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| - One Saturday afternoon, I jumped on the 'ol innerweb and bought two Groupons, one for a Mexican restaurant and the other for a Chinese restaurant. Since it is an election year, we decided to put our democratic process to good use and we all took a vote...Chinese it was. The Groupon that I came across was good for dinner and drinks for 4 people. I never heard of Chok and Wok, but thought we can't go wrong eating Chinese food in the heart of Scottsdale, right?
We arrived around 6pm Saturday evening and located the restaurant next to NYPD (pizza)...they each have a small store-front/patio area and they were located in a strip-mall setting. We walked up the little staircase, leading to the 2 chair outdoor front patio area and asked ourselves whether or not this was really a Chinese restaurant....from the outside, it looked like a cantina...hmmm, clue# 1. As we walked inside to the reception area, we immediately noticed the distinctive smell of a gym locker...hmmm, clue #2. A hostess/bar-maid/phone-taker greeted us and told us to seat ourselves wherever. Well, first observations was that this is not going to be fine dining. The restaurant had plenty of TV's positioned around, airing UFC fights and other sporting events, and the walls were decorated with skateboards...yes, skateboards. If management was going for the dark and divey atmosphere of a grunge bar, then they have hit their mark. As we looked around for a table, we figured that we must have beat the dinner crowd as there were plenty of tables to be had.
We chose a booth up front as this was somewhat away from the bar. We were greeted by our waitress, who was cordial, but not very sociable. I was not expecting to know her life story, but at least introduce yourself for Heaven sakes. We informed her about the Groupon and she advised she needed to ask someone else as she was unsure what to do. The other waitress came over and explained the Groupon was equivalent to $58 dollars for anything on the menu, including adult beverages.
I asked the other waitress what she liked and she recommended a "gummy bear"...ok, sounds interesting, why not, right? My husband wasn't feeling so adventurous and he ordered a simple Bloody Mary, using a well vodka. He asked the waitress to make his drink extra-spicey. Not sure what the prices were for the adult beverages, but the Groupon included 4 drinks.
My daughter ordered the broccoli and chicken $8.99, my son ordered the teriyaki chicken with fried rice $8.99, my husband ordered the house chicken $8.99 extra-spicey, and I ordered the honey shrimp $11.99. After giving our orders, our waitress had to come back a minute later to ask my husband what he had ordered because she forgot...clue# 3. I know restaurants try to manage their overhead, but really, c'mon, make sure your wait-staff has a notepad and pen to write down the orders. Food for thought, getting the food orders wrong will probably not make you employee of the month.
The dishes were cooked quickly, almost too quick, approximately 10 minutes from the time we had ordered it. Each entree came out on individual medium-sized plates, each were just enough for a single person. A big bowl of white rice was brought out and the fried rice for my son's teriyaki dish was brought out on it's own elongated-plate...the fried rice was plenty for 2 people. I looked at my plate and thought, 'wow, i scored, my honey-glazed, tempura-battered, shrimp were huge.' As I took a bite, I realized the honey shrimp dish was in fact honey chicken...no wonder the pieces were huge. However, I was not about to complain and have them remake it...I have always been fearful that the restaurant staff would do unspeakable and vile things to my food should I complain or have them remake my dish. My husband's house chicken dish looked ok, it was just tempura-battered chicken, covered with a dark-thick sauce...at least it was chicken...so we hoped. My husband said the house sauce was extremely salty and they forgot to make it spicey...on the bright side, they had a bottle of Siracha readily available. The broccoli and chicken was covered in a teriyaki sauce, but the dish tasted as if it had been sitting awhile. The teriyaki chicken with fried rice was decent, only because they got the fried rice right. Neither my kids really liked their dishes and they asked for their food to be boxed-up...which is code for we want to go home and throw it in the trash.
Our waitress redeemed the Groupon and told us it covered the entire bill...the best news of the night! We still gave her a tip (yes, it was real cash money). Oh well, we learned one lesson...the results of a Democratic voting process doesn't always give you the best choice.
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