This was two years ago the most authentic Chinese eatery in Zona Rosa, popular for the moment (2017-19) with Chinese from China as well as Mexicans. The menu is stil wide ranging from North China to South and from East to West. However, it is so popular that they don't seem to care about customers returning, unless if it's the in crowd with the boss, a smiling Jackie Chan who schmoozes and charms some of the customers, but not others.
However, the cooks are not smiling -- understaffed and overworked. Requests in English, Spanish and Chinese not to throw fistful amounts of minced raw garlic into dishes which do not require any garlic would produce the opposite effect, in fact, doubling the amount! Owner and cooks, are from North of the River, judging from the dialectal accent, and have little understanding of the Cantonese and Shanghai dishes they continue to sell, somewhat clueless when it comes to the more delicate palette of cuisines from South of the river. Garlic is a definite no, no in these eastern mid-coastal dishes, so called the rice bowl of China, from the province of Jiangsu, which includes the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai.
On occasions when the crowd is not so big one might actually get a tasty dish, but much different the next day. The owner is riding on his wave of success and must not be minding the malaise of the 2 young, overworked cooks, who when they emerge from the kitchen in very dirty clothing to smoke outside the restaurant, seem despondent.
Too bad that this restaurant in less than a year is already declining, serving tea which is lukewarm water with tea color, as many Overseas Chinese restaurants do, but this restaurant for sure is the worst when it comes to tea.
The restaurant seems to have trouble holding onto its waitstaff. The lady who minds the money desk seems to be very unpleasant in general. Someone who knows the owner might be well advised to urge him to attend to the welfare of his cooks, and occasionally sample the dishes coming out of the kitchen, since eventually another restaurant might appear out of nowhere to take all his business away. Meanwhile if you don't get bloated from excessive raw garlic, order the dishes which they are good at, hot and spicy fish or beef cooked in water with chili oil, dumplings are substandard even by Mexican/Oversea standard. Once for several times a beef belly with dried tofu skin was delicious. Two years later the cooks do not bother to hydrate them with boiling water and a teaspoon of baking soda, so that it is inedible. They constantly run out of certain items without any sense of apology. Some of their customers seem to be just fine with the indifferent service and hit or miss food. In a short two years it has gone sour...How can that be?!
Our last meal there -- posted here for 2 years -- not a single Mexican or foreigner...all hapless Asians.
This restaurant now presents a very BAD image of Chinese and Chinese food to Mexicans and the expat community. I suppose they feel that compared to the hopelessly grotesque "China buffet" joints around town their stuff is still better, but the excess MSG, mopping the floor with noxious fumed cleaning fluid, and lukewarm water with tea color and fistfuls of raw garlic in dishes which are meant to be delicate in aroma and taste all have gone quickly to hell. Not pretty! read more