This restaurant chain boasts a menu largely consisting of Cantonese/Westernized Chinese food, but this location is not run by staff of Cantonese origin. It loses two stars for continual stoic customer service along with two bad run ins of customer service incidents. If ranking by ingredients and taste alone, it would get 3.5 stars.
I come here only when someone else insists for lunch on a weekday. I never come here on the weekends because I think you are better off going to Chopsticks or another friendlier establishment with more appreciative people of their customers. In fact, I would rather go to Entehuus for lunch which is about 2 streets away, also near the Enge area.
The last bad incident I had was with a soup order. I had ordered in Chinese what I thought was the brown soup with tofu and pork, which is normally called hot and sour soup (literal translation) in Chinese. I didn't receive the soup I thought I ordered. Instead, I received a soup that smelled like sweet and sour chicken in a liquid format, with floating hot oil. As you can imagine it could be revolting for someone who is just recovering from the flu and have been feeding off of cough syrup for two weeks. I explained to the male manager nicely that there is no way I could drink this soup as I have been sick and this would hurt me and my sore throat, and if there is anyway he could get me the real "other" hot and sour soup. He seem to not care and started coercing me to pick another soup, to find out the soup I really wanted is actually called Szechuan style soup here. He was unnecessarily all flustered and extremely irritated, and kept repeating that I have to pay additional for this. I thought it was amusing how it was only a small switch of a soup order, he did not have to make a scene and get all flustered. And he did end up charging me for two soups, although he took back the first soup and I never received it. This guy is really unfriendly at times borderline rude every time I go in there. And when they tell you to enjoy your meal in German here, it usually feels stoic.
The other bad experience was a hot summer day and I had walked to the restaurant with my water bottle. When my group of 8 including myself was sitting down, I left my water bottle on the table to get sorted out to sit down. The same male manager seated us and he went out of his way to tell me I was not allowed to bring my own water and drink it at the restaurant in a very rude way. Come on, did he really think I was going to do something like that? Plus, I was at a business lunch.
Also, I've noticed that they rotate their young staff, which I believe they hire as hospitality students for a limited amount of time. They seem to be treated poorly by the managers who don't seem to care about anything else but to get the customers in and out asap to roll the profits. Or my friend just thinks it's a case of oikophobia. read more