Looking for Chai Taiwanese Kitchen — Restaurant in Bellevue

Like all the other restaurants during the grand opening, it is slow, process needs work and sometimes things don't go as planned. I took today's experience with a grain of salt.

I was happy to see that the owners were able to open a store in Bellevue, since their bubble tea is pretty good! During the grand opening weekend, there is a buy one get one free drink, so take advantage of it while you can.

The moment I walked through the doors, there were about 6 groups ahead of us. I peeked at the entire room and no one had their food yet, so the first thought that came in mind was, "nope not waiting". We decided to order takeout instead - 2 pork over rice and 6 bubble tea drinks (what? Buy one get one free!).

25 minutes later, the pork over rice came out - you'd think that this would take 5 minutes to do since it's premade. 10minutes after all the drinks were done. It was a bit slow.

Food thoughts: Try their cookie milk tea - great for photos and their milk tea is great! Pork over rice - not enough sauce over the rice. The sauce only took up 1/5th of the rice, that's not a very well balanced out portion in my opinion since we ended up mostly eating white rice.

Next time I come back here, it'll be for...

I was very surprised that the owner would profusely refuse to accept a credit card once she knew someone in the party carried cash. I have been to the restaurant many times and always paid with a card. I also saw other customers paying with cards today, so I was quite confident it's not the problem with the credit card machine.

My husband and I took our visitors to the restaurant tonight because it's close. At the end of the meal, my husband was at the registry trying to pay for the entire bill with a credit card, but as soon as the owner saw that one of our guests carried cash (not enough to cover the entire bill though), she immediately turned and refused to accept any credit card payment (I don't know why... maybe to avoid credit card fees? avoid tax?). Two of our guests ended up chipping in together to pay the bill in cash even though the meal was supposed to be our treat. The whole paying experience just feels so suspicious.

It's going to be very hard for us to pay our guests back as we don't know when we will see them next, and we don't have a way of sending them USD electronically (they are not from...

It's easy to write a negative comment/review about a restaurant, but to receive service so good that you are so happy to leave a positive review. First off, my family of 4 arrived just when lunch rush began. So it is expected to wait for a bit. But the 2 ladies ran the front so well, things were cleaned up and set up in such efficient way, we were seated in no time. They have excellent communication between each other which made the process went so smoothly. Food was great, the C2 dish (crispy chicken with special spicy sauce) was really good. Not really spicy but for someone that doesn't really eat spicy, I have nothing to complain about. Too bad the fried chicken steak over rice was a bit overcooked and dry. At the end we decided to get some bubble tea. Although they were so busy they were spinning like a top, the lady with red hair took the time to introduce their drink to us, and even offered to split the drink for our kids so they each have one drink in hand (they were so surprised and felt special). Gosh, the tipping system is so abused nowadays, but for these 2 ladies? A hands-down "take my money...