($$), Chinese
View Menus

Location and Contact


See Map - Get Directions
Location Icon 1415 4th Ave
Huntington, WV 25701
Phone Icon Phone: (304) 523-1818
Neighborhood Icon Neighborhood: Huntington

Hours

This restaurant has been reported as permanently closed. Click here if it has reopened.

Monday:Closed
Tuesday:Closed
Wednesday:Closed
Thursday:Closed
Friday:Closed
Saturday:Closed
Sunday:Closed

View the Menu

View Menus

Restaurant Details

Delivery
No

Payment
Accepts Credit Cards

Parking

Good for Kids

Attire
Casual

Alcohol

Reservations

Cuisines:
Chinese

Price Point
$$ $ - Cheap Eats (Under $10)
$$ - Moderate ($11-$25)
$$$ - Expensive ($25-$50)
$$$$ - Very Pricey (Over $50)

WiFi
No

Outdoor Seats

Restaurant Description

*This restaurant has closed. If this restaurant is open or has reopened, just let us know.

11:00am - 2:30pm, 4:30pm - 9:30pm

Restaurant Photos

camera_icon

View Menu

See Menus

Write a Review for Wonderful Restaurant

Share Your
Experience!
star1 star2 star3 star4 star5
Select a Rating Select a Rating!

Top Reviews of Wonderful Restaurant

review_stars 07/27/2012 - Matthew S.
Just got finished eating lunch there. Had the shredded pork in garlic sauce with fried rice and West lake Beef Soup. Food was fantastic and the service was good! Just a friendly tip, if you don't like spicy things then don't order it hot, very hot, or medium. Even medium is very spicy.

review_stars 12/16/2011 - Gary Taylor
My wife consulted ahead of time face to face with the chef at Wonderful Restaurant to plan a meal tonight. We were inviting a couple of friends who were a little leery of eating Chinese. Tonight (16 Dec. 2011), our friends declared that they loved the meal. Chef prepared a whole fish with black bean sauce, Shanghai qing (baby bok choy), West Lake beef soup, pot stickers, egg rolls, and sesame balls. Our friends ordered some Mao's favorite style pork, and I ordered some stir-fried green beans with black beans accompanied by fried rice. We enjoyed a delicious meal served with warm friendly Chinese hospitality.

review_stars 12/12/2011 - Gary Taylor
This evening (28 May 2010), my wife and I ate at Wonderful Restaurant for the first time, and the food lives up to the name "Wonderful." It's located in Huntington at The Flats Apartments at 1415 Fourth Avenue.

Incidentally, the Chinese name means roughly "10,000 Special Blessings," and actually sounds rather like the English word wonderful -- Wàn Tè Fú (pronounced "wahn tuh foo," with "wahn" and "tuh" dropping sharply in tone and "foo" lilting upward).

We judge a Chinese restaurant by how the chef handles humble things like meat dumplings. We ordered some pot stickers, which looked so beautiful when they arrived that I asked whether we could have some traditional dipping sauce of soy sauce and vinegar.

When our server, a cheerful young woman from Wuhan, reported that to the chef, he poked his head out of the kitchen to see the high-nosed barbarians who knew how to eat homestyle dumplings. He raced back in and whipped up a dish of sauce to which he added some minced fresh ginger.

In Chinese, pot sticker is guōtiē, literally, "pot stick" -- say "gwaw t'yeh" with both syllables floating along, neither rising nor falling. These were delicately crisp on the bottom, steamy on top, and the meat filling was tender chopped pork, seasoned with fresh ginger and other tasty bits. The server revealed that the secret to making the filling so tender was to incorporate just a bit of water and whiz the filling with a blender for several minutes before the traditional steps: shaping the dumplings, pan searing their bottoms to a golden brown, adding a little cooking water and covering to steam them until the water is gone, and then running them straight to the table.

My wife tried one skewer's worth of the restaurant's specialty barbecued kebob. She ordered Uyghur-style barbecued lamb on a stick in the manner of Xinjiang province. The lamb was tender, its exterior crusty with cumin and other herbs and spices not so very different from, say, Mexican, but not too much to obscure the delicate flavor of the lamb. Unbe-freakin'-lievably tasty!

I ordered red-cook pork meatballs -- only to learn that the dish had been so popular that the chef had run out of the pork mixture for them. He was terribly apologetic. The server explained that they try to prepare ahead only one or two days' worth of anything so that everything will be fresh, but they had not counted on local people wanting the pork dishes for which the chef makes that mixture.

He came out to the table to apologize in person. I didn't want him to lose face. I told him and the server both that there were so many wonderful things on the menu that I wouldn't have any trouble finding a replacement.

To accompany her lamb, my wife ordered a plate of hot pepper fried potatoes. The server took great pains to find the exact degree of spiciness that she might tolerate, and it proved to be perfect. A mountain of potato shreds had been stir-fired at blazing temperature so as to cook quickly with scallion and hot pepper with a hint of vinegar in just a bit of oil. Just to be sure, in case she needed some extra fire, the server brought her a little cup of extra jiaoyou ("hot pepper oil," pronounced "jee-ow yo" with "jee-ow" in one smooth syllable, neither rising nor falling and "yo" lilting upward) .

I chose a Southern-style tofu and vegetable dish with a bit of meat, Mapo Doufu -- say "mah pwaw doaf," with both syllables of "mah pwaw" lilting upward and "doaf" dropping sharply. The menu at Wonderful spells it, Mahr Boh Tofu, or some such, but don't worry about the English; the Chinese characters are all written there plainly. When I asked whether the chef used fermented black bean in his Mapo Doufu, the server assured me that the chef would add or delete as I liked. Upon receiving the order, the chef went into such a transport of delight that some round-eye might actually enjoy salt-cured fermented black bean -- douchi (say "doh chrrrr") -- that he made extra for my wife and me. The server ran out with a tub of Mapo Doufu that would have served a Chinese family and a couple of bowls of steamed Thai jasmine rice.

Oh.

My.

God.

Bean curd cubes swam amongst bits of meat, green peas, hot pepper, fermented black beans, and carrot in a thick oniony sauce.

We sipped on hot wulong ("black dragon") tea, Chinese style: real tea leaves swirled around the bottom of the pot.

And the server brought us ice water just because it's so durned hot and, hey, we're in America!

The extra hot oil came home with us -- along with a few bits of lamb, a pint or so of leftover Mapo Doufu, a heap of hot pepper potatoes, a scoop of rice, and a bit of dipping sauce.

(15 Aug. 2011)

At Wonderful Restaurant, we had utterly scrumptious sesame ball appetizers before green beans in hot black bean sauce and beef with onions and green peppers.

Mercy, it was all delicious!


Huntington Restaurant Guide: See Menus, Ratings and Reviews for Restaurants in Huntington and West Virginia
United States Restaurant Guide:
AK | AL | AR | AZ | CA | CT | CO | DE | FL | GA | HI | ID | IL | IN | IA | KS | KY | LA | MD | ME | MA | MI | MN | MS | MO | MT | NC | ND | NE | NV | NH | NJ | NM | NY | OH | OK | OR | PA | RI | SC | SD | TN | TX | UT | VT | VA | WA | WV | WI | WY
Canadian Major Cities and Provinces:
Alberta | British Columbia | Manitoba | New Brunswick | Newfoundland | Nova Scotia | Ontario | Prince Edward Island | Quebec | Saskatchewan | Yukon | Calgary | Edmonton | Montreal | Ottawa | Regina | Saskatoon | Toronto | Vancouver | Victoria | Winnipeg |
Most Popular US City Guides:
Albuquerque | Amherst | Atlanta | Austin | Baltimore | Boston | Boulder | Brooklyn | Burlington | Cape Cod | Charlotte | Charleston | Chicago | Cincinnati | Cleveland | Columbus | Dallas / Fort Worth | Denver | Detroit | El Paso | Flagstaff | Fort Lauderdale | Fresno | Gulf Coast | Hartford | Hoboken | Honolulu | Houston | Indianapolis | Jackson | Jacksonville | Jersey City | Kansas City | Knoxville | Las Vegas | Long Island | Los Angeles | Louisville | Lowell | Madison | Memphis | Miami | Milwaukee | Minneapolis | Myrtle Beach | Nashua | Nashville | New Orleans | New York City | Oakland | Oklahoma City | Omaha | Orange County | Orlando | Philadelphia | Phoenix | Pittsburgh | Portland | Providence | Raleigh | Reno | Richmond | Riverside | Sacramento | Saint Louis | Salem | Salt Lake City | San Antonio | San Diego | San Francisco | San Jose | Santa Barbara | Santa Fe | Seattle | St. Paul | Tampa | Tucson | Tulsa | Twin Cities | Virginia Beach | Washington, DC | Wilmington | Winston-Salem