T4, Themed Tea House — Restaurant in Bellevue

I've been to this place about 4 times already but wow… what a mistake. While I was waiting (and waiting) for my drink—my boyfriend had already paid—I had a front-row seat to the chaos inside this place. There were loud arguments going on between a group of young-looking kids (must be in high school) and this mid aged Asian lady with glasses who was supposedly in charge. She was rude, condescending, and completely fake towards customers—putting on a smile one second and snapping the next. Super unprofessional. Those kids need to find better jobs because clearly that is disturbing for me to witness. I am a teacher and this is just horrible. Not only she talked down to the employees which was honestly hard to watch, they all look exhausted. It was giving power trip, not management.

I am also very disappointed in how differently I was treated because the customers in front of me spoke in Chinese to the lady with glasses and when I was up she had a very different attitude to me. Is it because I can't speak Chinese? I don't know but I am very unhappy about the customer service now. I remember coming last week and there very sweet girl with black hair who kept complimenting my outfit. She was energetic and had a really big smile. We end up having a small conversation. She really had made my day. This is what I would like to see.

The whole vibe was uncomfortable and tense, not what you want when you're just trying to get a simple drink. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes here, but it’s not good. Definitely not coming back. There are plenty of other places that know how to treat both customers and staff with basic respect. This is not it. That Asian lady with glasses set off the whole cute boba cafe impression.

Would not be...

Basil popcorn chicken tasted fine, but the wait times at this place are unacceptable for the type of establishment it is. The place is small which is normal for boba tea shops as it’s not a sit down style restaurant. However, the wait times this place has are the same length if not longer than the time you would wait at a full service restaurant. All we ordered was a single popcorn chicken, yet we were forced to wait 25 minutes to get our food. To add insult to injury, the workers didn’t even appear to be that busy with one or two standing near the front of the store not even working given they didn’t need to take orders. One of the workers even came up and announced to everyone that drinks would take “20 minutes” and chicken “20-25 minutes” which is completely unreasonable when you have less than 10 people actually in the store waiting and almost 10 employees yourself working.

The location this store occupies has seen many tenant changes over the years with different boba chains all trying their luck in this location which doesn’t receive much traffic. I wanted to hope that this store would break the pattern of them closing down after a while due to poor service and/or product but I simply cannot see a place like this surviving when they have nothing special to offer and have insanely slow wait times and low turnover rates for guests.

I will not be coming here again if I want popcorn chicken and I certainly would pick somewhere...

You can watch them make the food over the counter, they cross contaminate by using the same gloves and breading bowl for the raw squid and chicken. I also watched the staff take the gloves off, set aside and then use again on the next order. This place should be shut down. That is the grossest thing I have ever witnessed. Clearly the business is very cheap if they need to re use the gloves over and over again. I also watched the older lady repeatedly yell at staff which caused my drinks to take much longer than needed considering there was few other customers. Everyone should be wary, it’s only a matter of time before they make everyone very sick. Where is the health department.

Weird response from owner… I am 34. Why would I want to work at a boba shop for minimum wage when I graduated from...