Bay Island Cafe — Restaurant in Rosemead

While I was in New Mexico, my parents had mentioned visiting Bay Island - telling me that they really enjoyed the food and the fact that the drinks are well made; they even went as far as to send me pictures of the food they were eating! I finally got to try it out for myself a few weeks back when I came on a late Sunday afternoon. Despite coming at around 1 PM, the restaurant was still packed, so the wait time was around 30-45 minutes. Since Bay Island is located in one of the worst plazas I've ever been to, you won't have much luck at finding parking - especially on a busy afternoon. The spots are mostly designated for compact parking, so definitely be careful!

The restaurant itself is fairly nice. I think they're trying hard to attract both the older Asian population who enjoy the Hong Kong comfort food as well as the younger ABC crowd who enjoy more of the Asian-fusion dishes. They definitely do have a good variety, but I would say the food still wavers to more of a traditional type dish. But I really do like how they have a variety of drinks you can order along with the lunch specials for an additional few dollars - they have pretty legit drinks besides the standard HK milk tea and lemon iced tea.

I ended up trying the Hokkaido milk tea with boba. Even though my parents warned me that it was really sweet, I wanted to try it out - yep, it's definitely more of a sweeter drink with not much tea flavor to it. Very milky, but not a bad taste! The boba was nothing special, very plain and a bit too chewy for my liking. My dad's HK milk tea was good though. Seems like the more standard drinks are made better. My parents did come back and try the black sesame milk tea (after seeing everybody order this); not a fan of black sesame in my drink, but it was pretty interesting.

Food dishes: -Cold Cut Crystal Chicken (Half): $8.50 My dad really likes to order this dish at almost every HK restaurant we go to. It's very hard to mess it up, but at the same time it's not the easiest to get the chicken to be super tasty as well. Very plain chicken dish. Flavors were good, but the skin lacked the yellow coloring that some restaurants have. Not that much meat on the bones. I expected a little more from this dish.

-Hong Kong styled spare ribs: Really enjoyed the flavors of this dish. Lots of red and green bell peppers. A lot of sauce so the dish went well with rice. Meat was slightly crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside as well.

-Eggplant with Tofu: I liked this dish! It was a little heavy, with a lot of sauce, but the flavors were good. Really enjoyed how they cooked all the ingredients so that the eggplant was soft enough to eat, but the tofu skin had a good amount of chewiness. I would order this dish again.

-3 Cup Chicken: We thought the dish would be more saucy, but the chicken looked a bit dry. Upon eating though, the flavors weren't too bad. A little bit of smokiness with all the onions and green pepper. I wouldn't mind eating this again!

tl;dr - Overall, I'm glad I got to try Bay Island - the restaurant is relatively small, and the plaza is pretty horrible, so you'll either be lucky and find that there's nobody waiting or you'll be ... unlucky and have to wait for awhile before being seated. I've made several attempts to return, but my parents said the food quality has gone down and the wait time still remains the same. For my visit, I thought the food tasted pretty good. It wasn't the best, but I liked it. I really liked the drinks as well - they're served in the Half and Half type cups, so decent amount for a...

I was unfortunate enough to have found this filthy restaurant located in the busy area of Rosemead, CA.

Inside this casually remodeled place, I could find the kind of styles that remind me of the low-tier restaurants that are flanking both sides of some busy streets in the city of Rosemead.

Greasy and bad-smelling floor is the "distinctive" aspect of this small restaurant that makes them "standout" among its class of lousy waitressing services and disorganized management style.

One uncommon practice of this rather lame restaurant is their audacious way of hiring some waitresses that seem to defy the conventional attitude towards serving the patrons who are bemused and blind-sighted by the locational convenience of this cheap Chinese restaurant.

Inside this rather uniquely strange place, there is an overweight waitress in her mid-20's who has a pony tail that was unwittingly combed and wrapped above her "stuffy" head.

She possess a pair of ever-so-intimidating and hollow eyes that would easily make the customers submitting to her own ways of waitressing.

I did find her rude and offensive when she yelled at me to wait outside the restaurant for my takeout.

While she was giving out this order vehemently her hollow and angry looks in her eyes had gotten intensified. I was thrown off by her antagonizing and brainless attitudes which had forced me to wait outside the restaurant where an empty bucket and an upside down mop were being placed against the wall pretty much next to the main doors.

I would not go back to this pathetically run Chinese restaurant ever again knowing that this overweight and "embattled"waitress and this "chaotic" restaurant would ruin my appetite and my day even I would have a minimum amount of patron-and-staffs interactions inside.

I recommend going to the other better managed and more hygienic Chinese restaurants in the area to fill up your stomach and to reboot yourself for the rest of the day.

This waitress was trying to force me into submission with her self-proclaimed authority. I was really affronted by her offensive attitude and tone of voice.

You can attest yourself to my reviews by dining or having lunch in this eatery-and-restaurant hybrid restaurant later.

It was ONE of my worst experiences of buying takeouts. I felt like I was being kicked out of the restaurant by this overweight, hollow-skulled, and Cantonese-speaking waitress.

By the way, I had been buying takeouts at this restaurant for over four months now and still, I could have received such kind of offensive service from this waitress.

"Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're gonna get." --...

AWFUL EXPERIENCE! DON'T COME!!!!

Firstly, it took 1 whole hour to get parts of our food. After mentioning to the waitress, she had the audacity to belittle us in a condescending tone. She put the blame on us for not sharing parts of our meal to the others. It would've been fine if the waitress apologized for the wait, but she had to keep shifting the blame onto us and kept talking behind our back to the other waitresses, saying how we were rude for rushing them. Not to mention, she had to keep labeling us as ungrateful "ABCs". She was trying to assert her seniority onto us, but we are the customers who are paying for the meal.

The food was also extremely salty. I took one sip of the soup and had to spit it out because of how salty it was. My friend had a stir fried udon and stopped eating after one bite because of how salty it was.

Overall, it's a terrible experience with its service, and the...