Congee Queen - Mississauga(Dundas&Hwy427) — Restaurant in Mississauga

My family and I love Congee Queen and have been customers for many years. However, this is our first time at the Etobicoke location and this is our worse experience ever.

We order over $200 of food and found hair half way through eating the general tao chicken. I informed the server and he asked me if i wanted a new one and i’m like it’s ok there’s so much food already and I didn’t want a new plate and further waste food but i want to let the staff know there’s literally a long piece of hair in the food. Later at checkout they charged us for the dish which i don’t think is fair. As we stopped eating and found it disgusting to have a long piece of hair between the pieces of chicken. He argued and with a lot of attitude saying we finished most of the plate before finding the hair.

But to be fair it’s not like i go digging in food and making sure there’s no hair before eating. I found it at that certain point of eating and immediately stopped eating to let him know very politely. And also $20 to an almost $250 bill like is it even worth me trying to argue? But it’s disgusting and unsanitary. It’s not like we’re not paying for the whole meal and trying to scam them out of a plate of general tao chicken. We didn’t continue eating it and asked another two server to take away the dish since the original server just left the plate on the table and also the plate that we left the chicken with the hair on.

I was still polite explaining I don’t think it’s okay for you to charge us this plate. He argued but eventually took it off the bill. I told him I appreciate your help and he responded very angrily “yeah you should appreciate it”. I felt like I was doing something wrong when it’s the restaurant responsibility to ensure quality and cleanliness. Genuinely disappointed and would not be visiting this location again.

I really don’t mind that we had ordered a lot and then packed the rest home. Maybe he thought because we over order now I’m trying to save $20. But I always order a lot to have leftovers when I eat at Congee Queen. Regardless my reasoning I felt the way he treated my family and I were uncalled and i’m hindsight maybe i should have taken the whole new plate and let him charge me so I didn’t have to be treated...

When our patience all of a sudden got tested, it was bad. I have taken my wife and toddler to enjoy dining at this restaurant for a few weeks and it was our revisit this week since Sunday.

The restaurant was busy regularly. We ordered three main dishes - one congee, one beef and one fried rice, nothing special. However, we quickly noticed the dishes were served slowly to our table vs the other tables around us.

How slow? When we were eating our first dish the others had their dishes continuously arrived at their tables. When our second dish arrived, customers at other tables had done their eating. When we kept waiting, other customers had paid their bills and new customers had filled in and got served. My toddler didn't enjoy the first two dishes so we were hoping for the fried rice as last, but it just never arrived. We had been waiting for AN HOUR for the third dish. During that time, we had asked FOUR waiters that passed us to follow up. None came back to us again. At that point our kid barely ate anything and to leave apparently wasn't a good option either.

I quit being patient and walked all the way to the back counter to ask for an order for takeout, as apparently the dish can be done in a much quicker manner over there. The staff had a discussion with me about my order and without knowing much of my situation I was advised to wait for another while like 10 minutes. I wanted to feed my kid with some food he liked ASAP, so I took one last chance to explain to her nicely about the situation as clearly as possible. Finally they listened, confirmed my sitting, and REORDERED my last dish immediately. The warm dish arrived at my table in less than five minutes.

We couldn't stop thinking what the other four waiters had done that never let this "magic" to happen. The poor kid could have eaten way earlier. None of them paid attention to hear that our first need was to feed the kid. They didn't realize that was a problem at all.

Truly, it was such a huge disappointment to us with this restaurant that has a...

Dine in date: April 18 2025 around 4-5pm

First the positives:

Food - consistently the same and always delicious, came to our table quick Servers: Friendly and quick, our server was great, she had divided the orders per table and the correct dishes arrived at the correct table with zero confusion, she was excellent!! Restaurant: clean and spacious

Now the negative:

Our only gripe for that day was the host, he was not pleasant at all. We were a party of 16 but my wife had called in advance, asked if they would be able to accommodate our party and it was busy, she was told it was ok and they were not busy. When we had arrived 2/3 of the Resturant space was empty so we figure score and we would be seated right away and without any issues. Well the host, it was man, was very rude, talked under his breath and did not seem happy to have us there. Mind you we called in advance to ensure it would be fine, otherwise we would have gone else where to dine. He would not take us to our seats if we hadn’t agreed upon the 15% service fee, which was a problem for us at all, stood at the host table and repeated it several times, to which we had already agreed upon with him. Once seated, only given 2 menus between us, it was fine anyways since I had done all the ordering. My spouse had asked for an extra seat since he had only 15 spots, she was given attitude and he was very unfriendly. I had witnessed him talking to another colleague about my party as well, as if we were creating some sort of problem for him and the resturant. It was a truly uncomfortable experience with that man, I sure hope Congee Queen provides service training for their host. I really wanted to take him to side and ask him what the issue was and it was a big deal my group and I would of left. Again the resturant was 2/3 empty when we had arrived and not busy at all. PS it was one bill only and our bill was 500$ including service fees of 15%. The host was the only one that made our dining experience a...