Jason reviews food options at UCSanDiego: Fan Fan

Location:

New Sixth College (A&H)

TL;DR

Better Than Panda Express(tm) - which isn’t saying much, the right choices could be healthy; large servings for $; fast service; I will return

Details

Service: At 1pm in summer there was no line and it took <1 min to scoop my food. I’ve been here twice before during the school year, and had to wait 10-20min because the line was so long

Food: fried rice bowl w/ sesame chicken and spicy Mapo tofu. Spicy tofu is the right choice off the normal menu. Lovely texture, a bit of Szechuan peppercorn numbing the lips and heating the tongue. Pretty mild for something called spicy.

Sesame chicken is (as one expects) a sweet and reasonably tasty sauce. The chicken is meh. 1/2 of pieces are stringy, 1/4 are dry, some are both. I’ve still not eaten their special menus, maybe its better? But I didn’t grow up eating pigs feet, etc and don’t feel ready

BTW always take a rice bowl, never the Chow Mein shudder unless you like grease. Cost: $11 for the 2 item bowl, which left me very reasonably full. Of the places I’ve been this week, this is the value proposition, and giant eaters will be defeated by the 3 item bowl.