Peking House

There's nothing like consistency to make a good restaurant a longtime success.

Peking House on South Florida Avenue in Lakeland has been making diners happy since the mid-1980s under owner Helen Chan, and since 1991 under owner Alan Wong. The place shows no sign of changing.

The red arch to the main dining room still looks fresh and inviting. A pleasant server brings a bowl of crispy noodles and two sauces to keep you occupied while you play eenie-meenie-minee-mo with the menus.

There are lunch specials, early birds, family meals and pages of individual choices. The most expensive item is $18.95, but most are less than $10. Lunch specials for $6.25 or $6.50 include fried rice, egg roll and fortune cookie.

Tea is telling about a Chinese restaurant. Some places serve hot tea from an urn in the back somewhere. Peking House pots might be old, but they have two bags of tea. That's a good sign.

There is a lunch special every day that is the best deal in the house. For $5.25 on Tuesday, you can have country-style chicken, fried or white rice and soup.

Egg drop soup is thick and hot with plenty of egg sheet.

The chicken dish is like many others … small pieces of chicken meat with vegetables in brown sauce. With the inoffensive fried rice, the meal is plenty.

A Pupu Platter costs $10.95. It's meant to be nibbles for two and includes finger wipes to use after the huge ribs. This is nostalgia in a monkey pod bowl. A tiny hibachi sits in the middle with a glob of solid fuel providing flames to heat the beef sticks, ribs or wings.

Each item is presented in cabbage leaf cups. You get two large, tasty fried shrimp without sauces; two delightful chicken wings that had more than just chicken flavor; fried won tons that looked like crab Rangoon but the nub of something in the center was well past identifiable; two beef sticks, flat pieces of sweet beef that benefitted from the Sterno; two huge, sweet pork ribs; and egg rolls in rather gummy wrappers.

See if you can trade the egg rolls and won tons for shrimp, chicken wings, beef or ribs.

Lemon Chicken is wet-battered and fried, much like English fish and chips, served with sweet-tart lemon sauce with slices of fresh lemon ($8.50). This is wonderful. The batter and sauce would be equally super on fish and pork.

Triple Delight for $9.95 includes two-bite shrimp, tender beef and chicken breast with broccoli and snow peas. I had one stray slice of bamboo shoot, too.

Mu Shu Pork might translate to "Chinese Burrito." Take some of the shredded meat and vegetables, spread them on a Mandarin pancake and slather on some hoisin sauce. Roll it up and enjoy ($8.50). Browning in a wok adds flavor to the shredded pork.

The dominant ginger flavor in Ginger Beef and Oyster Sauce came from the shredded ginger on top of the heap of very tender beef, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts ($8.95).

Chinese doughnuts ($3.95) make a sweet, puffy ending to a meal.

You can always count on the food at Peking House, but other than spicy dishes, you can usually count on it to be rather bland. It's safe that way. I would prefer the oyster beef to have more oyster sauce flavor. Ginger beef to be more gingery. Just about anything (except the doughnuts) to be more garlicky.

On a recent lunch visit, servers were moving as fast as they could, but a diner got up with his empty tea glass looking for a refill.

The restaurant met standards during the most recent inspection, Nov. 24.

A few things they can do to improve are:

More garlic.

More ginger.

More oyster sauce.

Peking House has been a safe bet for years. The restaurant earned three stars when last reviewed in 2006. Peking House keeps the three stars.

Trent Rowe can be reached at 802-7512 or Trent.Rowe@TheLedger.com Check out his food blog at aquickbite.blogs.theledger.com.