祖家小厨 Lam's kitchen — Restaurant in Charlotte

I've heard so many good things about this place that I just had to come try. This restaurant isn't a huge place so there's bound to be a wait so I wasn't surprised when they told us it would be a 40 minute wait. The bar area which only seats about 7 people, is a first come first serve area so it wouldn't be a bad spot for solo diners. We ended up waiting only about 20 to 30 minutes so less than the anticipated time.

We ordered quite a few things - crab rangoon, crispy fried shrimp balls, szechuan wontons, steamed dumplings, fried tofu with shrimp paste, braised pork belly with preserved greens, beef chow fun and lastly, the most anticipated dish for the evening - the whole reason why I've been wanting to visit - was the lobster steamed sticky rice. 😋

For the appetizers, the crab rangoons were not very good, the texture was not very crispy..kind of hard to chew and the inside was bland. The steamed dumplings were okay, just regular dumplings; what saved it for me was the sauce which was good. I wouldn't recommend these two appetizers - but if you're going to come and try the menu, I want to recommend the other appetizers I had instead. The crispy fried shrimp balls, szechuan wontons and fried tofu with shrimp paste are all 5/5. Each one of those dishes were very delicious, not greasy, very flavorful, fresh and the texture was perfect. I would definitely come back just to have these appetizers again.

For the main entrees, the lobster sticky rice was a 10 for me. You have to try this dish if you come to the restaurant! Every bite was immaculate. Next time, I would probably get the smaller 1 lb version of the dish versus 2 lbs that we got just because the 2 lb portion was way too much for 3 people. The pork belly was very tender and the bok choy was good as well. This dish comes with white rice and is definitely needed just because the dish is so saucy that you need the white rice to balance out the richness of it. As for the beef chow fun, it was good but nothing too special there. Good flavor and a good dish if you're craving noodles.

Comments on service - they are very busy so make sure you ask for what you need when the waitress comes to the table or you may end up having to get up and flag your server down. Other than that, she was very sweet and was not rude at all even though we kept flagging her down.

Overall, if you're in the area, do yourself a favor and try the place out when you get a chance and don't let the wait...

We tried so hard to like this place. The food is decent, but the way this place is run is diabolical. Scenario 1: Dine In We arrive five minutes before our reservations, we give our name and are told there's about ten minutes wait for our party of six. Ok, no problem. Another party comes in about ten minutes later, turns out they have the same name, but a party of three. They get seated immediately at our table for six with three empty seats. I inquire about our outdoor table reservation and they are stumped by the situation. No idea what to do. They seat us at an indoor table in a high traffic area instead. Then, after sitting for a few minutes, they kick out the other party, seat them in a booth that opened up, and give us the outdoor table, humiliating them and us in the process. We feel bad about them losing a table and they look dumbfounded, like who does that?!?! Scenario 2: take out. We call an order in and are told about an hour. No problem. We arrive about 55 minutes, are told that 2/3 of the food is ready and they're just "finishing up the last two dishes." We stand there like idiots for 45 (!!!!!) minutes while they finish these last two dishes. After about 30 minutes we did inquire as to the status and were assured that it would be ready any minute. At the 45 minute mark, they hand us one bag of warm food and two bags of cold food and offer nothing for the inconvenience or nonsense. And please do not come at me with, "well, it was busy." It wasn't, there were multiple empty tables and no stack of waiting take out orders. People walked in and asked to order or asked for a table and were told a minimum of 1:30 wait for either. There's all sorts of waitstaff running around looking busy, delivering one dish at a time. It's really a shame. Food is ok, of you ever get it. I have parted with my money at this establishment for...

I came here because I heard the food was good. It’s pretty authentic Chinese food but take heed of the reviews about the wait time and terrible service. We were told the wait would be 40 minutes, which was fine as it was Saturday evening and we didn’t have reservations. We didn’t get seated until a bit over an hour instead. After we got sat down, we ordered our food immediately and got our drinks. One note on the drinks is that most of the soft drinks are bottled so you don’t get refills. The ginger ale was $2 for a very small bottle (10 fl oz). We waited an hour and a half and heard another table complain. The manager came out proudly announcing that he would bring out spring rolls to them for the wait and they were on him. What about us? He turned around to us and said “I’m checking on your food.” We obviously heard you provide your apologies and free food to them. The waitress came by 15 minutes after that to say that they cook everything by the ticket and there’s other tables in front. We got the food shortly after that. If there were more tables in front including the knowledge of 2 large parties of 10 or more, you should have been up front about it. Tell us before we waited to tell us the kitchen is behind and that the food would take a while to make. For a table of 4, we waited almost 2 hours for our food to come out. This was a total of 3 hours at this establishment. I would have taken myself elsewhere if I had known before and came back another day. This is unacceptable and you need to do better. Do better with your communication to your customers. Of course, nothing will be done about it because this isn’t the first complaint about...