As a restaurant owner myself, I know that customer service can make or break you. It is just as important as the food. Tonight was the first time I ordered from Zheng Garden and it will be the last. I called in a pick-up order and they said it would be 15 minutes. I showed up about 20 minutes later. The lady at the counter asked if I was picking up and I said yes. She asked me to hold on a minute and I said sure. She never asked my name, never asked what I ordered. She turned around and started putting other orders together, 3 to be exact, which took about 5 minutes. Then the phone rang. She took the order on the phone which was about another 1-2 minutes, hung up the phone, turned around and started putting more orders together. By this time I'm getting really annoyed. A couple minutes later, a man came up to the counter and asked the man who came in several minutes after me who was standing behind me in line if he could help him. I'm pretty sure I actually said "Are you kidding me?" out loud because at that point the guy behind me asked if I was helped yet and I said no. Let me say one thing, I work the counter at my restaurant every single day. My number 1 priority is making sure my customers are happy. If I have a customer who just walked in to get a pick-up order, I drop whatever I'm doing to help them and make sure they're in and out as quickly as possible. Never ever would I ever turn around, start doing other things, take phone calls and completely ignore the person. If I did that, I would fully expect them to log onto Yelp, write me an awful review and never return. As it turns out, my order was sitting on the counter in the bag getting cold the whole time I was standing there. I was so aggravated when I left, I decided that no matter how the food was, I was never going back.
So on to the food. The Pork Fried Rice was excellent. I really liked it. The Crab Rangoon was awful. The worst I've ever had. It had maybe a quarter of a teaspoon of filling. The Sweet and Sour Chicken (which I get at every Chinese place I go to) was not good. This is going to sound stupid, but the sweet and sour sauce was too sweet. I couldn't eat it. Although I like batter, the chicken fingers were about 90% batter and 10% chicken and flavorless. I got my husband General Tso's Chicken because that's what he always gets. I didn't tell him what it was. When he started eating it, he asked what it was. When I told him, he said "This is not General Tso's Chicken. It tastes like generic Sesame Chicken or Sweet and Sour Chicken." He hated the Crab Rangoon as well and didn't complain about his white rice.
I like that the kitchen is open so you can see what's going on. However, I did notice two flies flying in circles in the dining room which is odd since it's the middle of winter.
It's too bad that people don't put more effort into customer service. If I had an employee who did that (although I'm assuming this was the owner), it would happen once and only once. If it happened again, they would be fired.
I really don't know what other reviewers are talking about when they say this is the best Chinese food ever. Other than the rice, it was below average. In fact, the only reason I gave it two stars was because of the rice. So if you really like Pork Fried Rice and that's all you like and you don't mind being ignored for 10 minutes after you've called ahead so you wouldn't have to wait, you should order from here. It would be nice to have a good Chinese food place in Hudson because the only place I like in the area is in Londonderry and it's kind of a pain to drive there. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to keep making the drive when I want Chinese food. read more