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| - I am a Chinese, I love food and I know my food - I know what authentic Chinese food stands for, what fine Chinese food promises to offer and what contemporary Chinese food aspires to deliver. And this restaurant offers none of those. But the price tag is astronomical. A Peking duck package (offered only to party three and more) cost $76/person. As part of the package, you can choose certain numbers of dishes from the appetizer selection and entree selection. Just to give you some idea, if you go to a Chinese restaurant in China town just a couple of miles off the Strip, you can find very good Peking duck with three different ways to eat it for half the price. And the Peking duck is only offered as a package. If you don't like the package, you can order your meal a la carte. In that way, a small plate of Mr. Chow's noodle in the appetizer section, the signature dish of the restaurant with hand crafted noodle (which is slightly different version of zhangjiang mian), cost $19.99 and in the main entree selection, most of the dishes are in the range of $40 and up with a few exceptions in the $30 range. If you want rice and vegetable, $7.50 per person. On top of that, the dishes had no presentation, of small quantity on a very small tin plate (maybe silver but it really did not look like silver) and were brought out to a very cramped table.
Now talking about service, we saw more serving staff than people dining in the restaurant. The most dutiful person was the person who filled up the drinks. My son ordered a pink lemonade. Every time his glass was left with 1/3 of the lemonade, he would be presented with another full glass of lemonade. And that went on 5 times. Other than that, although there were more staffers than diners it took longer than usual for the orders to be taken and for the food to be served.
And ambient, my kids said it felt like we were in a spaceship. The restaurant had a very futuristic feel to it. The lighting was fluorescent, turning blue as the moon dropped down from the ceiling every 20 or so minutes. It may be cool, but really did not offer a pleasant, cozy dining experience.
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