| rev:text
| - summary: clueless service, limited menu, mediocre food.
I walked into the place knowing that they serve Americanized Chinese food, so I am prepared for that. The rating is based on comparison with other restaurants of its type (the most mass-market example being P.F. Chang).
Wai Wai belongs to a new class of American Chinese restaurants that try to shake off the dingy "takeout place" image. The decor has a more modern sensibility to it than, say, Jimmy Tseng's. Think Starbucks meets Asian tea house. The menu, though, looked just like the one from a takeout place twenty years ago. Here you'll find things like pu pu platter and honey chicken. I was disappointed that the entree list was pretty basic. There were only four vegetarian options, and the content of the dish was pretty much just the single ingredient (e.g., a plate of stir-fried eggplant) which makes it look more like a side dish than someone's dinner.
The food was largely forgettable. The appetizers I tried (fried dumplings, spring roll, crab rangoon) were ok -- though hard to go wrong with deep fried stuff. I was underwhelmed by my main dish (the eggplant). The plate had an island of rice and an island of eggplant surrounded by a sea of brown sauce. The sauce is overly sweet and goopy, but the eggplant itself had too little seasoning to stand on its own. The one good thing about the food was that the vegetables were fresh and not overcooked. The string beans were still crunchy and the eggplant still vibrantly purple. The shrimp, however, was probably from frozen.
My strongest impression of the place might be the clueless waiter we had. As soon as we sat down, he asked for our drink orders, even though we didn't know what they had to offer. The menu actually doesn't list their drinks, but the waiter didn't volunteer to tell us what they had. To order some tea, it took couple rounds of back and forth with the waiter to settle the matter. When ordering our food, I had some questions about the dishes (like, is the chow mein the thin and crispy kind?). The waiter's response was "I don't know, I haven't tried it." (Hadn't he served it to other customers? Was he not paying attention?) Upon further interview, it turned out that he had only sampled one dish of this restaurant, and he didn't have anything to say about even that dish. Even a new hire ought to do better, surely?
Bottom line: even for American Chinese food, I've had better. If I should ever be struck by a craving for General Tsao's, I'd probably go take my chances at Richard Chen or Plum or whatever Asian restaurant standing on that space then.
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