Oriental Pearl Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Chamblee

I am a LONG time customer of Oriental Pearl, have been to dim sum here numerous times over the years, and have had many family dinners for special occasions here as well.

My wife, toddler, and I ordered a LARGE (and not inexpensive) take out order for a nice lunar new year dinner earlier this week. We came to find a nice metal staple embedded in a piece of chicken. Not a staple floating around in the food, but IN the chicken.

I went back to the restaurant and showed the manager a photo of the staple and she began to explain loudly that they put orders in paper bags and staple them shut. (Yes, I know this already.)

I then explained to her the staple was IN the food and she responded angrily that there was NO WAY that a staple of theirs could have been in the food. She then said WE must have dropped the staple in the food while taking it out of the bag.

1. The food is in foam containers, within the paper bags.

2. We removed the containers from the bag and took the containers to a different room. We did not open the containers near the paper bags, therefore the staple was in the food prior to being placed in the bags.

The manager then said "Do you want to see how we staple the bags, there is no way we did it!" (I'm well aware of how bags are stapled BTW)

Staples aside, the food was good which is the only reason this isn't a ONE star review.

The sad thing is that the manager refused to discuss this any further, no discussion of re-making the dish, no apology, no refund of course, but worst of all she BLAMED IT ON THE CUSTOMER.

You'll probably have a fine experience at Oriental Pearl, but beware, if you do have any issues, you're probably going to not like...

The tradition of Dim Sum is very similar to the tapas culture of Spain. While the Spanish tradition involved alcoholic beverages Dim Sum revolves around tea consumption. After a long days work families and friends would meet in tea houses to socialize. These tea houses started to include small dishes of food. Dime Sum includes small dishes of dumplings, cakes, and buns. It did not take long for these tea houses to be better known for their food rather than the tea.

There are a few customs that a patron should be aware of... If you order tea, and you should, when the pot is empty leave the lid off. This signals to the staff that your tea is empty and you would like an other. This also signals that this is not your first Dim Sum rodeo. your bill is a living document left on your table. If the carts are rolling hand the operator your bill after your selection they will stamp the bill for every dish ordered. Pour tea for everyone around you first, hopefully someone will reciprocate, if they do, tap 3 fingers on the table to say thank you.

As far as Dim Sum goes I have found O.P.R. to be the best in Atlanta. Why only 3 stars then? Well Dim Sum in Atlanta is fairly horrible. There are glimpses of what could be a proper Dim Sum house. Unfortunately for every good dish we had there was a bad one. Some steamed items suffered from a strong freezer burn flavor while others where freshly made. Admittedly my Dim Sum bar is fairly high having NYC and Hong Kong as my bars for what is acceptable.

Overall I would say if you are visiting Atlanta try Vietnamese or Ethiopian. If you live in Atlanta and need some Dim Sum, as I often do, this place is your...

I just had dinner at this establishment and at a first glance I thought that this restaurant would have had good food from the atmosphere. What ruined that thought was the overcrowded seating. The tables are so close to each other that if there were more people eating, (There were about 4 tables full when we visited) you would be bumping shoulders with the next family trying to eat their food. The one star review comes from the food. We ordered a mapo tofu with pork, an egg drop soup, steamed shrimp dumplings, and Cantonese style filet mignon. The egg drop soup was interesting, not good, not bad, just interesting. The mapo tofu had randomly spicy moments from the jalapenos, the sauce itself wasn't spicy, and it was so salty that you would have had to eat it with a 3 to 1 ratio of rice, just to cut down on the saltiness. The steamed shrimp dumplings tasted like it came straight from packaging. Lastly the Cantonese style beef. At first glance looked pleasing, it wasn't until I took a bite and realized that it was so tough that you could only eat it in one bite. The taste was of maple syrup, something I wish I knew before ordering. What's worse is that the oranges they hand out for a complimentary finisher didn't even taste like anything, we just got a mouthful of citrus water. The only thing we liked was the diet coke that came from the can. 0/10 would not visit again. We left with our mouths salty and our stomachs empty. Management didn't even ask if there was an issue when we declined take out boxes when our plates had a spoonful of food...