MingHin Cuisine — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

Wow, where do I start? Perhaps I will begin from when the waiter carelessly threw the water on the table spilling most of it and just walk away as if he didn't give a damn that he spilt a glass of water everywhere, and the fact that it took asking 4 different people if someone could clean up the mess so someone from our party of 8 didn't need to eat in a puddle of water. Or when the waiter (Chinese) said, "Hurry up and order, I have Chinese guests that need my attention!" After realizing that 7 of the 8 people were Vietnamese and myself, of course, the only white man at the table, he smerked and mentioned how odd it was, To which I replied that I happened to be married to the woman next to me, and the rest of the people at the table were her parents and siblings. He rolled his eyes and walked away as if it were a shameful thing. Let's talk about the food. I, for one, took a bite of Crab Rangoon and ended up with a mouth full of plastic, literally PLASTIC!! The oysters smelled expired, and the meats were either extremely overcooked or weren't cooked enough. The sauce for the egg rolls was bitter, and if you were to look at the English Translation of the menu, it was as if a child had done it. When we needed our waiter, he was too busy socializing with his Chinese customers, and though he acknowledged our presence, he ignored us all the same. When it came time to pay we waited and waited, for the waiter, my wife called him several times and again he was too busy with all his Chinese customers to wait on a table of Vietnamese and a white guy.

After the 5th time he ignored my wife's call I stood up, took the bill to him and told him if he doesn't take our payment now, we will consider it an apology for the disgusting food, horrible service, and his rude behavior... and we'll simply leave since our money seems to be no good at his establishment!! He took the card and ran it but not before adding an 18% tip for himself, then hoping we wouldn't notice he said with a smerk, "Don't forget to leave a tip." What he didn't realize is that my Vietnamese wife is a Chief Financial Officer and an executive of a major company, and I'm a retired Military officer. In other words, we're no fools!! Since he was so kind to think of his own tip, we realized that there was no need for us to leave one. The aftermath... I spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom throwing up and was diagnosed with food poisoning, must of been the PLASTIC crab Rangoon since I was the only one who ate it and the only one who sick.

In a nutshell, this was hands down the worst restaurant experience I've had in a long time. Do yourself a favor. Choose somewhere else for your dining experience. This place is nothing more than a trashcan dressed up to look fancy!!

NOTE FOR THE OWNER: Save us both some time, don't bother posting your "copy / paste response, adding a customers name at the top doesn't make it a personalized response, it's lazy and shows that you don't actually care about your customers or your business. Especially after reading several of your 1-2 star reviews and noticing a pattern of behaviors that you and your staff have repeatedly failed to correct, because if you actually address the issues, they wouldn't be getting mentioned over and over again. Hint: THIS IS CALLED BAD MANAGEMENT.

In Response to Management: Yes, while your staff came to our table "20 times," they not once spoke to us or asked if we needed anything, not even how the meal was. And when we did need something, we were ignored. Now I get that you're going to defend your establishment to the end on this platform, instead of taking the criticism and comparing it to other negative responses about your restaurant and finding the common issues that need to be addressed and ACTUALLY doing something about them, but it would appear that once again your going to bury your head in the sand, make childish excuses and do absolutely nothing. It's quite sad that as the owner of a business, you'd squander away an opportunity to improve...

Alrighty - let's start off with the basics - I am a very fair reviewer when it comes to reviewing restaurants, food, etc. I've been doing this for a long time, and as such I tend to be direct and honest. A friend of mine recommended MingHin in Rolling Meadows to me a few days ago after we were chatting about the best Dim Sum restaurants we have been to. For me personally, Phat Phat in Schaumburg is my favorite and I have introduced many friends to their incredible food. My friend who recommended MingHin insisted they were so much better, will blow me away, etc. I had pretty high hopes when I suggested to my husband we go here tonight and have dinner. All that said...

To be completely, brutally honest... we had a pretty miserable time at MingHin tonight :'(. I wish that wasn't the case, but it was absolutely the case. Let me start with layering out what we ordered, what we got, how the restaurant was, etc.

THE GOOD:

The atmosphere of the restaurant was really nice. Very clean, very well kept, etc. The interior was fantastic. Loved the ability to order on the iPad, etc. Really sharp!

The staff, overall, was very kind. While they did not come visit you much after you sat down, when you needed them they were there. Our server was attentive when we flagged them down, etc. They didn't really explain anything about how ordering worked at all, however. You had to figure it out for yourself (which we did as we have visited a few places previously that had a similar iPad type ordering system).

Both the cold milk tea with boba and the hot tea they served when you sat down were both really good! I enjoyed them!

THE BAD:

Pretty much everything else. I know that sounds incredibly harsh, but I am just being honest. We have had every type of Asian food you can think of, ranging from Cantonese, American style Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Japanese, etc. You name it, we've probably had it. That said... this was just straight up not good. Allow me to elaborate a little bit here - when you ordered on the iPad there were NO mention of any ingredients in each dish. You had to rely on just a photo (maybe) for what you were ordering. As I said earlier, the servers were not around unless you called for them. Everything we ordered arrived within 2 to 5 minutes of when the server finalized our order. Making this type of food fresh is NOT physically possible in 2-5 minutes. This tells me everything was premade and heated up. Tonight we ordered the following dishes:

Siu Mai: Was incredibly not good, lacking in all flavor, seasoning, etc.

BBQ Ribs: We each had one tiny rib bite, left all the rest.

BBQ Pork Fried Rice: No seasoning, very bland. Truly not good. We each had one serving spoon of the rice, left the rest.

Steamed Pork Bun: My husband had two bites, we left all of it.

Xiao Long Bao (Pork Soup Dumplings): Three in the serving, we had ONE. Left the rest.

Pan Fried Pot Stickers (regular portion of 6): Ate 2, took the other 4 home. Passable.

Pan Fried Vegetable Roll: Absolutely vile. Truly awful. Absolutely COVERED in grease, immediately tore apart, vegetables were half mushy half raw, zero seasoning. We had ONE bite, didn't touch the rest.

With tip it was $80+ dollars. We left everything except the pot stickers, server saw we didn't eat anything, never once asked if the meal was ok, never once offered to get a manager (granted, we didn't ask for one - we wanted out of there ASAP). That said, at least ASK how the food was and we could have at least shared like "Hmmm - it's not what we were expecting". We didn't ask for a refund, but when 90% of the food is remaining on the table, not taken to go, you should at least ask your guests what happened.

All that said, check out Phat Phat in Schaumburg if you want incredible soup dumplings, appetizers, rice, etc. It will blow you away. As for MingHin - sorry, but it's not for...

Walking into this Chinese restaurant, is like walking into a restaurant in Hong Kong. AKA Hong Kong style bright, modern quick efficient, great presentation, everything hot, and tasty, yet very family friendly.

Hong Kong style vs country or family style Chinese food.

We ate there New Year's eve Dec 2016 a Saturday nite at 6:30pm. Fortunately we made reservations.. Our party of 5 adults had a table to ourselves with surround screen for privacy, no yelling or talking loud to hear each other. That was a plus.

Everything looked sparkling clean and bright. I'm so happy when I see a spin-able lazy susan top. It makes it much easier and fun when ordering and then eating the dishes. Oh, and fresh made dim sum at 7pm at night, Thats a plus, plus in my book for Chinese restaurants.

I'm using the menu names they have in English, so if you eat at this restaurant you can order exactly what we ordered. Another plus is every dim sum item as well as every dish they have on the menu, displays what the dish looks like and ordering is through a notepad (I thin ipad). The dimsum menu is paper, and also with photos.

Over 65 dim sum choices!!! excellent! We only ordered 5 items from the dim sum menu, to save room for the main dinner entrees.

Dim Sum: Steamed shrimp dumplings, Beef short rib honey sauce, baked bbq pork buns, and after dinner, mango puddling and egg custard tart.

Honestly my wife and I have eaten at many restaurants through out the United States. Our home place is Denver. Food at a mile high and food close to sea level, does have a different taste, consistency and moistness level. Just a comment.

The dinner entrees were:

Rice noodles with Beef (Chow Fun),

Beef Tenderloin with black pepper sauce,

Whole Lobster with Ginger scallion sauce, 1.5+ lb lobster.

Young Chow Fried Rice (it's the best, and only available at "real chinese restaurants", don't even try to find it panda express) This fried rice doesn't use soy sauce as a primary ingredient.

Preserved mustard pork casserole (if you're on a diet, or you believe in always eating healthy) skip it or just go back on your diet afterwards. My table never ordered this before, but I was pretty sure they would like it, and it was an absolute hit.

Pea tip vegetable with Japanese tofu, okay, confession, I'm in heaven, if you like tofu, this is it. The tofu is the soft silken type. The pea tip vegetable wasn't bitter.

And finally from my childhood and for all who like authentic ethnic dishes. (whole) ginger scallions Chicken. ( roughly translated from Cantonese (White chopped chicken). I'll load some...