Hainan House Restaurant

Great family dinner! Our waitress was the absolute sweetest! She took her time with everything answered any questions and encouraged us to try their soups, which were all delicious, with our meals! Our meals were wonderful, appetizers were great! Our son really enjoyed getting to sit next to the fish tank! Restaurant and staff all great, we will be back!

There are a lot of Chinese places around town but few compare to Hainan House on Bluffton Rd. Go there for dine-in for the best experience. We have been coming here for years and they never disappoint! They have the best egg rolls in town. No joke. The staff is always very friendly and the food is always very good. I like the Mu Shu Pork. I order it with no pancakes to avoid some gluten in the meal. I highly recommend that you check this place out ASAP.

Hainan House is about the only 1st-generation (1980s) Vietnamese immigrants' restaurant that I actually respect lol. Yes. The owners are Vietnamese. Doesn't mean they don't make very authentic Chinese food though, and the place itself is very much a Chinese restaurant. I'm not going to discuss Vietnamese-Chinese history or demographics right now. Anyway, back to what matters. Hainan House is a VERY traditional place doing your classic Chinese-takeout dishes, but it takes pride in its cuisine and tastes nothing like, say, Bamboo Garden. This is original Chinese-American cuisine in its best form, untarnished by runaway capitalism and the ever-growing desire for cheap ingredients. All of their takeout dishes are what I would call "reliable": Nothing too special and basically what you expect, but always better than most, and a safe bet for when you just want to eat something without worrying about it too much. And of course, no discussion of Hainan House would be complete without mentioning their soups. You have your takeout favorites like egg drop, wonton and hot-and-sour, but also their house special the "tomato beef". These are basically exactly what they sound like, but in a way that makes you realize the usual kinds should be the weird one: The hot-and-sour soup is much tangier and has a far deeper crunch of woodear mushrooms, while the egg drop soup, my favorite, is thick and clear with pieces of chicken, vegetables, and skin. It's a purely chicken-based soup with drops of egg, as the name entails, not... whatever the neon-orange stuff at Double Dragon and co. is supposed to be. Egg doesn't look like that, yo. Another forte of Hainan House is their classic appetizers, in particular the "beef strings". Ultimately, it's just barbecue beef in a fancier form, but it's better than any beef skewer I've seen. The shrimp toasts are worth trying too, and they have the best crab rangoons in town. Not that it's a high bar to clear. Hainan House's strongest point though, has to be their dinner combos. So they are the only place I've seen in the USA that engage in what would be called "cơm phần" in Vietnam: A shared dinner whose amount of food would scale with the number of people joining, but each person still gets their own dish while free to have what everybody else is getting. Of course, in classic Asian fashion, this has to be done with lots and lots of rice. They call it "Dinner A" which, eh, could've come up with a better name. What this all means is that they are the perfect choice for gatherings between close friends, though. Everyone sits on a round table. Regarding their Vietnamese cuisine, one of their signature dishes is mì xào giòn or deep-fried lo mein noodles (yes, we Vietnameses deep-fry stuff too). They are the only ones offering this in Fort Wayne and I must say, their rendition is pretty good. Their Vietnamese coffee is also nice, but like every other Vietnamese place in America unless otherwise stated, don't order the phở here lol. TL;DR Best Chinese place in the Fort, especially for families.

Fantastic little restaurant, super friendly! They love to make you laugh, and they get to know their regulars. I can not recommend this hidden Gem more! The Princess Chicken was delicious, and their jasmine tea hit the spot.

My husband and I have eaten here many times and it’s our favorite place egg drop soup and crab rations but the last 2 times, the egg drop soup was different. The first time we thought maybe it was just made and that’s why it looked so pale, no lovely yellow color due to the chicken stock but the 2nd time we asked to see the soup before hand (we go there just because it was the best egg drop soup in town) and it was the same pale colorless soup. We asked about it and were told it was changed because the cook didn’t like the other soup. Really??? Won’t be going back sorry to say.