YU GARDEN Restaurant | Chinesisches Teehaus — Restaurant in Hamburg

Please don't go to this restaurant, especially if you are a POC. The staff are very racist, which is mind boggling as they don't appear to be from there! A group of us who were in town for a conference, all highly educated scientists, from all over the world, who also happened to be brown and non-German speaking, visited this restaurant on July 11th, Thursday around 7-7:30 PM. The head waiter was super rude. He could not communicate in English, but our French friend tried to speak with him in German. Throughout service, he was rude and impatient with us and kept telling us to hurry up with ordering when we were asking questions. The food was mediocre, all the people saying on here that this was authentic Chinese food and very good, have never eaten authentic and good Chinese food. I'm from the US, and we have excellent restaurants here with amazing food and great, courteous service. We were so disgusted by his treatment of us, especially as he forcibly added a 10% tip without our permission. When I discovered what he was doing, he insisted it's mandatory in Hamburg to add 10% tip automatically. That is not true, tips are reserved for good service and are up to the discretion of the customer. Normally, I always add tip, but I have never encountered such rude, horrible service anywhere in the world!!!! Afterwards, our friend who understands a bit of German overheard him bitching about us to another customer and he even made a rude gesture to us, when we were leaving! Can you believe the audacity?! This guy is an awful, awful human who shouldn't be in the restaurant/hospitality business, and I hope the owner deals with him. I never wish ill on someone, but I sincerely hope karma prevails! From what I've read of some of the reviews below, there are other POCs who also had a terrible experience dining here, so please consider this a PSA!!!! Sure, the ambience is beautiful, but the food and the awful service are simply not worth it! If the owner actually cares about his customers and delivering good service, he/she will respond to my comment on here. What happened was...

In short: Be very AWARE to eat at this place, if you're not German or/and don't speak German. The food is NOT really worth the price.

In long: my friends and I wanted to try this place for a long time and got the chances to finally do it. Upon seeing the score on google (4.3), we were pretty confident that this restaurant was worth a try. This assumption was easily turned upside down after these things happened:

While ordering, the waiter gave me an already opened beer in front of my eyes, which was already not a good thing. I asked for a change and they did it.

The waiter pressed a friend, while he's still deciding to choose what to drink. I've worked in gastro in my college years and this is a no go. This peaked my interest to look at google reviews. Boy oh boy, there were complains about the service in general and open racism towards foreigners. Tbh this reduced my appetite.

They were looking at our table in a subjectively demeaning way, didn't ask about how the food was etc.

During payment, the waiter just gave me the card reader with the price, which I thought was really not that weird at first and we normally give tips, because we know how hard it is to work as a server. Then, when I received the bill, there were 15€ difference 🤯. I asked why, he showed me, that he just tip himself a bloody 10%!!! I was so shocked and not in the mood for a fight over 15€ so we went home and swore to never go back again. Plus, the waiter had the audacity to shake our hands at the end, which was really mind boggling.

I know a few far better chinese restaurants in Hamburg, that's respectful to any guests. At the time, I was really not proud of being a chinese descendant.

My thought: they are really confident of their regulars, that they treat foreigners awfully. I advise you to really think 10x before eating here and look for other chinese restaurants first. Hopefully, you don't encounter this behavior. 1/5 is already...

I was here with a conference group and we used a lovely upstairs room for the meetings and had breaks in the Red Chamber. The interiors radiate a calm and welcoming atmosphere, and the staff were very helpful. Also, the tea selection was amazing. I also enjoyed our lunch with reasonably-sized dishes. The dinner, however, was a bit of a shock. We got huge plates of tofu and meat with virtually no vegetables and a lot of rice. Although the meats, prawns and tofu were nicely seasoned, it was impossible for most of us to eat so much at a time, and I asked for a doggy bag. A lot of food went to the bin, however, which is really sad. So catering more to European tastes and expectations, the dishes on the dinner menu might become more "diverse" and include more veg. Otherwise this was a...