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| - This place is a very odd mix of biker/skater dive bar and Chinese restaurant. Kind of cool atmosphere, but also trying a little too hard to be hip and trying to be more Tempe than Scottsdale, which is a bit of a fail. Personally I can totally handle the dive bar atmosphere, but the really loud music was very annoying - in our case, it was rather awkward to sit next to a table of seniors while super vulgar rap music was playing. Kinda makes this place more geared towards people aged 50 and under, and bikers.
We went on a Sunday evening around 6:30pm and the service was awful. We were seated at a dirty booth that still had fortune cookie crumbs on it and was sticky. the menus were sticky also... gross! On top of that, we sat there for over 25 minutes before the waitress showed up to ask what we would like to drink! needless to say we were ready to order the entire dinner at that point since we waited so long. We specifically said we were starting with the family size Wonton soup, crab puffs and Char-Shu pork, and for our entrees we ordered the large Mongolian beef and the small honey crisp chicken. While it took forever to get our order taken, the food was ready in about 10 minutes, which was a bit of a surprise. But they dropped the ball again by bringing out ALL our food at once! what the heck? This was so unprofessional - by the time we finished one plate to move on to the next it was totally cold. We specifically stated what we were "starting" with, but I guess the staff there couldn't care less that there is a pretty simple protocol when serving food - appetizers first, and then entrees... not everything at once. This really put a damper on our meal as we felt rushed because we wanted everything to stay hot, which didn't happen. The "family size" soup came in one single serving bowl with 1 spoon - we flagged another waitress who confirmed that was the single small soup, not family size; we informed our waitress she brought out the wrong size but it was ok, we'll just share the small bowl, as long as she didn't charge us for the larger size. Well low and behold, when the bill came it was indeed the larger size. Normally this would just be an honest error, but after having told the waitress what happened, it seemed rather unethical of her to not bother correcting the bill. I really don't care for restaurants that don't make the effort to be accurate when it comes to charging you - shady shady shady.
Now on top of the lousy service, the food ended up being subpar. The crab puffs were nice and crispy, but they were tiny; the smallest crab puffs I have seen in a while. But that was the least of our worries. The Wonton soup was a disgusting disaster. First off, they add way too many ingredients to it...it was like a salad with all the different veggies in there. The beauty in Wonton soup is the simplicity of the broth and the dumplings, with maybe some green onions. But here it was the kitchen sink thrown in, including floating shrimp. The Wontons somehow disintegrated and the soup was just wonton particles swimming in veggies and shrimp. Easily one of the worst soups I have ever been charged $10 for.
The Char-Su pork - credit for the meat itself, it was really good. Nicely bbq'd with a sauce that wasn't overbearing. However the plate itself was another disaster. There was barely any meat on it, and once we picked it out the meat, it was all shredded cabbage in sauce, in a pretty gross hot mess. Not worth the price at all. More meat, less cabbage filler to make the plate seem larger than it is, please!
And then our cold entrees - the honey chicken was basically the General's Chicken slathered in honey. Didn't even have sesame seeds for a little flavour. It was not crispy at all, and was just drenched in honey. Would never order that again, it was really disappointing. the "large" Mongolian beef was on a bigger plate, but really was the same portion as the small and I would even say that I thought it had less meat on it than the small chicken plate. So kinda a ripoff to upsize it I think. Like the pork, the Mongolian beef itself was pretty tasty. But once we picked out all the meat, which was not a lot, the plate was just a giant pile of slop - shredded cabbage and sauce. When we were ordering the waitress bragged "oh we have huge portions here!"... that is a bit of a scam because the portions seemed to be mostly shredded cabbage filler! This was pretty off-putting to say the least.
So from the inattentive and lousy service, to the deceptive portions with shredded cabbage making up 60% of the plates, the cold food, the disastrous soup, the inaccurate bill... the meal was a total fail. Ultimately the dive bar atmosphere with the inappropriately vulgar music was maybe the best part of the experience, because the food and service were mediocre at best. Not worth the $60 I dropped there for 2 people, not at all.
I would recommend trying RED HOUSE on Via Linda instead -best Chinese in the valley.
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