Gong Cha & Fuji Teriyaki Silver Spring — Restaurant in Calverton

I’ve seen their sign up for awhile now and been waiting excitedly to try them once they open. I finally saw that their lights on and got lucky as they were doing a soft opening! I must say the wait was worth it. 10/10 recommend!!

Customer service: ✅ everyone is super friendly

Covid friendly: ✅ clean, everyone is wearing masks & gloves, they have the protective plastic things up between you and the cashiers/kitchen area.

Food: One word - yum. I got a side of fries, the chicken teriyaki, beef teriyaki, shrimp tempura bowl, and honey bbq wings. LOL my fiancé and I wanted to try the entire menu but we had to resist. Fries were crispy and delicious and you can see how you get a lot for a serving. The shrimp tempura was a great - crispy, light and I loved the pickled onions! Beef and chicken teriyaki were well made and such a huge portion size! I usually expect teriyaki to be super oily and drippy but was pleasantly surprised that they weren’t yet still kept the flavor. Was expecting more sauce but I like to think that it being on the healthier side is a plus. My ultimate favorite has got to be the wings! The honey bbq was absolutely mouth watering. I’m a sucker for chicken wings and once I had a bite I couldn’t put it down.. will definitely be going back for those and trying the other flavors. They were a good size too. Overall couldn’t finish everything cause there was just so much food but that is never a bad thing imo. Got my bang for my buck.

Gong cha: I’m a bubble tea addict so was happy that they partnered with gong cha as their direct neighbor within the store. Was super convenient for me to knock 2 of my favs down with one visit.

With it being their soft opening I’m sure they are getting into the flow of things, but for visiting on their first day open, I must say they executed everything really well. Excited to go through their menu and...

Review for Gong Cha here. We normally go to the Fulton location and are thrilled to have a Gong Cha literally across the street from us now but are nervous on whether we'll have to decide to if we'll prefer the 12 minute trip to the Fulton location. The tea is good but just overall poor business decisions in the early days of its opening. This early on, they should not be "out of bubbles" over an hour before close. "Out of bubbles" means, lets save cost/not be bothered. You don't just "run out of bubbles", and especially don't tell customers that when there's a bag of uncooked bubbles sitting in plain view. Secondly, why understaff with one person manning the register AND making drinks just to let drink tickets sit there because the person is too occupied taking orders resulting in 10+ minute waits. Trust me, I want to love this location so bad but, dear owners, please step up your game and realize you're not going to do well at this trajectory. Saving labor and saving costs on minuscule things is not how you operate a business a week into opening. This is our third trip since opening and we have yet to feel confident that this location...

The staff and customer service is great! Everyone is really nice, but the boba (I don't blame them) was kind of inconsistent. My friend order the milk foam milk tea and it had clumps of sugar. I'm guessing it wasn't fully mixed. My drink was the Matcha milk tea and it was pretty bland and watered down (the ice hadn't melted yet also 100% ice 100% sugar). And this was when I came during a slow hour. When I came on the first day though, it was very busy and the drinks tasted great. We also ordered the Beef Steak bowl. The steak was pretty hard to chew through and the rice was pretty mushy. The whole bowl was pretty under-seasoned especially the egg... You kind of have to get the soy sauce since there isn't too much sauce or anything to coat the rice. Maybe if the egg was less cooked for the yolk to be the main component. Though this review is during soft opening (2/7) so I am looking forward to any...