Great Wall

Address: 914 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, NY 14222

Phone: (716) 882-4520

Tomato fried with eggs - Photo credited to Chris Wu

"Hello?"

"Hello, pick up or delivery?"

"Delivery."

"To where?"

"30 soldiers."

"Okay, ni yao shen me (What do you want)?"

As soon as the restaurant clerk heard the delivery address, she changes the conversation to Chinese. Residential students have ordered their food here so many times, they have developed their own secret menu at Great Wall, for times they miss their homeland food late in the night.

Chinese residential students usually order different food than Americans do. At Great Wall, it is "tomato fried with eggs" and their homemade Chinese beef noodles. Even though there are still some differences between dishes here and Chinese traditional cuisine, students order food here mostly because they are starving and they miss their homeland's food.

On Monday, May 15, we went to Great Wall as usual, but we did special interview with them. From the interview, we found out that they are a family from Fuzhou, a city in southern part of China. They came here in 1985 and started their own restaurant.

Great Wall began as a restaurant only making American Chinese food. As the number of Chinese students at SEM increased over the years, Great Wall started to make some traditional Chinese dishes for them according to their requests. SEM boarding began in 2008 with about 8 students. In 2017, there are over 4o girls.

Recommendation List

Secret Menu

No.1 Tomato Fried With Eggs (Fan Qie Chao Dan) - It sounds weird but tastes really good. It is better when you mix the juice of this dish with the white rice.

No.2 Beef Noodle Soup (Niu Rou Tang Mein) - With various vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage, carrots and peas, and beef. The soup tastes amazing.

No.3 Double Cooked Pork Slices (Guo Bao Rou) - Different than we have in China but still taste good. Have many cabbages and pork slices. Tastes kinda salty and you can eat it with rice.

Official Menu (American Chinese style)

No.1 Fried dumplings (Pork)

No.2 Teriyaki chicken - Chicken on a stick and it is roasted with the teriyaki sauce, which tastes salty sweet.

No.3 Shrimp chow fun - Made by rice noodle with bean spouts and shrimps in it.

Beef noodle soup - Photo credited to Chris Wu