99 Pocha — Restaurant in Carrollton

Came in on the evening of 8/18/24 with a large group (20+) around 9PM. I came in earlier than everyone else to let them know a big group was coming. There were two servers: a guy and a girl. The guy was very nice - he served us with a smile even during stressful times. Unfortunately, he was not our server; our server was the girl. She was rude from start to finish, treating us like burdens instead of frequent customers. She hurriedly ushered us onto the patio and snarkily told us "I can only give you five tables. Figure out the rest." Rude, but ok, we're a large group so we need to be understanding.

She only provided us two water pitchers, which the 20 of us blew through in five minutes. After 15 minutes of waiting for her to come back so we can ask for refills, I brought the pitchers inside to ask for refills. She glared at me as if I was bothering her, snatched the pitchers out of my hands, and shoved two fresh ones into me. At this point, I was shocked. I have dined here more times than I can count, but never had I been mistreated by a server in that manner. The guy witnessed the interaction and tried to be nice to me, but as if she didn't want him to be nice to me, she pulled him off to the back before he could finish his sentence. I brought the waters back out, and I saw that my party was moving our 5 tables around so we could make more space. The server RUSHED out behind me and scolded us "I already told y'all I can only give y'all 5 tables." Absolutely ridiculous way to handle a customer interaction.

After being scolded like kindergarteners, we asked her to turn on the ceiling fan as the patio was very warm (Texas in the middle of August), to which she replied "it's the patio, of course it's hot." Mind you, we were not asking her to move back inside - we were simply asking her to flick the switch next to her to increase air circulation in this cramped outdoor seating area. Before we can continue the conversation, she storms off back inside again.

At this point, we are hot, disgruntled, and we have been here for about 40 minutes and have not received anything more than the waters that our server was reluctant to provide. She comes out asking "Do y'all want to order more food?" Ma'am, you haven't even taken our orders for drinks or appetizers. We politely explained to her that we did not like how she was treating us, we waited for her for a long time on numerous occasions and it did not feel like we were welcome in the restaurant. Her reply? "Oh then y'all can leave."

Appalled is the only word I can think of to describe how we felt when she said that. I understand that we are a large group on a Sunday night, but nothing gave her the right to shun us like that. Never in all my years on this Earth have I received such treatment, and I do not wish this upon anybody else that wishes to dine here.

Her rude comment was the last straw for us - we got up and left immediately. We went to Pochakaya down the road, who had no problems accommodating our large group and we even got to know the owner for a bit. If you like being berated and mistreated for wanting to receive basic restaurant service, then I would come here. Otherwise, there are plenty of other pocha restaurants in the Carrolton area that treat their customers with decency and respect. I used to frequent 99 Pocha because of the service and the affordable food, but the food has risen in price and the service quality has clearly plummeted. I do not plan on returning to 99 Pocha until there are some concrete changes made internally, and I encourage readers to...

Our experience here was terrible to say the least and we will not be returning. When we walked in there was a delay in seating us because of a party of 15 that was waiting. The party ended up leaving and thats when my party of 4 got sat. When we were led to our table the female server hounded us about if we were part of the party of 15, after we told her multiple times we were a separate party. After we were sat at our table for a while we pressed the button for service, about 10 minutes passed and no one ever came. So we pressed it again and allowed another 10 minutes to go by, still no one came, when we pressed it for the third time the male employee i believe is named justin comes out right away with a mouth full of food and very rudely states “You only have to press it once” after we explained that we hadn’t been served in over 20 minutes he did not care gave us a smug look and said we only had to press it once. By this point our experience is already ruined. Later on when our food comes out the dumpling are burnt and literally black. We also ordered the peaches and lychee and got no spoon and of course with the already unresponsive service, we had to use our chopsticks. Also dont order it, it’s literally just 90% ice. I believe that they did this on purpose because they were annoyed with our button pressing. The rice that we received was very clearly old rice probably from another table with rice on top of it (disgusting) because there was a red sauce all over the rice at the bottom. Which is just unsanitary. Later on we ran out of water so we politely asked the same server for water, he took our jug, and just never came back. We ended up having to get up and go inside to ask for water. Then when we were ready for checkout and togo boxes we pressed the button, and one more time no one came. So we once again got up from our table and went inside to ask for everything. Upon inspecting our check there was a 20% gratuity added to our check. Mind you this is a party of 4, and on the menu it says its only for parties of 6. I once again go inside and ask why this is, the employee looks stunned and says that the automatic 20% applies on weekends. I ask why this isnt on the menu or anywhere on the walls and he says that we have an outdated menu. I ask where the updated menu is and he just looks clueless. All of this I now know was a blatant LIE per the owners response on a recent review. I politely asked them to take it off and they did. Please do not waste you time with this place if you actually want to be able to enjoy your food and not have to deal with untrained young servers, terrible service and lies. This entire experience made all of us extremely uncomfortable and we will not be returning or recommending this...

Look, I'm all for small businesses and supporting, but my experience tonight was very sub-par.

First, we have a large group of 10 and we were sat with the most inexperienced server (there's only 2 servers here for a Saturday night?)

Our first round of drinks were brought out 30 minute after we ordered - we asked the other waitress to check on them and told us our waitress had not even put them in the system at the time.

I asked if we could split the bill as well, but was told no and that we would all be on one tab (this was said to me with 0 customer service skills). I feel like establishments should go out of their way to help with customers requests, especially when auto-gratuity is added and we received AWFUL service.

Our waitress, which we ordered from - tried to bring our first food order to the table next to us, which was not even in her section. This food took 40 minutes to come out (for just French fries)

Two orders were not entered once we asked about it after receiving most of the food. There is no way their employees are accurately tracking what is ordered or entered for our table, so I decided to take note of everything that has been brought to our table to compare with the bill. I read previous reviews with disputes in customer bills so I am not taking any chances. There were no apologies during any of these issues our table was having.

We're here celebrating a birthday for two of our friends. We will not be coming back after they fumbled the bag too hard. We received the check and they put some of our drinks ordered on the table next to ours' bill. It's fine but the business needs to get this straight. It does not look professional.

Felt bad for the owner. He was actually running around trying to make everything right for the entire restaurant. Honestly I think you need to hire more wait staff. It will make your life easier. Maybe have a bartender to take the bar section on weekends will help. I'm not trying to bring down the establishment, I just give honest reviews of my experiences. 2 stars because everyone in the party at least enjoyed their food.

An auto gratuity of 20%?! That is insane. If you're auto gratting that much, the service needs to be excellent. If everything was smooth I would have no issues with this. Tips should be...