If you are a regular reader of my column (thank you!), you probably feel I’ve beaten to death my gripe about Chinese food; just like a lot of Mexican restaurants serve Tex-Mex, many Chinese restaurants serve an Americanized version of Cantonese food. As I’ve said before, I don’t fault these restaurants in either case, as they’re clearly giving the public what they want. Just because I like authentic Mexican food, for example, doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get a hankering for chicken fajitas served in that sizzling pan. The same can be said for my feelings about Chinese food. Although I have a feeling what I’m eating isn’t terribly authentic — and, let’s be honest, one Chinese restaurant often tastes pretty similar to another — sometimes that’s what I’m in the mood for. Fried shrimp. Barbecued pork. Sweet and sour chicken. Yes, even that.

There are about a half dozen Chinese restaurants between the Long Beach Peninsula and the stretch of the Oregon coastline that is in my jurisdiction. I have not tried them all, so I will not make a blanket statement about their quality, but I’ll instead say that I’ve tried most of them and what you’re often getting is good ol’ American Chinese food. And that’s okay. There are even some shining stars in that group — unfortunately, the Golden Star isn’t it.

When I dine out as The Mouth, I spend a lot of time perusing the menu, so my usual routine is to place an appetizer order with the server, and then I place my order for entrées when he or she returns with the appetizer. In this case, I ordered barbecued pork and fried shrimp as appetizers, and the dish took a long time to show up at the table (20 minutes or so — and yes, I keep track of these things with a watch). When the server arrived back at the table, and I told her I was ready to order entrées, she said she would be back in just a moment to take the order and then disappeared for another 10 minutes.

When our entrées eventually arrived (40 minutes from when I ordered them), I was fed up (and not from food). Since I had ordered four or five entrées, the server put them all on a wheeled cart with shelves, and a few of the entrées were on the bottom shelf, just inches above the floor. This just didn’t seem right to me.

For the most part, the dishes were mediocre. The pork fried rice was the tastiest of the entrées, with bits of barbecued pork and peas. The sweet and sour chicken was also fine, exactly what you would normally expect.

One of my favorite dishes at a Chinese restaurant is moo shu pork. A sort of stir fry of pork, scrambled eggs, cabbage, mushrooms, bean pods and scallions, the dish usually has a bit of a charred taste to it and in our American tradition is heaped into tortilla-like pancakes, often accompanied by hoisin sauce. In this case, the moo shu itself had an overwhelmingly smoky flavor — owing to what, I’m not sure. The hoisin sauce also had a bit of a chemical taste and was ice cold. When added to the moo shu and the pancake, the sauce brought the overall temperature of the dish down too low for my liking.

The spicy Mongolian beef was indeed spicy, but the strips of beef were tough and leathery, which made eating the dish a chore. Chicken sub-gum was passable, although the sauce had a strange, gel-like consistency.

During our meal, I flagged down our server for another pot of tea, extra silverware settings, and some soy sauce (which wasn’t on the table), but she never returned until we clearly had coats on, were standing, and seemed ready for the check.

Any time I feel that a restaurant deserves less than three stars, I pay them a second visit. This is based on the idea that everyone has an “off” day, and deserves a second chance. Unfortunately, my experience on the return visit was just as bad as the first, although I will admit that the service was faster, perhaps because I was by myself.

My goal as The Mouth is to inform readers about what they can expect of a given restaurant before they spend their hard-earned dollars on dining out. When I give a restaurant a great review, it often seems to work in their favor as unexpected advertising. The letters I sometimes receive lead me to believe that negative reviews also impact a business. Please know that I don’t enjoy giving anyone a negative review, but the fact remains that if a restaurant has poor service and lackluster food, you deserve to know.