China Garden — Restaurant in Great Britain

Apart from the shrunk and average food, staff are mostly blunt and arrogant. During our visit, there was One sweet and kind lady who treated us with respect and a smile. She’s like an angel.

We booked a table on phone two days ago. When we approached the entrance, a woman asked us ‘how many people?’ in Cantonese. We are a group of Asians and English, but you should never assume one’s background by just how they look! I am more used to speak in English, it is uncomfortable to be forced to speak her preferred language. Then she went ‘didn’t book a table?’, almost sounded like she was annoyed. How arrogant! She ‘greeted’ customers by total assumptions. This is the most unwelcoming Chinese restaurant I’ve ever visited. We had been here a few times before covid, it was very much different.

Once we sat down, one of them said ‘you have limited time to dine today as it’s busy on Sunday’. However, she didn’t even say how long their ‘limited time’ is. They should inform customers when they book it or when they greet them at the door. They should make sure the customers agree with it before they are seated. We tried to clarify with another member of staff how long we are allowed to stay; yet he didn’t have a clue and looked surprised that we asked. He did came back and told us one and a half hours.

One of the dim sums we ordered in the first order came very last. We did not care. We didn’t complain, we didn’t even ask about it. We were just trying to enjoy our limited time. However, 4-5 staff kept coming to our table and asked ‘it still hadn’t arrived?’ in a rather annoyed and impatient voice. They didn’t come to apologise. They only wanted to see when we would finish and leave. It was never full in the restaurant at any point during our visit. What is their problem? We spent around 80 minutes there. No you wouldn’t want to spend any longer.

Apart from the one very lovely lady and the minute when we paid, we never heard ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, Chinese/English. It feels like we were stray animal being fed by some superior generous human.

If you want to pay to be treated by blunt and arrogant people, go...

My experience at China Garden two years ago was not good but the experience this time was good. As this restaurant has been serving food for the past 30 years, it is possible I may have been as a kid but at a different location if they have moved. Anyway, the reason I didn't like it two years ago was that the dimsum was so oily and the quality was like the bad stuff in Hong Kong. So on this visit, I didn't have any expectations but in general, the Chinese food in UK is much better than Hong Kong. Moving on to the dimsum, the taro puffs, rice rolls, Singapore rice noodles and egg tarts were impressive. To begin, the taro puffs were fried to perfection and gave a clean bite. It was made nicely with distinct taro coating with juicy mince meat in gravy inside the taro puff. The cup cake wrapper holding the taro puff did not have a drop of oil hence which was a good sign. Next were the rice rolls, again perfect uniformly opaque sheets with prawn underneath drenched in delicious sweet soy sauce. The Singapore rice noodles were delicious even though it was lacking colour and it was not too spicy crammed with fresh ingredients like pieces of charsiu etc. Finished with the Eggtarts which had a uniform pastry that was firm yet flakey. The eggtart filling in the middle was delicious. The only complaint was one of the waitresses that made me feel like Hong Kong, every time she collected the plates she would push me and the person sitting next to me aside. Anyway, I will probably be back if the...

This was by far the worst dining experience I ever had in a restaurant. The lamb dish I ordered had grit in it - presumably from unwashed/poorly washed spring onions. When the lady manager was informed about this, to my surprise, instead of apologising, she started arguing and said how they have been serving the same dish since evening without receiving any complaints. After I insisted that the dish was inedible, I was given a replacement. Although the replacement was again tasting of grit, I kept quiet and didn’t make any fuss. When I asked the staff to pack the left over dishes, I encountered the most appalling behaviour by the lady manager who asked me to pay 50p for the extra box. There were two left over portions, and she insisted that either I should combine two dishes (one pork, another lamb) or I would have to pay extra 50 p for an additional box. I lost my patience at that point and reminded the manager that I just paid £65 for the entire dinner and least I deserve is basic courtesy by the staff. The lady staff kept shouting at me and towards the end, when I refused to pay £6.40 service charge, she insulted me by saying that even when we go to the supermarket, they charge 10p for the carry bag. I left the take away box there and left the restaurant.

For people in the service industry, this experience defies every rule in the book related to customer service.

Extremely rude, arrogant, unprofessional and...