Orient Pearl — Restaurant in Epping

Always wanted to stop in. Looks elegant from the street. We too had to get our own napkins and ask another person for silverware. No salt and pepper, you have to ask for. Tea we got but had to ask. 18 year old waiter. Opened up one napkin to clean dirty table. A sugar ant was roaming on it. Opened the other saw 1 small curly hair and one straight animal like hair on the other side of napkin. When we asked for dishes, it wasn't china. Its a weird plastic that had cut marks which made me feel,it wasn't clean enough and my husbands had a chip. Was it safe? And, they were small in size. Was that a trick to make it look like they were serving a lot by the time you had it on your plate? Had to stir sugar we got ourselves with out water straw. Terriaki came with our meal and it was over cooked with a red dye look. Tasted strange and 1" shorter than we're a custom to. House rice veggies were just unfrozen while chicken and shrimp in it were just barely cooked while they used a cheap soy sauce. My husband ordered lobster sauce and it was very salty which was probably from cheap soy sauce. Now the decor. Cheap panel with 1/2 round trim where they connect. Problem is, a lot were ripped off. Don't touch the sides of the booths. Very dirty. Booths were made cheaply too. Good vinyl fabric should not come apart on the top of the booth. Our waiter was disturbing. When your being waited on an entitled, Asian, clueless, don't care kid, we're all in trouble. Why did I eat after I saw the curly and straight hair in a napkin? We were giving them the full benefit of the doubt. This place is EXTREMLY questionable. Ewhen you make so many cheap decisions in a restaurant, it should be a concern to everyone. People who were eating there must not know normal great Chinese food. One more thing, the prices seem to be reasonable but when you realize the portions are not the normal heaping size. They were half the size your use to. Good luck and if you get sick the next day, you can use my review. This place should seriously be checked out. I'm sorry to say. I want to wish any business owner luck but saw way too many short cuts...

This was our first time to Orient Pearl at 285 Calef Hwy in Epping, NH. My first impression was that it was bigger than it looks from the outside. There was a sign up saying “Under New Ownership”. Inside the restaurant was nice looking, but felt dirty. I got really distracted by how dirty the tapestry cushion on the back of my hubby’s bench looked. Bad. They need to be cleaned stat! Didn’t look like they had ever been cleaned.

It doesn’t appear to have much parking. The lot out front is small and the spaces are. IDK if there is parking out back?

We ordered water and tea and the teapots was seriously dirty on the outside. Old oil splatter that had collected dirt and dust. Enlarge the pic to see. My guess is because of the bamboo handle, they’d only been rinsing the tea pot and never got it clean. I didn’t dare look inside the pot. The tea tasted nice and the pot and cups were really cute (apart from being dirty)

We ordered FOUR dishes, but only THREE came. (We like leftovers!) We didn’t say anything to the waitress. We didn’t want to receive it late and have to take home the Special Crispy noodles only to become limp. Some foods are best eaten right away. We did get pork fried rice, which was plain, without much flavor, but plentiful. Also got mushroom egg foo young, which the waitress first said we couldn’t order, even tho it was on the menu. I had to show her the menu. It came and was good. Mild but good. Looks like they used canned mushroom tho. We also ordered crispy duck, which did have a nice flavor. There was plenty of duck. Some of it was very dried out, but the parts that weren’t, were good. There was good selection of fresh vege in the dish and it was our favorite of what we ordered.

The prices are decent here. The duck was the most expensive at $22. Overall, I wouldn’t rush back, but would eat there if I was driving by and hungry. I hope they take time to do some serious cleaning.

I noticed things like the table cloths are stacked up on the table, so they don’t have to wipe and can just slide them off. Saves time, but puts a lot of waste in the...

First off I was just told that "it was strange" that I wanted to pay by credit card over the phone and that orient pearl only accepts cash now. I travel all over for work and order food every single day in my travels. I must say that I find it "strange" that a restaurant business would not accept my debit card as payment. Most likely because they want to evade taxes or launder money I would guess. Pretty sketchy if you ask me that you can't run a debit card.

I also find it interesting to see that since the new owners took over there has been a significant increase in bad reviews...

I have frequented orient pearl for years as it has been one of my favorite places to get chinese food, a real 5-star place. As most people know there is a new owner now. Since the new owner has taken over I have noticed that there has been a significant change in this business for the worst. Every single time I ever entered the old orient pearl I was greeted with a smile and hello. Now when you go there is no greeting and you are spoken to like your an inconvenience. Every single time I got food at the old orient pearl it was 5 star. The quality of food has completely changed since new ownership. The food used to be so good and now it gets put together with the kind of skill that you would expect from a low end fast food chain. The meat is a combination of dry or undercooked depending what you order and the rice is mostly hard as a rock. I think the new owner should change the name of this restaurant to something else because it certainly is not the OG Orient Pearl. It is sad to see everything has changed so dramatically. I saw the owner had posted in response to a low review that they now hire better chefs and staff, well I disagree with that. The service was beyond excellent with the former owners and now leaves something...