Madame Wu?s

1818 N. Crossover Road

Fayetteville

You could say we were wooed by Madame Wu’s.

It’s not your average Chinese restaurant. The elegant interior at Crossover Village is decorated with Chinese artifacts. And there’s no buffet for lunch, which kept us from elbowing our way through the noon hour under the glare of heat lamps.

Madam Wu has done a nice job of creating a relaxing atmosphere in the middle of formal decor.

We were immediately seated by our hostess and provided with menus. One diner ordered green tea. It looked brown to us, but he drank it anyway.

We were pleasantly surprised by the prices. Lunch specials — which are served six days a week from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. — ranged in price from $4.25 to $5.75. That includes rice and either soup or iced tea. In some cases, those prices also include an egg roll.

Our group of four started off with soup — with three opting for hot and sour and the fourth opting for egg drop. Between sniffles, the hot-and-sour soupers raved about the appetizer. One diner described the soup as “tasty in the mouth and tingling in the throat.”

Even our most unadventurous diner, who had never ventured past egg drop soup, tried a spoonful of hot-and-sour soup and loved it.

For entrees, one diner had the pork with cabbage and green pepper in spicy sauce ($5.25). All the entrees come with a choice of white or fried rice.

“It was the best Chinese food I’ve eaten in Northwest Arkansas,” the first diner said. He said the egg roll that accompanied his meal was crispy and good, although the rest of us couldn’t see it under a blanket of hot mustard he had slathered upon it.

Another diner ordered the shrimp and chicken with vegetables in spicy sauce ($5.75). He couldn’t see any vegetables when it showed up, but they were under all that brown, spicy sauce. The entree was “excellent,” he said.

A third diner had the shrimp with mushroom and vegetables in wine sauce ($5.75). She had Madam Wu hold the rice, which made the rest of us suspicious, but otherwise the plate of giant shrimp and vegetables looked healthy and tasty.

“I really like how they use real shrimp — big shrimp,” that diner said.

The big feller in our entourage had the triple delight (shrimp, beef and chicken) with vegetables in Peking sauce ($5.75) and described it as “good.”

We had no desire for dessert by this time, and fortune cookies aren’t included with lunch. So we opted for Altoids on the way home.