Red Hot Chilli Pepper Fremont — Restaurant in Fremont

With all the food places around Pacific Commons, you do not need to eat here. We were curious about the concept for this restaurant and we were in a hurry so we decided to give this place a try when we found there was a long wait at multiple of our top picks of restaurants in the complex.

We were seated immediately and ordered shortly after. I did not appreciate being told I need to order rice. He said the dishes were saucy and I can appreciate a tip from the server but I didn't like his insinuation that it's unthinkable to order two entrees with no rice. My husband felt the rice helped him be full from the meal, otherwise, he would have left hungry. I ate the dishes without the rice and I was fine. It's a personal preference that I don't take plain rice with my meals. It also bothered me that the order of rice was huge and costs $10. Typically, it's a few dollars for a smaller portion of rice. I can't decide whether it's the large portion of rice or the $10 that bothered me more when only my husband was partial to the rice. We took the remaining home so it would not be wasted.

The Hong Kong lamb had terrible quality of meat in unnecessarily small cuts and a watery sauce that didn't make sense to me. My family is Cantonese and I was curious what this dish would taste like and after eating it, I still can't tell you what it's supposed to be. It felt vaguely familiar like I could have eaten this at a Chinese restaurant but I can't quite place what this would be called at other restaurants.

The Sichuan fish dish was over $20 for 5 pieces of battered and lightly fried fish fillet. The sauce was not Sichuan at all. It tasted sweeter than it did spicy and we ordered medium spicy. I am used to medium spicy at Shang Cafe in the same complex and this was barely spicy at all.

To cap it off, the server stared me down as I was paying for the meal. Most people would turn their head or leave the console on the table and walk away while the customer is tipping. He sped through reading the charges to me (I barely finished looking at it before he moved it to the tipping screen) and just watched me while I paid...I did not appreciate that.

The food is over priced for the quality and quantity of meat in the dishes. The flavors are not authentically Chinese or what it's supposed to taste like. If it's supposed to be fusion, I don't think it was executed well. The service is not good. There is no reason to eat here unless this is how you want your...

So overall, the experience was pretty decent from a service standpoint. We went on a Saturday at 650pm and the place was packed. We called to get a reservation but they said they didn't have anymore available. So I guess they have a quota for how many reservations they'll take.

We were seated, but they do improvise some of the seating by adding an extra chair to a 4 person table. It's not a big deal, but it does make it more cramped for everyone.

We ordered our appetizers, the baby corn chili and the tofu wrap item. After ordering, a few minutes later we were informed that there was no more tofu. This was unfortunate seeing as how a large part of the menu for vegetarian items has tofu. We ordered the chili paneer. The appetizers took a decent amount of time to arrive (~20 min). The baby corn chili was pretty solid and we all enjoyed that. The paneer chili was okay. There wasn't anything special or great about it.

We were informed that one of the other items we ordered for the main course was out as well somehow. So clearly they're going through some pains of properly approximating food for customers. The waitress was noticeably frustrated with the kitchen, but she seemed more annoyed at us even though we knew she wasn't. Maybe she didn't want to say anything I guess. The main course arrived another 20 min after that. All of the food was pretty salty though. The hakka noodles were great though. That was my favorite item. The paneer itself wasn't marinated for long enough so the paneer itself was super bland. The garlic noddles were okay but also very strong in taste and salty. Spice levels overall were normal, we ordered medium.

We were automatically charged an 18% gratuity even though their own menu stated that, that gets charged for parties with 6+ and we were 5. No apologies or discounts for our items not being there by anyone really. Overall, a very mediocre experience. The bill came out to over $20 per person, which is very expensive for what you get.

Some of this might be due to the fact that the restaurant is new (3 weeks) and they just need to figure out their flow, but still nothing more than a mediocre experience in...

We dined in today and ordered the following. Here are our ratings (3 adults) and comments regarding each item.

We paid over $130 in total for 4 drinks (2 mocktails, 2 juices), 3 appetizers (fries, hot and sour soup, chilli chicken), 3 entrees (hakka noodles, szechwan fried rice and chilli chicken gravy) .

The overall ambiance of the restaurant was okay. Dim light, music and chit chat of other customers in the store. The food arrived a bit late. We were first served our mocktails and juices 15 minutes after ordering, followed by appetizers after 10 minutes, than mains 20 minutes after that. I asked for no scallions or cilantro in our food which they listened to and nothing arrived with either in it. Staff was nice.

We won’t be going in again, just because we expected it to be better for the price we paid. I’ll stick to Inchins Bamboo Garden (similar price and serving sizes but much better flavors)

Chilli Chicken dry - 6/10, wasn’t hot and fresh, chicken was chewy

Chicken hot and sour soup- 8/10, hot, flavorful but had minced chicken instead of traditional shredded chicken pieces. I didn’t like that.

Szechwan fried rice- 6/10 the chicken added in both noodle and rice were the same kind, had an intense chicken smell and not much flavor.

Chicken Hakka noodles- 5/10, had an intense chicken smell and taste with every chicken bite and was lacking flavor. I prefer my hakka noodles with thicker noodles and these were thinner noodles normally used for garlic chilli noodles (maybe thats just me or thats how I grew up eating hakka noodles in Canada).

Chilli chicken with gravy - 7/10, did what it’s supposed to but again, it was overpriced for the...