My dad wrote about this place almost 2-3 years ago when he used to frequent Chinatown. I’ve eaten here with him for the same duration and I must say the food was good. But nothing could’ve prepared me for the great disappointment I felt when I ate there on my own.
I ordered my favorite dish which was so striking because of the amount of roasted cumin seeds they put into the mixture. I was so excited because I was always telling mig how great this dish was. The beef came and no cumin… It also lacked a lot of salt. The fried rice tasted like bad hospital food and didn’t look like the snapshot on the wall..I was so puzzled how this happened and I was so pissed off because my stomach was so ready for great meal. Glad the dumplings were still good though.
It’s sad, a lot of people now frequent this place because it was recently included in a food tour of Chinatown. But now when I think about it, eating there without my dad and all, I wouldve been happier spending the money on mcdonald’s that day. Halfway thru the dish I told mig I couldn’t take eating this badly made trash and complained to one of the waitresses why it turned out this way. That I’ve been eating here for 3 years with my dad and this is the first time I was served this horrid meal. She gave me a nervous smile and said, “naku marami kasing may ayaw ng cumin Kaya Hindi namin pinapalagyan unless may request”. What?! Are u kidding me? You feed THIS to people unless specified?
now I can now understand why bourdain said “that’s really sad” when we had told him that we went to the claypot rice place in Vietnam which he featured and the place already expanded so much. In this case, the place had so much more waitresses, and had adopted their recipes to what they THINK all Filipinos like. Having a person in your restaurant complain about the wild amount on cumin in a dish is like going to India and saying that their curries should not have their masala. You might as well eat in mcdonald’s. I’m just saying this because I was thoroughly disappointed, of picking out that place instead of the maybe 100 restaurant in chinatown who don’t care what u think, they’ll serve the food according to their standard.
Anyway the only action they took was that they topped my dish with some oily cumin that never had the chance to infuse with the rest of the dish. I had them pack the food up so I can give it to the dogs. Well atleast the dumplings were still pretty good.
plaridel
i hope you’re tactful enough whenever you complain to the restaurant staff as you can’t always be sure what they’d do to your food behind the scene. 🙂
giannina
I was, but what was surprising is that the waitress KNEW that it was cooked the wrong way. And the kitchen was open anyways, that’s how we saw that she merely topped the cumin seeds and the meat never left the plate.