Duk Wo, Pan-Asian in Burke - Fairfax Location Is Now Closed

[wrash]

We went to Duk Wo which is on Burke Lake Rd. in Burke, VA. This restaurant has recently reinvented itself, and to make sure everyone knows about it, they sent out a Groupon that gave you 20 dollars off for 10 dollars. I guess the idea was to get people to come back to see how the old Duk Wo has changed.

The old Duk Wo was one of those neighborhood Chinese restaurants that was kind of down at the heels, but reliably OK. It would never win any awards, but the place was good for a quick Chinese dinner and didn't feel like driving too far. But the place was getting run down, the food was losing what quality it had, and many people, including me, stopped going.

Now Duk Wo has been redone. It's bright and renovated inside. The booths are comfortable, the lighting is good, and there are Asian art-like things on the walls. There's even a sushi bar.

The food, however, is nothing like the old Duk Wo. The menu is short, the selection somewhat confused with a Thai thing here and a Chinese thing there. You can get a design-it-yourself generic stir-fry in which you pick one of each thing to go into it. There are three soups, one of which is a hot and sour soup that's actually not bad. The won-ton soup is generic. The spring roll is generic and without flavor. My wife had the lo-mein, which she said was also without flavor. I had the crispy beef, which had a pepper on the menu promising heat that it failed to deliver. In fact the only flavor note on the beef was near cloying sweetness. It was, in other words, an Asian restaurant nearly totally devoid of Asian flavors.

Sadly the service matched the inept nature of the cooking. Our spring rolls appeared, at room temperature, after our main courses. They forgot napkins. We had to request chopsticks more than once. At least they were friendly.

Basically Duk Wo has become an Asian-like place without Asian flavor. I'm glad that I got ten bucks off through Groupon so I wouldn't feel as ripped off. But it wasn't really worth what I paid for the dinner even at the reduced price.

My one piece of advice: Don't go there. It's just not worth the time and effort. There are other Chinese places in and around Burke, and even the mediocre ones are better than this.

Wayne Rash

[TheMoonwalker]

It's not bad, but I prefer the old Duk Wo. The option to buy "small" and "medium" portions just gives you the false perception that you're saving money when in reality you're just paying more than you normally would for smaller portions of food. The interior of the place is so drab and feels like a jail that just happens to be decorated a little bit.

[DonRocks]

The Fairfax Duk Wo has closed, leaving only the Burke location.