If you haven't already been to the best Chinese Restaurant on the North Side of Chicago, today's Groupon will help you correct that mistake; for just $20, you get a $50 Groupon to Friendship Chinese Restaurant. Located just off the Blue Line in Logan Square at 2830 N Milwaukee Ave, Friendship's menu carries the most authentic Chinese cuisine this side of Beijing (which, geographically speaking, includes the entire earth since Beijing and Chicago form opposite poles on the Axis of Chinacago).
Popular favorites include the Spicy Honey Orange Chicken (tossed in Grand Marnier and Szechwan red chili) and the Mongolian Beef (stir fried with chili paste and scallion). But vegetarians will delight at the Temple's Feat, a delectable assortment of elven-sounding ingredients like lily flower buds, woodear, tofu sheets, exotic mushrooms, long beans and more. And fish lovers will enjoy the Honey Walnut Shrimp with Szechwan aioli and honey glazed walnuts. Friendship is BYOB, so grab some budget wine and have a fully loaded gourmet dinner on a shoestring budget. You could eat this meal for less than it cost the Wright Brothers to build the first airplane.
Also, the panko crusted Champaigne Lemon Chicken is getting positive mentions all over their Yelp page, where Friendship has been inundated with a passionate outpouring of 251 reviews (the most reviewed business Groupon has ever featured and one of the top reviewed restaurants in Chicago), scoring an average of 4 out of 5 stars. Hot pants! Here's a few Yelps...
- "The best Chinese food I have had in Chicago." - Justin W.
- "My favorite Chinese place in Chicago when I lived here. So creative and inventive, and always the freshest ingredients. Not too expensive either. A gem worth checking out." - Allison H.
- "I'm lovin Friendship as my go to Chinese place with solid quality food that doesn't require me to spend a fortune. We started it off with the appetizer sampler which is far too much for even two of the hungriest foodies around. It was a good way to get introduced to all the appetizers I hear people raving about. The crab rangoon and bbq ribs were delish. I ordered the Mongolian beef and it was the best I've had." - Martha Z.
Friendship is adamantly serious about creating high quality authentic Chinese cuisine. This is more than evident from the Chef/Owner's public confession, where he declares: "When I hear people referring to the art of Chinese cooking as now being represented by the popularity of Chinese Buffets...I weep bitterly." The Friendship experience, however, is not one of gloom, but one of joy. For Friendship has followed the wise words of Confucius, who said "Keep your friends close, and use aromatic charms to trick your enemies into being your friends - so they too are close. Everyone should be close." And everyone is close in Friendship. Everyone holds hands while they eat, which begs the question "how do you eat without your hands?" Worry not friends, for what are friends for but to provide each other with face-sized straws for suction eating when our hands are occupied with the tasks of friendship?
Entering Friendship, one is greeted by a full wall of silver Buddha heads. As you may know from experience, the happiness of just one Buddha is highly contagious. His robust laugh emanating outward from his jolly belly tickles even the hardest souls. And at Friendship, there is an entire of wall of Buddhas. And they're happier than normal Buddhas, as they are cast in silver, which means they have silver tongues. And as we know from Buddha's Little Red Book: "A silver tongue makes for a heart of gold. And a man with a golden heart will lay bronze eggs to feed his family forever." The wall of Buddha moderate the hand-holding during dinner and occasionally serve as the MCs for charity auctions held at Friendship to raise money for people with no friends.
Of course, those people all live in other cities, for everyone in Chicago knows that they'll always have a Spicy Orange Chicken friend in Logan Square. Get your Groupon.
