Golden Mango

I'm not even trying to get the dinners that consist of soggy deep-fried chicken in a strange-flavoured sauce. I order random things, and still get that meal.

Today I went to Golden Mango, which opened around a decade ago, not long after my arrival here at Waterloo, and which I ate at a single (disappointing) time. I remember that I was disappointed at the time by just how much my "Vietnamese" lunch missed of what I like about Vietnamese food: no cilantro, no mint, no fresh chili peppers, no zing of fish sauce. And I naïvely assumed I'd find that food with flavour would be common in a "Vietnamese" restaurant.

Well, I went back today, and ordered one of the lunch specials (#5, "mango chicken with rice and deep-fried wontons"). I really expected that the chicken would be stirfried breast meat, with mango pieces, maybe some garlic, maybe some scallions, and maybe a little chili heat. I really had no idea what to expect from the advertised wontons, and was hoping to avoid pork dumplings.

No worries there.

What I got was the aforementioned soggy deep-fried chicken in tart sauce alongside some weird pieces of mango, with red pepper (largely raw: it'd be neat if the plaza restaurants could figure out how to actually cook the food they claim to cook), served on yellow fried rice (which didn't even have frozen vegetable medley).

And the wontons were basically little pieces of deep-fried wonton wrapper sitting on top. That's it.

I guess I'm full. And still depressed.

I had: Combo #5: mango chicken with rice and deep-fried wontons
I paid: $6.75. (One hopes that they pay their taxes: have you noticed how many of the plaza restaurants don't actually use the register when you buy your food?)
Verdict:
Speed: Not super fast, especially since there were not-very-cooked parts of my meal.
Quality: Not at all exciting.
Value: I will admit that this was pretty cheap. Also, I did eat most of it: a lot of these meals have been enormous, but this was the right size.
Would go back: No.