Rough. Started out with promise based on the menu (and photos of the interior looked lovely), but it quickly went downhill and our frowns just deepened throughout the entire awful experience.
Food: we ordered Empress Sizzling Beef & Twice Cooked Pork. Server seemed to have never heard of TCPork before, so I should have taken a hint there. I pointed to the words "twice cooked pork" on the menu, and she politely said, "let me just check in the kitchen real quick." Once it arrived, our server poured the sauce over the meat & veggies on a hot plate (think fajitas style) and it sizzled. So, that means none of it was cooked in the sauce... no sense of the wok in the flavor, texture, or visual appearance. The ESBeef had redeemable texture in the vegetables, but the beef tasted really strange and the sauce was sort of thin and mediocre. The TCPork was abysmal: the meat was so tough I had to bite and tear off parts using my hands, then chew forever. The pork was definitely not slow-cooked and certainly not marinated or velveted or anything to tenderize it. The sauce was terribly imbalance and it was a real struggle to eat even a third of the meal. We crushed the steamed white rice but left nearly all of the meat and sauces behind.
Atmosphere: the decor is initially so beautiful, but after sitting for 30min, it started to look fairly unclean. What quickly messed up this meal, though, was the birthday karaoke crew in the neighboring room. There was no sound barrier between the dining room and the 1 full hour of off-key terrible karaoke. It was brutal to endure, kind of maddening. We each went to the bathroom--here's what I saw. Toilet was full of un flushed pee and toilet paper, sink had 4" of standing water, zero draining going on. No paper towels. I decided to hold it and just use the edge of my sleeve to open the door to escape. When I told my fiancé that was rough, he said the men's room was exactly the same. Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.
Service: our server was very polite and I think genuinely doing her best but clearly overwhelmed. She was speed-walking throughout the dining area (5 tables) and the back room with the karaoke party the whole hour we were there. We had super long pauses between being seated, ordering, and having our food served, but I don't think that's on her at all. Every time she cleared a table and brought dishes to the kitchen, there would be a LOUD clatter as if dishes were thrown and some fell to the floor and bounced around. Kitchen was otherwise completely quiet. We heard the table next to us say "last time we waited an hour for our food." Oh my.
It's now 17min since we left and my stomach is getting knotted up, so that doesn't bode too well, oh boy.
Was it the worst place ever? No, of course not. Was it deeply regrettable? Yes, I'd never go back. Avoid, avoid, avoid. read more