The Full Story
Chung King Express Gourmet, in Depth
The building gives it away before the food does. Chung King Express Gourmet works out of a small, pyramid-shaped structure at 3101 North Anthony Boulevard, and if the shape looks oddly formal for a Chinese carryout, that is because it started life as a branch of Peoples Trust Bank. Fort Wayne has a handful of these little pyramid-roofed former bank branches scattered around town, and this one on the north side, near the corner of Vance Avenue and Anthony Boulevard, now sends out General Tso's chicken instead of deposit slips.
This is a carryout, first and last. There is a small dining area, but the whole place is built around the counter and the drive-thru window, the kind of spot where you call ahead or roll up, hand over a name, and leave with a warm bag on the passenger seat. If you are looking for a room to linger in, this is not that. If you are looking for dinner to bring home on a weeknight without leaving the car, that is exactly the point.
What Regulars Actually Order
The menu is Chinese-American, and it hits the dishes you would hope a neighborhood carryout gets right. General Tso's chicken is the headliner, the sweet-and-hot fried chicken that most people are pulling into the drive-thru for in the first place. Shrimp fried rice is the reliable base order, and the hot and sour soup is there for the cold months, which in Fort Wayne is most of them.
Past the standards, the kitchen runs a wider board than a lot of drive-thru spots bother with. Garlic chicken and salt and pepper shrimp cover the savory end. Breaded deep-fried scallops are the kind of thing you do not see on every carryout menu in town, worth a look if you want to order past the usual. And the appetizers earn their place: crab rangoon and egg rolls, the two things that make a takeout order feel like an actual spread instead of just a main.
Who It's For
Think of this as the fast, no-fuss end of the Fort Wayne Chinese food lineup. It is for the solo dinner you did not plan, the family order phoned in on the way home, the night nobody wants to cook and nobody wants to sit in a dining room either. You order at the counter or the window, you wait a few minutes, you go. Plain, and that plainness is the recommendation.
If you want to sit down and be waited on, the city has spots built for that. But for a north-side carryout with a drive-thru and a General Tso's you can count on, Chung King Express Gourmet does one job and keeps doing it. Working your way through the rest of the city's Chinese kitchens? Hunan Chinese Restaurant and Lu Garden are two more worth putting on the list.
Find it on the north side at 3101 North Anthony Boulevard, near Vance Avenue. Pull up to the window, or grab one of the few seats inside if you would rather eat it while it is hot.