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| - BLECH! Let me start off by saying that my dad is the king of horrifying cliches. Strangely enough, they've actually become a vital part of my vocabulary and somewhat useful.
1) If it sounds too good to be true, then it's probably too good to be true
$2.18 per dish for dim-sum?
2) you get what you pay for
I was telling a buddy of mine that the price trumps the food AND the service. After being away from the place for a month I forget how yucky the food is and the service is deplorable.
3) fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice (4 times?) shame on me and i deserve to be ripped off the 3rd and 4th times.
We were there on Sunday at 11am and my wife remembered that the carts come out from the kitchen and go around counter-clockwise. Her theory is that by the time they get to the north side tables, all the food will have been picked at and decimated.
She insists that we be seated as far from the main entrance (north side) as possible. We get a table right up against the back wall closest to the kitchen. We're sitting there for about 10 mins and no carts even pass by.
I'm like thinking, "ok, dim sum is not really a fast food environment. You stayed up way too late Saturday night and you stumble in for brunch. It's supposed to be a slow, no rush, drink tea and have vibrant conversation with those around you."
It was then that I started doing the math (not because I'm Asian. I know what you were thinking). I counted about 40 tables with 30 of them occupied. I looked around to see what the MO of this place is.
A) there are only 2 carts being pushed around at any time (are they trying to lower overhead costs by owning only 2 carts?) Instead of having several carts with the same items going different directions, it appeared that the cart pusher would only go back and fill her cart when it was empty. So instead of just exchanging her empty cart for a "pre-loaded" cart, she actually disappears for about 3-5 minutes (and I presume she's in the kitchen loading her cart?)
B) since we had no food, I had time to count how many employees were on the floor and what their jobs seemed to be. 2 cart pushers, 3 bus boys (their job seemed to be water fillers, table clearers, and check retrievers) Fine, we all know that you can't seat people if there are no clean tables. Then I counted 3 more (waiters?) with red vests going to tables and doing I don't know what (taking special orders?).
There was a man and woman that I assumed were the floor managers or owners that would be walking around doing "managerial" things like looking busy, answering questions, telling others what to do etc.
All the while I'm thinking "more cart pushers (the food is kinda important here) and less whatever the other 8 people were assigned to do.
The 1 hostess/cashier was trying to seat people, take numbers, and take peoples money. I felt somewhat sympathetic towards her because I overheard a customer say "you gave us number 22" and just seated another party when you called out "22". She apparently gave two patrons the same number. She quickly apologized to customer "22b" and out of frustration handed him a slip of paper with the number "32".
Needless to say, the customer was not at all pleased with the exchange and hotly protested "uh, I don't think we want to go 10 places to the back of the line!!"
It was getting really ugly and awkward but one of the other employees came to the rescue by immediately seating "22b" and things were restored to semi-chaos.
Oh, did I mention the food? When the 1st cart came by our table, the pusher stopped by the table next to us and was fumbling with the little metal dishes and trying to cut the cheng-fun. She seemed a little shaky and not at all concerned with serving the customers swiftly. While she was trying to serve the other table, her cart was blocking the aisle and the other cart pusher had to stand there and wait until she was done.
When the cart finally came to our table, we were so famished and anxious that we just started grabbing this and that in fear of never seeing the cart again.
We grabbed the following dishes:
1) shrimp cheng-fun: Rubbery and kinda bland
2) chicken feet: Great sauce, but the chicken was not tender and again....rubbery (perhaps leave it in the steamer longer?) Funny thing is, we've ordered the same 2 dishes the past 3 times and it's the same....RUBBERY! I guess you could say it's our fault for falling for the same rubber chicken trick each time.
3) Har-gow: standard steamed pork dumplings, tasted pretty good (or was I just starving and grateful for anything that touched my chopsticks?) haha
4) Wu-tao-gock: Fried taro was decent
5) Foo-jook-gien: steamed pork with black fungus wrapped in bean curd skins. was probably the best thing that touched our palates.
I know what your saying, why do you keep eating the dim-sum if the quality is mediocre at best and the service is non-existent?
PRICE! it's like a mosquito drawn into a bug zapper.
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