Yan Yan Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Haifa

Mediocre experience - nothing particularly memorable

I went for lunch at Yan Yan restaurant and chose the 105 ILS menu which includes a soup, an appetizer (fried spring rolls + salad), a main course: duck (the choice is between crispy duck, roast duck, duck with black mushrooms, duck with honey and garlic sauce, and duck with orange sauce). So, as it says in Fawlty Towers: If you don't like duck, you're rather stuck!

The duck comes with rice and you have the choice between steamed rice or fried rice.

I added a dessert (ice cream) and a coffee (long espresso). As a drink, a large draft beer (50 cl).

The restaurant is quite large, clean even though the chairs aren't very comfortable and don't encourage you to stay too long.

Maybe it's because I came for lunch and people have less time for lunch, but the service is ultra-fast and I generally didn't have time to finish my dish before the next one arrived.

The service wasn't particularly pleasant or smiling and mainly gave the impression of fast food rather than a restaurant.

The "salad" amounted to grated carrot without much taste. Similarly, the soup's contents weren't really identifiable by taste.

The rice that was supposed to be fried was something between steamed and fried.

Basically, the experience was nothing memorable: Not particularly good, not particularly bad, not particularly varied, the rice not particularly fried, the ice cream: Two scoops in a cup, not really a taste experience, no decoration, nothing.

Not particularly expensive (I paid 210 ILS with coffee, icecream and service), not particularly cheap, service not particularly friendly.

In short... An experience that doesn't particularly make me want...

On previous visits I ordered the lunch special, which now costs 49 NIS. Thus time I sprang for the duck menu, which costs 95 NIS and has more interesting selections. My favorite was the duck with black mushroom soup, which was delicious. I was somewhat disappointed by the fried rice, which had a few tiny pieces of egg but no visible vegetables, as I am used to from other Chinese restaurants. The duck with honey and garlic sauce was tender, but the sauce was too salty for my taste. Afterwards I told the waiter, who said he would inform the cook. The decor is attractive. The rest rooms have large signs mostly in Chinese, which indicates to me that they have many Chinese diners - surprising to me since I wasn't aware that there are many Chinese living in Haifa. Must be Chinese tourists, who are more...

This is not our 1st time nor our 50th time to this place. We used to love this place so much and it was amazing untill for the past 2 years... The service is not the best, they keep on forgetting what we asked and don't get our orders right, the main dishes are very traditional Chinese food but it's becoming very bland and tasteless, you always go out of the restaurant feeling kinda hungry even after having the meal deal and everytime we go the, the cook/owner is shouting at the top of his lungs at the staff.

This place is dear to our hearts but it's just not the same...