I was so excited to check this place out! I searched yelp for dumplings and came to this restaurant accompanied by its great rating. It was my first time visiting this area of Champaign. My excitement immediately diminished upon walking in. My boyfriend and I walked in and quickly locked eyes with the young lady behind the register. She had her phone in her face almost blocking our view but in a quick glance, did notice us. I said "hello" to no response.
This being our first time at this restaurant, we weren't quite sure if we should seat ourselves or not. After standing there awkwardly for a while, we made our way through the packed restaurant to an empty table near the register. Again, I locked eyes with the young woman, a who was aggressively scrolling through her phone and smiled. There were no menus on the table so we sat there patiently waiting for someone to approach us. After about 5 minutes or so my boyfriend walked up to her (phone still in her face) and asked her for menus. She pointed to some next to her and he grabbed two. She went back to her phone.
Maybe I'm not familiar with how this place runs but I was offended that she said nothing to us. She watched us stand in front of the restaurant for a ridiculously amount of time and gave no instruction, not even a "hello." We gave our menus back to the young lady and left. I've never been so blatantly ignored at a restaurant. We definitely felt unwanted there. We decided to visit Mr. Kyoto instead and received amazing customer service!