Wei's Fish — Restaurant in Cupertino

EDIT: there was a post-service refund + $100 coupon later the same night from the restaurant. That’s a kind gesture. I’ll bump up my review from originally 1-star to a 2-star. If I can feel there’s actual improvement in the service, I’ll make sure that’s reflected in the review update.

Really what I hope for is improvement on the actual service in the restaurant. There could have been a lot of mitigations that could have been done, like stop taking in orders when it’s already backlogged and obviously beyond their kitchen’s capacity, and also giving better estimates of how long it’s expected to take.

“The stove isn’t working well so the orders that we’re cooked on that stove were very slow” is a really lousy way to make an excuse, which is the one I’ve got tonight. Please, don’t offer that to your customers any more.

Honestly, this restaurant runs on a model of preparing meals from mostly pre-prepared kits. In my case I’d be totally happy to just buy the kit and heat it at myself at home than having to wait for a “broken stove” in the restaurant to heat it up slowly. This restaurant might want to consider offering that and offload a lot of stress to both themselves and the customers.

I will leave my original review below. Take it in the context of that there has been follow up after the fact.

ORIGINAL review:

This place is a huge hit-or-miss when it comes to take out orders. Mostly misses. Today I made an order at 6:27PM and waited in the restaurant for an hour before checking with the waiters. They said it should be quick. So I paid and waited 10 more minutes. I asked again and was told just 6 more minutes. So I waited more, and guess what, the total wait was around 2 hours. For a take out delivery.

No refunds, no coupons, just cheap apologies and lies about the wait time.

Think again before you order. For the number of times I ordered here, every time they can find a new excuse, and NO...

As I drove up to the store on a weekday at 1:30pm, I wondered if I could ever find a parking spot in such a small strip mall which hosted 3-4 stores. It turned out exactly as I had predicted. After 3 rounds of circling around without any success, I opted for street parking in the residential area which was only 5 minutes of walking away.

Maybe because it was off hours, the store was not crowded at all. I was promptly seated at a small table for one. The store looked neat and clean with cute decorations and logos of 2 fishes kissing each other. You could immediately tell fish dishes were the main focus of this store. The server quickly served me water and took my order. Normally you can order by scanning a QR code on the table, but the system was down today.

After much debating, I chose the scallion sauerkraut fish soup, size small, with enoki mushrooms and lotus root slices as my complimentary side dishes. I didn't have to wait long when my order arrived, steaming hot with a cute bowl of white rice.

The fish was so fresh and tasty!! I found the soup a bit oily to my taste but delicious regardless. All the ingredients were well cooked and complemented one another. The portion was generous. I couldn't finish all and had to have it to go. The store now allowed you to pack your rice as well. My overall bill is around $22 which is reasonable for lunch around Bay Area nowadays.

Overall, I enjoyed my chosen dish and would come back with a big group so I might try out their different...

I would definitely try to get out of going to this place again. The food comes out cold and it is very not spicy, even the items marked with three chili peppers. There is not much flavor compared to the similar restaurants on Stevens Creek and De Anza, but I don't think I can name drop here.

They had a lemon flavored fish soup that I wanted to try because it is very classic but unfortunately they were out. I do not recommend the tomato fish soup because boiled tomatoes have a sourness that ruins everything; ie: even the best of beef noodle soups!

Most of the items are fish soup so there is no point of doing family style. There is a chili beef dish for variety.. However, we waited abnormally long for it, so long that the most patient people in our group were getting antsy. Eventually we had to tell them that they plumb forgot about our last dish. The duck blood is fine but very expensive for what it is and the portion was small, the typical size of what you would find at skewer places.

The service is okay; no qualms here. They were efficient and even refilled our waters once. They also tried to help us figure out what was missing in our order. But this is not the type of restaurant where they ask how is...