Young Chow Cafe Chinese and Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Haymarket

I recently ordered over $60 worth of food from Young Chow Cafe, expecting a great meal that included shrimp fried rice. However, as soon as I opened the food, I noticed something was very wrong there was absolutely no shrimp in the so-called "shrimp fried rice." I called the restaurant immediately to resolve the issue.

At first, a non-English speaking lady answered the phone and remained silent, offering no help. Then, a man took over the call and, shockingly, his response was "What do you want me to do?" It was dismissive and frustrating. Instead of correcting their mistake, they acted as if it wasn’t their problem.

This kind of service is completely unacceptable, and it feels like the restaurant is stealing from its customers. If you're thinking about ordering from here, BEWARE! This experience left a very bad taste in my mouth - both figuratively and literally.

Save yourself the hassle and take your...

Definitely the best Chinese restaurant in the Haymarket/Gainesville area.

Food: it taste freshly made and you can actually taste the authentic flavor of the dish. It’s not all salt/oil/sugar like other Chinese restaurants. Their rice is also the freshest. Their food quality is great.

Parking: plenty of parking

Restaurant ambience: I’ve only done takeout but the place is clean and well-maintained.

Customer Service: if I could give 100 stars I would. The owner is just so lovely and nice. When my husband does the food pickup and has our toddler with him, the owner goes out of her way to help him open the door, etc. the owner also gave me a few extra fortune cookies for my toddler when I asked for just a couple LOL. She’s super nice!

Delivery: they unfortunately don’t have delivery service yet (as far as I know). I wish they would be in doordash...

Not sure how this place has such a good score on Google. I went for lunch, and ordered one of the lunch specials with an additional soup appetizer. I've had tastier Chinese food from my local grocery store hot-bar, which is a sad statement. Clean, nice, friendly yes - I expect this to be normal. There was a lot of food for the money, I ended up taking some home (to add vegetables and sauce. to give it better flavor). But the food had no Chinese "taste". It was however, salty enough. I ordered the Kung Pao chicken, which to me very clearly tasted like small fried chicken bits. Normally KP is not breaded. This was like fried popcorn chicken with carrot chunks and a few peanuts fried in a soy sauce oil. That is my largest complaint. Aged vinegars and spices do not cost THAT much to add just a tiny bit to a dish and give it...