Rice Bowl (Omaha)
My experience is that it’s hard to find good Chinese food in Omaha. I’ve been given a few suggestions that I need to try, but for good, cheap, and fast, my favorite is still Rice Bowl.
I usually visit on Wednesdays when the Imperial Chicken is on special (free bowl of soup). I’ve been there on enough Wednesdays that sometimes the servers ready my food as I’m walking across the tiny and stressful parking lot. The hot-and-sour soup is good and not thickened nor sweetened that I can tell.
Piping-hot-and-sour soup.
I like the Imperial Chicken at Rice Bowl because the breaded pieces are almost always solid white meat with no gackle. I’ve been told some cheap restaurants will try to hide various dark pieces and skin in these bites, but I’ve never had trouble at Rice Bowl.
No gackle-distended bellies here.
I don’t eat water chestnuts. I believe they are China’s revenge for taking our e-waste. And I don’t eat baby corn for moral reasons.
The sauce is sweeter than it should be, so that’s likely just an Americanization. I once asked the server if they could make it less sweet, and she said she didn’t think it would be very good that way. Live and learn.
And Rice Bowl has a hood (did you hear that La Buvette?).
This “Imperial Chicken” you think so highly of is just a sweetened-up and dumbed down version of the Chinese-American dish known as General Tso’s Chicken commonly found in American “Hunanese” restaurants. It’s a ridiculous dish meant for a sugar obsessed audience.