Yipin China — Restaurant in London

Update: No reply on my request to speak to the manager or owner, so here's my full review.

Yi Pin China was one of my favourite restaurants to frequent, until my run-in with a waitress who decided to be extremely rude after I explained why I wanted the service charge removed from my bill.

We normally drop by for a meal whenever we're in the area. When we walked in, there were four or five other tables already seated. The two of us ordered 3 dishes and rice, like we normally do. At the halfway point, the third dish still had not arrived, so I flagged down our waitress to ask where it was.

Her first reaction was to immediately deny that there was a third dish, but I persisted, as she had definitely written it down and even repeated it at the start. Before I could finish telling her we had already eaten most of our rice, she had run off.

The last dish only arrived after we had finished almost all of our first two dishes and our rice, and - had actually stopped to wait about 10 minutes for the last one!

The last dish was slices of beef with chilli sauce/seasoning heaped on top. The beef was cold, as if it hadn't been heated up properly, but we tried it anyway. The beef slices themselves were not seasoned, which was fine, but the seasoning on the top was hideously salty. How salty? I spend a lot of my weekends in the sea, and I accidentally drink a lot of sea water. This was extremely salty. After eating three slices we thought it was inedible and impossible to continue. I flagged down the waitress to tell her, and she offered to ask them to remake it. I said no and explained that it wouldn't make any sense as the dish had even come so late that there was no more rice left to eat it with. She threw a bit of a strop and tried to resist, but in the end she took it away. When I asked for the bill, she practically threw the bill presenter on our table without a word and walked off.

I took out my card and instead of placing it on the bill presenter, I placed it on top of my purse, which was on the table in front of me, close to my chest. I did this intentionally because I wanted to discuss the service charge with the waitress.

She finally came back with the card machine and almost lunged to snatch the card from my purse. I had to pull it away and say, "Hold on."

First I told her that I really liked this restaurant, and that I didn't mind so much that the dish was extremely late. However, I was not happy about having to argue with her about it being too salty - hence I wanted to ask for the service charge to be removed. Drama ensued, albeit a bit one-sided. I don't remember what she said here, but it made so little sense even my partner needed to ask me what happened again after.

Finally she conceded, but as it was unclear through her huff, I asked her, "So what's my total?" She practically screamed at me that it was minus the charge. (Any doubts about asking for the service charge to be removed now dissipated). Card and receipt thrown back at me on the table.

After we packed up to leave, I went over to ask her and her colleague in Mandarin - "Is your boss/manager here?" No reply. I repeated my question to her colleague (who I had served me on a few previous visits and was very nice), and she vigorously shook her head and backed away.

Our terrible waitress replied in Mandarin: "Our boss isn't here, what do you want?!"

I said, "Why did you have to throw our bill and my card on the table? What is it you are unhappy about?"

I spoke to her in Mandarin because there were other customers in that part of the restaurant who seemed to be non-Mandarin speakers, to save her face. I spoke politely and in a low tone to her, but she shouted back.

She accused me of lying about the dish being salty, so that I could get away with not paying for it. She said she had tasted it and "it wasn't in the slightest salty." She added, "I already removed the dish from your bill, wasn't that enough?!"

I asked for her name but I have forgotten it. She was quite threatening when she told me, and shouted, "Go on then! Tell my boss! I...

Yipin China is not on the list of top Chinese restaurants in London, but it is absolutely a hidden gem. I am so glad that I discovered it following a friend’s recommendation. Don’t let the modest setting deceive you – the food quality there is absolutely second to none. The drawback is that it only has a small selection of dishes, specialising in a small subset (called Hunan style?) of Chinese cuisine, so some of your favourite Chinese dishes may not be on their menu. But again, this is a sign of quality to me as I don’t believe chefs who can do multiple-cuisines.

While food quality impresses, the food quantity does put me off slightly. I am a medium-sized man, and I find one dish can only fill 60-70% of my stomach. Of course, health professional would recommend not to eat till you are 100% full, but sometimes I want to indulge and have a feast with my mates, then we have to order 2 dishes each – taking the cost of dinning in Yipin china to about 20 quid each (inclusive of drinks). So I want to give Yipin china 4.5 stars, but google won’t let me do half star. Since I am in a good mood today, I will give it 5 star – purely for its authentic...

I started going to Yipin about two years ago and quite enjoyed it until my last visit about a year ago. I ordered steamed pork belly with mustard green and was really horrified. My family used to run food business and I can easily tell that I was served the pork belly that was cooked days before. Any Chinese who kept warming up pork belly in soya sauce in a work twice a day for 3 days would understand what I am talking about. Pork belly skin started to separate itself from the layer of fat underneath it and the meat became really tough and tasteless. Restaurant should not be serving food like this. it should be thrown away. After the meal, I told myself that I have always preferred fish with pickled mustard green soup in Barshu (they used Seabass there) but not in Yipin and also a few others dishes that I tried in Yipin were just average and now I have been given left over probably cooked 3-4 days ago. I felt really bad leaving the restaurant thinking that I have been ripped off paying for left over and would...