Lucky Liu’s Has a Massive Menu

Lucky Liu’s. Photo taken Jan. 9, 2025 by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

Since 2009, Lucky Liu’s has been serving Chinese and Japanese cuisine in the Brady Street neighborhood. It’s located just around the corner on Van Buren Street and what a variety of food it offers. I stopped counting the dishes at some point, but it boasts more than 150 choices just the Chinese side of the mile-long menu.

The restaurant is small, immaculate and, during both my visits, classical music played softly in the background. If you order the Lunch Combo, as my companion and I did, you have 28 choices, all served with steamed or egg-fried rice, and your choice of two spring rolls or two crab rangoons. We appreciated the little red peppers marking the entree choices that were hot and spicy and that accurately described the spicy heat level of my companion’s Szechuan Chicken. In addition to tender chicken, the dish included broccoli, onion, and carrots. Steamed rice and two egg rolls made this a hearty lunch. My Beef Broccoli, also a Lunch Combo, came with egg-fried rice and two crab rangoons. Like the Szechuan, it was a filling meal. The egg-fried rice alone was enough for a meal and it was quite tasty with the addition of soy sauce for extra flavor.

While we waited for our meals, we chatted with our server who told us he came to Milwaukee from Beijing, and, when he arrived, he spoke very little English. He found that learning the language was a challenge because, he said, “I needed to use a different part of my brain.”

When you come to Lucky Liu’s for lunch, you are not limited to the Lunch Combos as friends and I learned on my return visit. We all ordered from the regular menu and enjoyed dumplings, an appetizer served with a sweet and sour sauce. The eight dumplings were plump, not a bit greasy, and had been sauteed on one side to add more flavor after they were steamed.

Egg Foo Young is a Chinese omelet that is traditionally cooked in more oil than the American-style omelet. My Egg Foo Young was full of chopped vegetables and despite the oil used to sauté it, it was not greasy. The edges were crisp and it had good flavor.

For the Vegetable Lo Mein, the chef combined vegetables such as pea pods, broccoli, onion, mushrooms, and crunchy water chestnuts, with fat soft noodles. The stir-fried veggies and the noodles were drenched with sauce making this a very filling dish and enough for another meal at home. My companion ordered lobster on egg-fried rice, a dish not on the menu, and was surprised when lobster meant the whole tail. A glass of Plum Wine was the ideal drink to accompany the lobster.

We did not venture into the Japanese side of the menu but, if you do, there are 93 meal choices and 14 Lunch Specials.

The name of the restaurant, Lucky Liu’s, comes from the surname of the owner and it is a popular name in China. Maybe luck was something the owner needed in addition to the hard work and optimism necessary to maintain a restaurant for 15 years. But there was a lot more than chance involved. Perhaps the owner took the advice offered in my fortune cookie that read, “Your success is intertwined with your outlook on life.”

On the Menu

12►

Photo Gallery

The Rundown

• Location: 1664 N. Van Buren St.
• Phone: 414-223-1699
• Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mon, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wed-Thu, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fri-Sat, 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sun. Lunch specials available 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Neighborhood: Lower East Side
• Website: https://www.luckylius.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/luckyliusmke

Existing members must be signed in to see the interactive map. Sign in.