though don’t expect authentic Chinese cuisine; this is more Chinese-American food.
The double skin is an interesting dish and definitely worth trying. The walnut prawns are also good, though I’ve had better versions elsewhere. The guo ta fish is a little underwhelming, as it’s just very simple steamed fish with soy sauce, but not very good quality fish.
Portions are fairly decent, but I still found the pricing a little high.
4
Food here is exceptional. Had dinner with our son (who lives in Berkeley) again...we eat here everything we are in town. The service is average but is sort of typical for Chinese restaurants...live with it. Tried a few new dishes this time and they were amazing...Chinese Green Beans is a new favorite!
