Kungfu Kitchen — Restaurant in Reading

Where to start. My husband has already written a review but i really feel I need to back him up with this.

We only get 1 night a week together due to work commitments and always try to go out to new places for food. We have driven past a lot and decided last night was the night to attend. Worse mistake.

We were given a table and left to look at the meal (all normal at this point) a young gentleman came to take our drinks order and after I ordered my drink, my husband said to the server that he had a red bull in his pocket if its OK to drink in here, he pulled it out of his pocket to show him and the serve says "yes thats fine and just to confirm 1 coke"

I then received my drink and nothing was mentioned about just the 1 drink.

After waiting 20 minutes to be served, we flagged a server down and he was great and went through the options with my husband to what he could have and also showed me another option as I just wanted the chicken and sweetcorn soup but on the main menu it was a shareable bowl. Also at this point the red bull was on the table fully visible.

We started to receive the food at all different times however there was a big party in so this was fine we didn't mind waiting.

The lady came over and just pointed at the table, she was carry rice so I mention o i am waiting for rice thinking this is what she meant. However she just shouted and said no outside drinks and pointed at the menu to say its printed on here no outside drinks. We apologised and said we did check with the waiter and she just got more and more angry. we said what would you like us to do, we can throw away if you want but she just walked off.

The server also then lied and said we never showed him however multiple people attended our table and didn't say anything. He seemed very young and maybe new to the role and we understand this can be hard to admit when wrong, we have all been there.

Every time she walked past us she made a point of no outside drinks, my husband then said what would you like us to do, and said the way you are speaking if really disrespectful can you please just explain what can be done. But no she just got worse and worse to the point after 2 mouthfuls of my food I stood up and said nope we are not excepting this. She was shouting at us across the restaurant in front of all the guests making us look to be the worse people in the world.

This went on for about 20 minutes, this was because she said she called the police so we didn't want to leave and cause more problems for ourselves. Myself and husband both apologised multiple times to the other guests and wished them a good evening.

We ended up just not answering her anymore as you couldn't possibly get a word in and just made it worse so dealt with 2 other staff members who unfortunately had to deal with the after affect. It was obvious the police were not called and we came to an agreement with the 2 staff members that we would happily pay for what we had but would not be paying the full meal as we have not been able to eat it in peace.

After reading through the comments on here you can see we are not the only people to have an issue with this woman. She is truly a disgrace and should not be in this industry with her attitude.

We could have just walked out and not paid but thats not who we are, state why we paid for what we had.

I would highly recommend you avoid this restaurant or even just avoid when...

🚨 W A R N I N G 🚨 BEWARE! Overcharged just as a blatant extortion in a very tricky way especially targeting fellow Chinese, Asians, uni students even regular customers, but shockingly the mid-class Anglo-Saxons might be the only bias of the Chinese female owner ?!

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

The female owner (a Chinese lady) handwrote our bill and suggested us to pay by cash so we would get discounts but that is an utter LIE. Actually we got at least 10% overcharged (this must have been happened on our previous visiting but we didn't realise at that time due to embarrassment reason).

Asking for cash payment every time on the other hand it means the lady boss wants to avoid paying tax and VAT which is absolutely illegal in UK. I do suggest everyone whether you are victim or not should immediately report to the Thames Valley Police Office and relevant authorities for investigating KUNGFU Kitchen thoroughly and very seriously.

Because this is not a normal business should be but a pure CRIME even with racial discrimination against one's own fellow citizens astoundingly!

Overcharging a customer accounts for billions of pounds each year in the restaurant industry. Some methods are obvious and intentional, while other occurrences of overcharge are covert and harder to identify. As customers we do need to be vigilant.

From my awful experience in Kungfu Kitchen, the owner is keen on using at least 4 ways to overcharge client directly or indirectly because she bet you would feel too embarrassed to ask for bill checking:

1 - Hard upselling food that you're in dilemma but finally don't want to (indirectly)

2 - Selectively taking variable rated service charge via hand-written bill as per owner's mood (directly)

3 - Asking for paying cash with so-called discount excuse which can help evade tax and VAT year by year (indirectly)

4 - Supposedly sneaking extra pounds in the hand-written bill every time even if loyal customer (directly)

In general, the female owner seems as a complete opportunist and very good at such kind of vile trick to loyal customer especially fellow Chinese. In fact everyone with good math knows at least 10% overcharged (that's why the owner never print out bill to Chinese customer) but she loves keeping play this by handwriting receipt with wrong prices and thinking we are all idiotic. Hey, this is 2023 not in Victorian era. I am quite sure that I mustn't be the last victim!

Conclusion:

I really don't want to write this review to be honest. But for the wellbeing of local community the truth should be exposed to everyone, nonetheless I am feeling extremely humiliated the hell out. Fortunately not all the Chinese behaviour and attitude are the similar as the owner who is an exception. At least all my Chinese friends are fairly kind and warm.

Please share this with all your...

Food was great and authentic. Generally large portions and full of flavours. Would highly recommend the food.

However, one aspect really ruined the experience for us, namely the owner of the place.

She would loudly and over-enthusiastically greet, help and tend to 'certain' customers, sometimes bordering on aggressive. As the customer on the next table remarked to me after her order was taken, "She's quite a character isn't she". I get that this type of customer service might be well suited for some because it shows friendliness and willingness to help, but others might prefer a more laid-back approach, and might even interpret her actions as rude or overbearing. We just found her to be especially loud and it ruined the atmosphere for us a little.

More importantly, on the 'certain' customers, we noticed that the owner (ethnically Chinese) would only tend to white customers. As a fellow Chinese customer, we were seated between two tables with white customers, and the difference in customer service cannot be overstated. She would enthusiastically greet, help them and tend to their every need; but pretty much ignore us or immediately delegate her two other employees to serve us. We weren't 100% sure at first, but after observing her customer service to other Chinese and white customers around the restaurant, we noticed that she couldn't spare any of her time and attention to her Chinese customers and would rather be over-friendly to our white counterparts. At the end when we asked for the bill (to one of her employees), since she seemed to be the only one able to operate the register, she took a long time to get to it. She literally tended to every other white table before generating our bill, and again asking one of the employees to come to our table instead of herself. Weirdly, we were told we would get a discount if we paid cash instead of card (is this tax avoidance I'm not sure), but none of the white customers sat beside us were told this when they paid, and they paid with card. (And the owner brought the bill to their tables personally) I'm not sure what was going on, but that definitely smelled fishy. All in all, maybe there was a reason for the different ways we were treated compared to the white guests, but we definitely walked away feeling unimportant and deflated because of our skin colour.

In conclusion, if you're white and don't mind a bit of over-friendly customer service, I'm sure you'll have a great time. If you're ethnically Chinese, I might suggest getting takeaway from...