Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Emeryville

Can confirm, the bad reviews here are accurate. Beware of the rude audacity of the waitstaff for banquet menus.

If you care about service do not come here. Do NOT throw your birthday or wedding banquet party here. I spent $2250 ($343 tip included, receipt posted on here for reference) for the night for 23 people, two tables. The beautiful bay view is not worth it, nor was the food to ever return again.

I would recommend Harbor View on Embarcadero, or R&G lounge or great eastern in SF Chinatown. They were having the Chinese parade the Saturday of my banquet so that was not an option.

Reasons for bad service: the 18% tip is mandatory and included, so they didn't care at all. In fact they (the man on the black suit and the man in the white vest) were straight rude about everything including getting water refilled and taking away empty plates. The server in the white vest practically throws the soup onto the table. And anyone who thinks it's because we were bad customers, no way (plus we didn't want our food tampered with so we kept our composure), we just weren't regulars (who they were very polite to the table next to us, which honestly feels like they were rubbing it in, a high contrast to our treatment as customers).

AND They talked back (in Cantonese)! Examples: My cousin: hands over empty plate to help server Server: can't you see I'm doing something, let me finish this first

The table has 11 soup bowls for my family table. The server comes out with the big soup bowl and takes one bowl away, and my family member says, we have 11 people at this table, and the server says, "this banquet menu is for 10, you have 11". Which the restaurant knew about two weeks prior when I reserved the two tables. My family member politely then asked, can you distribute the soup between 11 and give us each less soup then? Which he then did, because why not and why even mention that the banquet menu was for 10? RUDE

We needed water at my friend table so I went and brought the empty pitcher to the waiter in the black suit and he said "OK wait, I'll do it later", then while I was standing around talking to my family members at the family table, he hands over to me a filled water pitcher. Okay? So I do his job and walk it over to my friend table. What a punk, seriously. The smoked black cod was undercooked at my family table and they had to send it back to have it cooked some more. Also, when it was time to cut the birthday cake into pieces for my guests, he basically tried to fling each piece of cake onto the plate like it had a disease, and butchered the whole thing. Enough so that one piece flipped onto the table, and wasted it. The cake was from Cherry Blossom in SF, so delicious, and a misfortune to lose even one slice (which I think was their intention). Also, for a banquet party they didn't even give new plates mid 9 course meal (after crab, and no hand towels, which R&G lounge provides). Also because my friends are artists and queer, I think it might be the reason for their caustic attitude. My table of friends mostly did not know Cantonese besides myself, so the waitstaff couldn't talk back to us, since their English is not great.

But because I have a lovely family and wonderful friends, they all laughed about it in the end. And we definitely will never be returning. I recommend Cantonese speaking people do the same, unless you want some inspiration on a comedy skit highlighting the audacity of the wait staff at Hong Kong east ocean, then this is the...

My MIL made reservations at this restaurant for my SIL's belated birthday. We live in Green Valley (Fairfield) so my husby and I were not super happy with having to drive to Emeryville AND crossing a bridge lol. We arrived with our boys and had to park across the street from the restaurant which was a little track. It was really busy with two big parties.

They sat us near the window which had a view which was nice before the sunset. When we first arrived our original waiter checked on us to see if all our party arrived, which they hadn't. Basically, that was that for a moment. We waited for about 15 - 20 mins more mins upon arrival before there was any more activity to our table.

What we ordered for our meal which was SO delicious!! We ordered Peking duck (with the bun and plum sauce), crispy whole chicken, their filet of beef (cooked med rare and to die for!), walnut prawns, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, seafood fried rice, tofu with snow pea leaves and this other dish that my SIL picked out that was made of only egg whites and shrimp. It was tasty. Our boys are good eaters and they enjoyed everything we put on their plates! Esp our 2 yr old. He has an amazing palette.

Far as drinks, my husby and I ordered 2 rounds of whiskey sours. As he put it ... "this is the best whiskey sour I've ever had." And as for me, I thought they were refreshing! The bartender did forget to put the cherry in our second round. Oh well. That didn't make or break our meal. They also served us 2 complimentary desserts, sesame balls with black bean (super yummy!) .. did I mention that this restaurant also serves Dim Sum during every day for brunch (need to try that), and I'm sure that is where those yummy sesame balls came from. We were also served a brown rice and peanut dessert soup. First, I thought it sounded kinda odd but worth the try. The soup was good definitely worth a try.

If there was a negative thing I could say about our experience was that we were served water. After we finished our fulfilling meal we noticed there was no water. Not too sure if it was something we had to ask for. I know that some things have changed in restaurants, so maybe it had to be that. Sometimes you just need a sip of water and we didn't get it. Meh!

Our last waiter John Lee was very nice and accommodating to our party of 9. He was friendly and attentive. We liked him and would want him to be our waiter the next time we go (which we will be back!) He is so nice. Then on the way out after dinner, we met Edith the hostess she was fun to talk to you. We told her about our experience there in the restaurant and she was delighted. Super nice!

If you want some amazing tasting DimSum/Cantonese food this is the place to try. They are Michelin recommended!! It's a must try. And we will make the 30-35 minute drive. Thank you...

Stay away from this restaurant!!! It has beautiful ocean view but poor service. First, the waiter is impatient answering our questions. All he wanted was our order but seemed very reluctant to provide any basic service such as introducing their food or giving any recommendations. I understand if it's during a busy time , however, there were only a few customers there at that time. Besides, they force 18% service tip but with this kind of attitude, there's no way we will pay. So we decided to take out food and were told to go back in 20 minutes. We took a walk outside, checked the reviews and found there are complaints about cold or untasty food. So when we returned to the restaurant, asked if we could check food first. Obviously the waiter wasn't happy because he wanted us to pay first, but finally he let me check it. Now here comes the funny thing: there are only FOUR soup dumplings, microscopic, unfresh, seeming like leftovers from the day before. Plus, there should be TEN instead of FOUR. Don't ask me why but this is how it works. I told the waiter at least inform your customer before our order or mark it on the menu. So he took out a different menu with pictures, totally different from the one was given us before and pointing at the menu claiming it was marked 4, however, from the one provided before no clear number was displayed. He was not happy at all when I asked to return the soup dumplings because I felt they are not honest about their business. The waiter kept arguing with me about the number of dumplings which really made me lose the appetite. Why can't he apologize instead? At last, he said I'm not selling food to you and took away the food. Remember, these are two different waiters, the one who's impatient and the one who at the end suddenly decided not to sell their food even though they made us wait for 20 minutes. Guys, go to other better ones because you deserve better service and...