Szechuan Village — Restaurant in Avenue District

Rank and Stank Szechuan Village

Ok so I just moved into the area and as a foodie navigating from my ATF places, which can be exciting, frustrating and some for some places, horrific.

Now to be honest the first time I ordered from here it was so good that I even tried ordering another dinner for 1 because I was so impressed. SIGH A distant memory😭

2nd time I went all out and ordered 80 bucks in food. Sadly disappointed, I'm making it understood that no, I'm not looking for anything. The place opened up at 4. I got my food at 3:45. I got yesterdays old rice. The ginger beef was old but beef and greens were good. In total, meh!

So I went back to the basics tonight. Again, I was excited because it should be fresh right? I opened up the Wonton Soup and IMMEDIATELY it smelled off. Not sure if it was the noodles or the hunk of pork. I took bite of the pork and yup, it was definitely the pork that is off. On closer examination, you can see the discoloration. Now I'm afraid of the noodles LOL! But to be fair, the piece of broccoli in the soup is a spitting image of health. Great color, with a bit of crispiness to it 😂

Now we move on to the meal. Again, nostrils were setting off my Spidey senses. That off-smell was back. FFS this too WOW!

Dinner for one: ginger beef, chicken fried rice, and beef and greens.

Let's start with beef and greens. Odd mix. Meat was a mixture of good and bad meat. I had one piece that was ok. Again some discoloration. OMGOSH the broccoli!🤢 Some of it was kind of yellowish. The rest was slimy (like old slimy not slimy from sauce) and you can see where they tried cutting away the brown. It was soggy, almost rubbery, like if that makes sense. The carrots are no better! They were so old they were rubbery, squishy and overcooked. Who knows how many times they were recooked! RIP The rice, wow, they even screwed that up. Ginger beef, no clue.

If I thought the results would be like the first one then I'd be ok but at this point, I lost faith and was replaced by fear. We all had food poisoning right? NOT TAKING THE CHANCE HERE🤣

So now my enlightening conversation.

Miss Customer Service

I call in politely. I asked for the manager. Immediately her tone changes and it drops 18 degrees. I told her you guys need to check both produce and meat because it's off. First, she argues it was not them and I did not order from them. Now I like WTF! So for 3 minutes they were arguing because they had no orders that day (obviously because I got last week food). Then FINALLY she goes "Ohh you ordered from Uber Eats. Well Uber Eats didn't complain so why are you complaining?" WAIT WHAT?? I told her it was not Uber eating your food. I told her I'm not touching it but tossing it and would review it appropriately. She's now irate! I just hung up. SMH

I'm including pictures but sadly to get the full effect of this experience the essence of scent of the bad meat and broccoli is lacking. I dodged a bullet here.

EDIT: I tried including the green meat and slimy broccoli pics but Google itself...

So I've done my research & this place apparently has the best Hot & Sour Soup In Alberta. I have a girlfriend who loves Hot & Sour soup. I called last week to arrange delivery to her office for lunch. The owner took my order, but informed at the end of our conversation that they didn't deliver during rush hour to Downtown Edmonton. I called the next day in the early evening & spoke with the same woman who remembered me from the day prior. At the end of the order she asked me how I intended to pay. I said credit card & was told they didn't accept credit cards over the phone. She put me on hold to speak with her partner & came back informing me they would accept an interac etransfer. Understanding that etransfers can take some time I decided to wait until another day where they had the money in their hands to place an order. That day was today. She's at her office alone, working overtime on a Sunday. I'd have loved to have made her day, so called in to order soup. Planned to pay $50 to have it delivered a mile away, well within their delivery area.

Called in and asked if the woman on the phone if she remembered me. I was told yes. I began my order but within the conversation it came out I was paying from Winnipeg. Going back on her earlier word from a week prior, I was informed she would not take an etransfer, reiterated they did not accept credit cards over the phone & denied ever having spoken to me in the first place, despite her telling me minutes before she remembered our conversation.

If their food is good, their customer relations surely are not. In the end I was hung up on after she repeatedly interrupted whenever any attempt was made to interject into her lies & deceit.

I could have arranged a friend to go about this grand gesture, but had hoped to keep this as a private gesture between the two of us. Further, I'd have already done this had the owner been straight up with me from the get go.

Sadly I may still get soup from there & have it picked up by a friend. It better be good or this review will get even worse.

An edit to this review several years later. My friend had been experiencing severe depression, hence why a simple thing like a surprise order of soup would have been extremely appreciated.

Sadly suicide was the end result. The little things in life can mean so much. A shame this restaurant provided no help to my friend, a successful business woman from a prominent family. She died sad and alone. Her family and mine grieve her...

You know, it's a pretty simple expectation: You get what you pay for.

My friends and I have been coming to this local stir-fry joint since we moved into the neighbourhood. While the dishes are in components: Appetizers and soup on the left, then in the middle, the noodles & rice separated from the two stir-fry dishes: Beef & Black Bean, and Kung Pow Chicken, and one sugary-syrup-coated attempt at Ginger Beef, They offer a buffet at a pretty reasonable price, $15.95 + tax & tip for dinner, from Monday to Thursday, 12.95 for lunch... The lunch runs from 11:30 to 2:30, the dinner from 4:30 to 8:30. Then they have some walk-in business...

With a giant unspoken asterisk of: "If you eat too much, they'll just not serve you," apparently. I thought I was being paranoid the day I walked in, with the heat lamps on, at 11:40, and they told me they weren't doing a buffet that day, I really did.

Today, my friend and I were there at 6ish. They had, for the first time, added a sign asking people to pay before they ate. No problem. I pay $33.50 for myself, and my friend, and I got my second plate - we're not talking a mound, we're talking a plate; not that it should matter when you're advertising All You Can Eat - and they just pack everything up without a word, a wink, a momentary glance, at 7:47.

My friend and I are gobsmacked.

So I sit there, until 9:15, waiting for them to so much as acknowledge me, or my dining partner, who due to her social anxiety, left early. No, but they'll acknowledge the party of three who came in at quarter-to-nine, as I sit there, spinning a quarter, waiting for them to surely correct this oversight. I'm sure the giggling and muttering to one another in a language in which I'm not conversant is about something else, because it's an ugly stereotype that allophones are using another language to talk about you behind your back when you're in the room... And for what it's worth, I still believe, in the vast majority of cases, it is an ugly stereotype.

Finally, after an hour and a half, I'm forced to refer to the ugly behavior as what it is: Someone offering a deal they're unwilling to honour. And it's not like I wouldn't understand if they were just in the mood to close down, if they'd offered something of equal value. But no, not noodle-one... Apparently, without a word, we'd done something wrong.

When I have something to say to someone, I say it to their friggin' face.

I don't buy from liars or thieves, and I hope you...