Restaurant Review: Verdict is still out on China Bistro in Greenwood

Every once and awhile, I leave the I-465 loop in Indianapolis.  Granted, it's not often.  Pretty much everything in my life is inside this circle around the city, so there's no need.  Today, I found myself on a work-related trip to Greenwood.  On my way back towards the city, I decided to try China Bistro.  Right now, the link to their website appears to be broken, but maybe they'll fix it soon.  Why China Bistro?  Recently, I was craving squid.  Not the typical Italian restaurant, fresh from the freezer bag of calamari rings.  The kind of calamari that is chewy, grilled or fried, and where you actually taste the squid.  I'm particularly fond of Asian preparations.  I searched Google for it, and found just a handful of restaurants with it.  China Bistro was one of them.

I drove past China Bistro at first, looking for a stand alone restaurant or something in a nice, mixed use space.  Instead, it's smack upside Walmart in a really generic strip mall.  It's kind of sad since inside, you find something much nicer than "Walmart" and "strip mall."

The China Bistro space is expansive.  There's a huge chandelier in the entry.  The main dining room has many booths and tables and decorative vases on shelves with lights.  The space is relaxing and comfortable.  It was much more than I expected from strip mall Chinese.  One Yelp reviewer named Joseph nailed it when he wrote that China Bistro "is much too nice of establishment to be located where it sits."  My favorite spot in SoBro to grab a Chinese lunch, Bamboo House, is the kind of place where you'd rather eat in the car.  The dining room is dirty and usually stacked with boxes.  The restrooms are downright scary.  It's definitely a take out kind of place.  But the food makes it all worth it.  China Bistro puts that interior to shame.

Entry at China Bistro.  You weren't expecting this in a strip mall by Walmart, were you?

But anyway.  The China Bistro menu is expansive and varied, with Thai entrees like Tom Yum soup and Japanese fare like seaweed salad.  I ordered tea, seaweed salad, and the salt and pepper calamari.  The server came by after I was seated, and without asking for a drink order or any pleasantries, just looked at me and said "you know what you want?"  So perhaps they sacrifice some of the chit chat for efficiency.

The tea was loose leaf tea in a large pot.  The seaweed salad was a generous portion, fresh, glistening with sesame oil, and icy cold.  All as expected.  Served quickly.

Seaweed salad and tea.

The salt and pepper calamari didn't hit the spot I needed today though.  The little nuggets, with the occasional piece of tentacle chopped up and mixed in, were soggy and heavy.  Also dark, like perhaps it was time to change the frying oil.  While not as light and crispy as a great preparation, it tasted authentic.  It wasn't anything that came from a bag in the freezer.  So I do give credit where credit is due for that.  And it was on a pretty paper doily.  Usually I expect a lighter coating, with visible black pepper.  There was no discernible pepper.  And no photo of it on my phone when I got home.  Oops.

Recently, I gave Formosa Buffet a shot on the northside.  While the food wasn't anything amazing, their salt and pepper calamari was spot on.  It was light and crispy, with the visible pepper.

And an on point fortune.

The total for my one-person lunch of tea, seaweed salad, and appetizer portion of salt and pepper calamari was $14.05 before a sufficient tip exceeding 15 percent (but not overly generous given the shortness.)

The bottom line: gorgeous spot to eat Chinese.  But curt service and soggy calamari left me wanting more on this visit.  I'd give it a second chance though, just not for the calamari.  It's not often I eat Chinese in a spot so aesthetically appealing.  This is a Chinese place you could take a date.  There aren't a lot of those in Indy.  Verdict is still out on the food though.