The Panda Express Menu: A Guide to the Whole Board
What is actually on the Panda Express board, family by family, from the Orange Chicken to the egg rolls.
Panda Express sells American Chinese food cafeteria-style: you walk a steam-table line, the board hangs above it, and you point. That format makes the menu feel fast, but it also flattens it, because every dish is presented as one more tray of food behind glass. Underneath the sameness there is a real structure, and it is worth knowing what is actually on offer before you reach the counter. This is a tour of the whole board, category by category: the entrees that headline the chain, the supporting chicken, beef, shrimp and vegetable dishes, the sides, the appetizers, the family meals, and the seasonal items that come and go. We keep money talk relative and point you to the Panda Express menu page for exact, dated numbers, since prices and availability shift by location.
Orange Chicken, the dish the menu is built around
If Panda Express has a single signature, it is the Orange Chicken: bite-size pieces of dark-meat chicken, battered and fried, then tossed in a sweet and tangy orange sauce with a little chili heat. The chain has sold it since the late 1980s and treats it as the front door to the whole menu. It is the dish most people order on a first visit, the one most likely to be freshly cooked because of how fast it moves, and the benchmark everything else on the board is quietly measured against.
Worth knowing: Panda runs spin-offs on the same idea. You will periodically see a Beyond the Original Orange Chicken made with a plant-based protein, and limited-time riffs that swap the orange sauce for a different glaze on the same fried-chicken base. If you like the texture but want a change of flavor, those variants are the place to look rather than a completely different entree.
The rest of the chicken lineup
Chicken is the deepest part of the menu, and it splits along two lines: breaded-and-fried versus wok-cooked, and white meat versus dark. Past the Orange Chicken, the fried side includes things like the Honey Sesame Chicken Breast and sweet, crisp white-meat dishes that read as lighter cousins of the signature. The wok-cooked side is where the menu gets more savory: Kung Pao Chicken with peanuts and chilies, Mushroom Chicken with zucchini, the Grilled Teriyaki Chicken served sliced with its sauce on the side, and String Bean Chicken Breast for the vegetable-forward pick.
The practical way to read this row is by cooking method. If you want sweet and crunchy, stay on the breaded dishes. If you want something closer to a stir-fry, with vegetables and a savory or spicy sauce, move to the wok dishes. The teriyaki chicken is the outlier, grilled rather than fried or stir-fried, and it is the closest thing on the board to a plain protein.
Beef, shrimp and the premium tier
Beef and seafood are the smaller, pricier corner of the menu. The long-running beef dish is Broccoli Beef, sliced steak and broccoli in a ginger-soy sauce, and it is usually joined by a peppier option like Black Pepper Angus Steak. On the seafood side, the headliner is Honey Walnut Shrimp: tempura-style shrimp in a creamy sauce with glazed walnuts, a genuinely distinctive dish that does not taste like anything else on the line.
Several of these sit in what Panda treats as a premium tier, meaning they carry a surcharge on top of the normal combo price. The Angus steak and the shrimp dishes are the usual members. The food itself is good, but the relevant point here is structural: the menu is not flat. A handful of entrees cost extra to select, and they tend to be the beef and seafood items. Which dishes are premium and what the upcharge is can change, so check the Panda Express menu page rather than assuming.
Rounding out the proteins are a couple of vegetable entrees aimed at the no-meat or lighter order. The mainstay is Eggplant Tofu, a sweet-spicy stir-fry that is one of the chain's few fully vegetarian entrees, and a mixed vegetable entree turns up at many locations. These are easy to miss because the board leads with the fried chicken. Keep one distinction straight: the vegetable entree is a sauced, seasoned dish that occupies an entree slot, whereas the Super Greens side covered below is a plainer steamed blend that occupies the side slot.
The sides: rice, chow mein and super greens
Every combo is built on a base side, and the choices are consistent: white steamed rice, fried rice with egg and vegetables, chow mein (the wheat lo-mein-style noodles tossed with onion and celery), and the Super Greens blend, typically broccoli, cabbage and kale. The chow mein and fried rice are the comfort picks and the heaviest; the super greens is the lighter, vegetable-forward swap.
The detail that matters most here is that on a plate you can usually split the side at no extra charge, half chow mein and half super greens, say, or half fried rice and half white rice. The staff do this constantly, so it is a normal ask rather than a special favor. If you cannot decide between the noodles and the greens, you do not have to. The side is also where the menu is most forgiving for anyone trying to eat a little lighter, since swapping in super greens does not change the entree you ordered.
Appetizers and family meals
The a la carte appetizers live at the end of the line and are ordered by the piece or in small boxes. The regulars are Chicken Egg Rolls, Veggie Spring Rolls, and the Cream Cheese Rangoon, the fried wonton parcels filled with a sweet cream-cheese center that are a quiet favorite. A rotating roll or a seasonal fried item sometimes joins them. None of these are part of a combo; they are add-ons, ordered separately from your plate or bowl.
For groups, Panda sells family meals and party trays, which step outside the individual combo format entirely. A family meal typically bundles two or three large entrees with two large sides, sized to feed several people, and the party trays scale a single entree or side up to a catering pan. This is the route to take when you are feeding a household or an office rather than building one tray, because it lets everyone mix entrees without each person paying for a separate container. The current bundles and counts are on the Panda Express menu page.
Seasonal and limited-time items
The last thing to know about the board is that part of it is deliberately temporary. Panda runs a steady cycle of limited-time entrees, often a new sauce on the familiar fried-chicken base, a holiday or Lunar New Year special, or a regional test item that may never go national. Sweet finishers like the seasonal Apple Pie Roll appear and disappear the same way. These are the dishes most likely to be different from one visit to the next, and the only reliable way to know what is actually being carried at your location today is the live menu rather than memory.
That is the whole board: a signature Orange Chicken out front, a deep chicken lineup split between fried and wok-cooked, a smaller premium corner of beef and shrimp, a couple of vegetable entrees, the rice-noodle-greens side trio you can split, the egg rolls and rangoon on the side, family meals for groups, and a rotating cast of seasonal items. For the full current lineup, which entrees carry a surcharge, and dated prices for your area, check the Panda Express menu page before you go.
Menupedia is an independent reference. Prices and menu items change; figures on our restaurant pages are dated and sourced from publicly available information. Always confirm with the official restaurant before ordering. See how we work and how we verify prices.