The China Gourmet and Lucky’s Bakehouse and Creamery are two spots in North Boulder that make for a nice “foodie” date night alternative.
The China Gourmet is a Chinese restaurant not that far from Wonderland Lake trails in North Boulder at 3970 North Broadway. It’s tucked away inside the shopping center with Lucky’s Market and Logan’s Espresso Café, off the corner of Quince and Broadway.
Cash Only
When you come to the China Gourmet be prepared because they are a “cash only” restaurant, but if you forget your dollar bills you can find an ATM machine inside Lucky’s Grocery store “for organic and local foods” next door.
Self-serve
We paid upfront at the cash register when we walked in. There was no waitress. We grabbed our own plates, our lemon water, our chopsticks, our soup spoons, and our straws. Then we sat and waited for the kitchen to call our name out from behind a window. We grabbed our order on a tray and walked it back to our table.
Our Order
We’ll tell you exactly what we like to get over at the China Gourmet… We’re no stranger to the Combination Appetizer for $8.95, which is a great start to your meal.
You can’t go wrong with two big fried shrimp, a chicken wing and drumstick deeply fried, two crab cheese wontons and two light and crispy egg rolls. The appetizer comes with hot mustard and sweet and sour sauce so be careful because too much mustard can clear up your sinuses real quick this winter!
Wonton, Mon!
The Wonton Soup for $2.75 has wontons like you would expect, but it also has vegetables like scallions, lettuce, and cucumber. You can also find these vegetables in The Happy Family, which was our main dish.
One Happy Family
Here, you get shrimp, chicken, beef, BBQ Pork, stir-fried with garlic sauce and steamed vegetables like scallions, broccoli, mushrooms, onion, carrots, red and yellow peppers and we even saw some green peas in there.
It was a big dish and tasty for sure (I did not even take any home in a box and ate the whole thing).
My companion who was with me ordered the Cashew Chicken and commented on how “fresh” all the ingredients were.
Lunch or Dinner?
Dinner prices basically start after 2:30 PM, but the prices are less during lunchtime. Lunch starts at 11:30 AM and a dine-in lunch includes a choice of white, brown or fried rice, an appetizer of a veggie egg roll or a crab cheese wonton and a cup of soup, like egg drop, hot & sour or wonton. Dinner entrees include white or brown rice or get fried rice for a $1 extra.
What’s for dessert?
We walked across the parking lot for dessert and went to Lucky’s Bakehouse at 3990 Broadway Street Boulder, which is an “alternative” bakery. For example, The Persian Love Cake, $3.99 a slice, is made with raspberries, pistachios, almonds, oats and rose pedals! It comes dense like a pound cake and inside it’s full of raspberry and the cake tastes like amaretto due to the wonderful, healthier ingredients.
Then we tried a Sunflower Butter Brownie, $1.99 each, which is made from sunflower seeds. It had chocolate on top and a gooey sunflower buttery bottom and was very sweet compared to The Persian Love Cake and the Lemon Almond Ricotta Cake, which we tried, these latter two definitely being the “winners” on this outing.
Something we also saw was the Blue Corn Cookie, which was blue and according to our server tastes like a sugar cookie but has a slight taste of corn. She described it as “grittier” than what you might expect from a normal cookie.
Another aspect of the Bakehouse was they have plenty of seating like a café does, and a 12 oz cup of coffee was almost half the price of what you might find over on the high rent yuppie sidewalks of Pearl St.
You could also watch them make cakes in the back from where you sat. We watched a girl singing and dancing along to disco music, coming from the speakers, as she decorated a cake with white icing, spinning it on a wheel, as she spread the icing around the cake.
Their menu is expansive. They also have breads, tarts, doughnuts, in house ice cream, cupcakes, muffins, pies, cakes and then there are their insane flavored biscuits (when you visit there you’ll see exactly what we mean)! Paleo and gluten-free options are available, too.
Also, if you need a wedding cake or a dessert for a big party or catering, they got you covered!
What else is there to say about The China Gourmet and Lucky’s Bakehouse and Creamery?
- These two spots in North Boulder make for a nice “foodie” date night alternative. Don’t forget the Nomad Theater and Playhouse is nearby.
- Lucky’s Bakehouse makes cakes for weddings.
- The ingredients in their baked goods are nothing like you’d normally see at a bakery.
- The China Gourmet has daily specials written on the wall on a magic-erase board. Specials, when we were there, were Hong Kong Fish, Lemongrass Peanut Chicken, Spicy Penang Chicken, Shrimp, and Chicken Pad Thai.
- 1/2 off all beer and wine from 3 PM to 5 PM
- The China Gourmet has a second location in Longmont, Colorado.
Click HERE and check out the China Gourmet’s website menus. Also, visit Lucky’s Bakehouse and Creamery’s website and see for yourself as well.
Tag the friends you’d like to eat with!
