Lin Heung Restaurant — Restaurant in Saanich

Let me preface this 'negative review' by saying that I've ordered from this place probably fifty times over the past 10-15 years. They are consistently average; reasonably priced, and reasonable with their wait times.

Tonight (April 23rd, 2019) however was a completely different experience than 'usual'. We ordered $68.00 of food for pick-up, tipped the nice young lady at the till, and brought the food straight home to eat.

My wife - who is pregnant - went straight for the Wor Wonton Soup as she was craving something lighter than the rest of the food we ordered, but the second she opened up the container, there was a very off-putting smell. She asked me to smell the second container (I believe their Large size 'to go' is 2 containers worth), and sure enough, it had a very bad smell. A mixture between meat/veggies that were off, and stale, almost moldy smelling broth. I called them right away to alert them to the issue, and after putting me on hold for a few minutes, they asked me to bring in the soup for a refund (of that item).

At this point, I thought they were handling it as best as they could given the limited information of the situation. We weren't going to eat the soup, so I had no issues bringing it back to them for inspection. When I arrived I was courteous and tried not to bring much attention to the 'return'. I said quietly that I had called in about the soup a few minutes prior, and passed them both containers of soup in the original bag and then took a seat and waited for their assessment.

A middle-aged lady came out and a younger man and she waved me over to the till. She said the soup was fine, and that they serve 100 bowls a day of it. I rebutted that I had consumed their wor wonton soup many times before, and this particular batch was not 'fine'. I'm ok with average chinese food; but I'm not about to poison my pregnant wife and myself...I know when things are off. She huffed and started typing on a calculator as she tallied up my refund. She told me not to order the soup next time if I don't like it. I said I do USUALLY like it, in fact, I've never complained to them before about anything. Average is fine 99% of the time in my books, I just didn't feel like cooking tonight. But I'm not going to pay for something that likely would have made me or my wife ill. She again stated the 100 bowls a day they serve, and no one complains, and that they aren't in business to give refunds and waste food. I had heard just about enough. I said to her that this is not how you deal with situations like this, I've been in the food industry since 2003, and am very well aware of food that has gone off. I was respectful and discreet, and didn't want to cause a fuss or a scene, but this is not how you should handle this situation. The young man began apologizing, but I said don't worry, it wasn't his fault. The most unfortunate part was that there were customers there eating in, and one waiting to pick-up who could have easily heard the back and forth between the lady and myself. It really didn't fill me with confidence that her first reaction to "the wor wonton soup is off" was "we serve 100 bowls a day, it's fine, you're wrong"...

Anyway, just my 2 cents. We won't be going back here. There are far too many options for average chinese food in this city. I honestly only go here when I forget that Tropical Island is closed on Tuesdays haha (FYI, try Tropical Island if you haven't, delicious food, and lovely people. It's more malaysian/southeast...

Servers are quite nice, but... Servers don't answer questions that well, when regarding their menu: when asked "what are your thickest noodles?" (in Chinese) the response was vague confusion, as if the question didn't make sense. 1st dish: Soup & Thick Soup, Hot & Sour Soup. Quite nice, with what I can assume as the correct order of spice. 2nd dish: Appetizers, Honey Barbecued Pork. With many pieces, and a good sauce, this is just a tastier grilled thick bacon. • 3rd + 4th: Hong Kong Style Chow Mein, Barbecued Pork & Vegetable Chow Mein. + Vegetable, Eggplant with Garlic Sauce. 3: The pork is SO SOFT, and the serving size is big enough for a single meal by itself. Taste works as expected as well. 4: By a personal professional, the eggplant is great, and overall is better than many of the other restaurants'. For my opinion, though the eggplants' nastier taste does come out every-so-often, after dipping it in the sauce, it taste quite like fish (as advertised)! 5th: Seafood, Szechuan Seafood Delight. And delight is the right word, as its softness and taste is quite delightful indeed. The spice chosen seems to match as well. • 6th: Hong Kong Style Chow Mein, Shanghai Special Noodle. This was ordered spicy-less and to-go, thus is not included in the rating. Food quantity is satisfactory for a restaurant of this nature, and to exemplify that point, we only finished one of our dishes....

We just came off the ferry, tired and hungry. “Chinese food near me” is not always reliable, but we saw this place from the parking lot of the first Chinese place we were about to walk into, and felt better about coming here.

The ambiance, the feel, the menus, just made us feel so at home, like when we eat Chinese food in Chinatown Toronto with Rocky and Ben and Athena.

Menus and hot tea on the table as we sat. Perfect. We ignored the printed material and started perusing the wall-mounted white boards. This is a fun way to see things. Feels very old school.

Had the wonton soup, so good. Journey swore that it was healing her sore throat. We also had the Black Bean Beef with Green Bean on rice, which was so good. Then the sesame chicken chow mein, which was also so very good. But the wonton soup needed more attention. So we ordered another!

Now, unable to finish bowl #2, happy and satiated, we will come back, whenever we drive through Victoria...