Maybe palace is not the right noun

In an effort to expand my culinary horizons, I recently ventured into Tian Jin Palace, near the corner of Georgia Ave and Bonifant St. Had I not started this blog, I feel pretty confident I would not have chosen to dine (OK, get some take-out) at this establishment. But, as I've said before, I want SoCo Eats to uncover the highs and lows of our local restaurant scene.

In case you're not aware, Tianjin (spelled as one word for the city) is a large city in Northern coastal China and actually has the 3rd largest urban area in the country (over 11 million residents), only behind Shanghai and Beijing. And while it does have four sister cities in the US, Silver Spring sadly is not one of them. Maybe if we ever incorporated ourselves! Nonetheless, we still have the Palace serving up both Chinese and Thai dishes. One could have previously gone to the Palace for sushi, but alas, those days are no longer (you'll need to head for Sushi Jin on Fenton for that - if you dare).

The menu at the Palace is pretty standard for an American-style Chinese restaurant. It's likely you would not even need a menu to place your order. You have your egg rolls, tempura and various soups to start, and then you have your typical mix of beef, chicken, seafood, pork and veggies for your entrees. In addition, the Palace has a low-fat menu too! On this menu one has a choice of a few dishes with no MSG, less oil and less salt. Moreover, according to a proudly displayed sign in the window, the Palace is also in compliance with MoCo Resolution 16-134, restricting the use of artificial trans fats. Long live natural fats!

But trust me, even though they are in compliance, you might still want to take a hard look at the choices on the Low-Fat menu, because it appears to me that the MSG, oil and salt saved from these dishes, are liberally applied to just about all their other entrees.

I will say on my one outing to the Palace, their egg rolls were fine, but my crispy eggplant was dreadful. I wanted to try something I had not ordered elsewhere and man, my mistake. The eggplant were not at all crispy and come to think of it, I'm not even sure it contained any eggplant. It was hard to tell amidst the thick covering of batter. And that was it. No other veggies, just eggplant - with some sweet-sour sauce and rice. However I can say, they didn't scrimp on the quantity. Those eggplant were busting out of that Styrofoam container.

Now maybe it's me, maybe it was my choice of entree, maybe I'm just a hater, but there are some folks out there who do really like the Palace. I noticed several entries on Washingtondc. menupages.com that were pretty positive - "food was very good"; "chicken and hot garlic sauce is awesome"; "very fresh" - maybe I went on a bad night.

I will say the place was pretty clean, their prices are low ($7-12 for dinner) and the folks who run it were quite nice. However, there was an odd-looking, kinda 60's-holdover couple in there when I picked up my takeout. Now they weren't eating, but folding the takeout menus. The lady raved to me about the Palace and said, "everything is good." I love when I hear that. Really makes me feel confident about the food. The only other table was a younger couple. They seemed to be enjoying their dinner. But what struck me was they appeared to be drinking some kind of Fanta-type drink; it was bright red. I'm not sure, but it could have been Brawndo! Either way, it looked like the Palace lacked a liquor license. A definite turn-off in my book.

But hey, if you're close and craving some greasy Chinese, why not?