Sea Fortune Restaurant — Restaurant in Richmond

🗣️‼️MEDIOCRE FOOD; TERRIBLE SERVICE‼️🗣️

Ordered the Century Egg, Pork and Scallop Congee. Besides the fact that it was the worst congee I've ever tasted in terms of flavours and add-ins (it was gritty and unnecessarily deviated from classic and familiar tastes; a sorry excuse for a century egg and pork congee), we found a piece of plastic in the the congee to which we notified the server.

The server apologized and asked if we'd like to replace it with the same item or with a different item on the menu, to which we declined. As I was uncomfortable and expressed my disappointment, they additionally added a 10% off from gratuity to our bill, however I felt that more reparations could be done, as simply removing the item off my bill does little to win me over as a customer. Are we just collectively pretending that nothing happened when you put my health in danger? Why would I want more congee when you boiled it with the plastic? How did it even get into the food?

As I was displeased with the food and service, I left a $3.50 tip on the $53.60 bill. I honestly did not want to tip at all, but felt that the rest of the food, such as the Ginger Milk Custard, was quite good. I felt my tip was reasonable given the circumstances but their continued service left a sour taste in my mouth.

As we were leaving, the waitress who took our bill chased us down and complained that we did not leave at least a 10% tip so that we cannot leave. She said they had already taken 10% for gratuity so that the least we could do was to add to their tip so that it would be at least 10%. Outrageous. Did we forget as a society that tips were given for good service or did we become entitled to it? Not only was this tip requirement never expressed on their menu or in any fine print, it's unreasonable to treat your guests with mediocre food that had plastic in it; my expectations were not matched either. Good tips were not warranted for this type of subpar service.

I understand that the plastic was a mistake but chasing us down clearly wasn't a mistake and I found it highly unprofessional and simply just horrible customer service. Anyways, we (again) expressed that we found plastic in our food and it made the rest of the eating experience quite uncomfortable as everyone at the table lost their appetites from the experience (it was also the first thing served to us; incredible start to the meal!). Also, quite hilarious that they specifically only talked to the one man of the group when directing their complaints to us, as he believed him to be in charge. It felt a little misogynistic frankly, as I, a woman was the one with my wallet clearly visible and I was also the one that paid and complained ab the situation.

In short, there are better places to enjoy dimsum and spend your money— especially in Richmond. This had to be the worst of the worst, only good for their convenience.

‼️Reiterating again: bad service, bad food, interact at...

Sea Fortune Restaurant is one of the countless Chinese restaurants located in Richmond. And like most Chinese restaurants, you can rely on these places being open during usual western holidays such as New Year’s Day… which is exactly when we chose to visit this place.

To be honest, when I first went back to look at these pictures, I couldn’t even remember where I took them from. Guess we go out for dim sum too often, lol. Anyhoo, we wound up ordering about 7 dishes (for the 2 of us)… which is pretty normal because we like to have a bit of variety.

First up was the Taro Dumplings with Duck Meat ($6.75). I thought that the crispy outer layer was slightly over-done but the mashed taro on the inside was nice and creamy.

A standard mush-try dish at Cantonese dim sum is the Steamed Prawn Dumplings ($7.25). Sea Fortune’s version was a bit compact (ie. small) but the shrimp filling was still plump with a nice snap to the bite.

As for the Steamed Chicken Feet ($7.25), I felt like the chicken feet weren’t tender enough because you should be able to just suck the skin off the bones and have it melt in your mouth (which was not the case here). However, the flavour of the sauce was on point.

I found that the Beef Rice Rolls ($7.25) filling, which was interspersed with chopped water chestnuts and cilantro, was quite meaty. However, the dish itself was a bit basic.

The Stuffed Eggplant with Shrimp Paste ($7.95) was certainly tender but I felt that it could have used a bit more crispness to the exterior to keep it from being too mushy.

For dessert, we opted with the Lychee Osamanthus Cake ($7.25). It’s difficult to tell in the picture but these are moulded into a flower shape.

Last up was the Shanghai Noodles ($17.95) – because what’s dim sum without an overabundance of carbs? When I saw this dish arrive at the table, I immediately thought that this didn’t look like the Shanghai noodles that I’m more accustomed to (ie. the ones with a thicker, rounder noodle and coated with a darker soy sauce. The noodles themselves were fine… but I still felt a bit disappointed that these weren’t the same as what I was hoping for.

Overall, I found that the food was pretty good here and the prices were a bit on the high side (although we did get a 20% off discount...

It was surprisingly bad in service though the foods, to be honest we’re not bad in general.

Frankly speaking, dim sums are more or less the same in many other restaurants. Parking spaces are another problems and that’s why we went there late around 1:45 in the afternoon. We had all together 10 people, when we first step in, there were still 35-40% occupied, we started to order food & dim sum after 10 mins when all of us settled down. The server, from his appearance who could tell was a manager, not telling us they were closing at 3 o’clock sharp. We ordered almost 18 dishes with 3 dishes of noodles, fried rice etc from the kitchen. It takes some times for the foods to be ready is very normal and the point is, when the dishes & dim sums started to arrived one by one, it was already passed 2:30, and suddenly around 2:45, tge same server came to say they are closing at 3:00, and told us to start packing those foods still on the table. He also gave us the bill requesting us to pay. We were not a trouble maker, hence we paid accordingly and expecting to eat more then packed whatever left. Unbelievable was that, he gave us 3 boxes and kept telling us to pack food, saying that the door will be closed at 3:00 sharp. He then told us we still need to pay $ 0.50 each for the storage box, in fact we support recycling programs and hence don’t mind paying for the storage boxes. The fact was they didn’t make us aware that the restaurant close at 3:00 sharp at the beginning and let us went in; told us to start packing food in a very bad tone and since they were not providing us enough time to enjoy food at first hand; ordered us to pack food in a rush and charged for storage boxes after we paid. At the same time, there was another table complaining the same issue, they have two little kids with them, how can you treat customers like that. In normal circumstances, many other restaurants will asked you to pay but will let you finished the foods even the time passed whatever they supposed to close for recess or close for the day. This was totally ridiculous ! If you really want to experience the same stress and bad service manner, you better walk in one & a half hour just before the resturant forced to close their door and ask...