If you're reading this, you like free stuff. Who doesn't like free stuff? Especially when there are no strings attached, like this offer for a free Samurai Surf and Turf from Panda Express this Wednesday.
With this coupon (click here to print or save on your smartphone), the chain is introducing the dish which has steak, shrimp, green beans, fried potatoes and red bell peppers stir fried in a so-called Samurai sauce heavy with black pepper. Normally it's one of those premium items for which they charge a buck more, but it is going to be free only this Wednesday without any additional purchase or, like I said, other strings.
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On tasting it last week (and actually paying for it), the new dish is generous with the potatoes, not so generous on the steak and shrimp, making it probably the premium item with the lowest ROI.
And if you're raising your eyebrows that samurais (which, ahem, are Japanese) are being used to promote a a Chinese fast-food chain, it's actually not Panda Express' only non-Chinese item–they've had teriyaki chicken as part of their steam table options for as long as this writer can remember. But then one can argue that a lot of what Panda Express serves now isn't exactly traditionally Chinese in the strictest sense anyway.
This is not a complaint, by the way. I am, like many of you, an Orange Chicken addict.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.