Ocean Palace — Restaurant in Houston

We went on a Sunday and arrived around 11am for Dim Sum. There were so many ppl waiting out in the lobby for a table. I had to put my name in the waiting list and according to the host it was an hour wait. They will text when table is ready. Yep, waited for an hour after walking around the warm strip mall on one of the hottest day of summer. There weren't many carts going around and served only the most popular plates like shu mai and ha gao. From the cart we ordered:

Shu mai Ha gao Chicken feet Cheng fun (contained shrimp)

It was ok and the food came out just barely warm. I just dipped all the food in hot chili oil and I am a semi happy person. LOL! We also ordered hot jasmine tea to wash down the heaviness of the food and it was warm too. :/

You could also order dim sum dishes off the menu which has picture and mark the quantity amount on a checklist. There were dishes that were not on the checklist so you would have to flag down the waiter to let him know what you want which we ordered flat rice noodles with beef which wasn't great as the noodles were stuck together and lack any flavor. From the checklist we ordered:

Turnip cake - need more flavor, dipped in hot chili oil to make it better Truffle shu mai - truffle overpowering Truffle soup dumpling - the outside layer was a little too thick and again Truffle overpowered the dumpling taste Cha sui bao - kind of small and one of my favorite among all the dishes we ordered Tripe with black bean - I had better and it had no flavor Sesame ball - another favorite but a tad sweet for me Eggplant - not memorable Shrimp and rice noodle with fried bread - interesting but ok, I don't recommend dipping in sesame sauce (yuck)

So when my son waved down a young waitress to ask for a check, she told him 'sorry no speak English' and walked away. Umm...majority of the young waitstaff speak English, some speak broken English and some speak English very well. Even the older waitstaff attempted to speak English to us but this waitress appeared that she don't want to be bothered since I believe the tip would be distributed evenly among everyone. There were quite a bit of customers in the restaurant who were non Asian so I assume that she would also say the same thing 'no speak English'?? So rude!

Enough ranting...we left the restaurant in a food coma...too much carbs. I probably won't be back and will find a better tasty dim sum restaurant. Don't expect good service either since you are in Chinatown. And if you don't wanna wait get there when it opens around 1030am on...

I ate at this place on a Saturday around 12 PM.

Waiting Time: When we got there, we were put on a waiting list and was told that the waiting time would be around 45 minutes or so. Surprisingly and fortunately, I believe we waited for a less amount of time (maybe 20 or so minutes).

The Food: Warning: Please take what I say with a grain of salt. This is just my opinion.

The food was okay. The congee we ordered wasn't really as hot as we would like. We ate it immediately after it was served to us. The shrimp with mayo sauce was a lot more sour than sweet which is what I am used to. The Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce was disappointing. It didn't look as appetizing compared to other dim sum places I've been to (like Crown Seafood Restaurant). I'm used to the sauce being combined with the broccoli on a plate. With this restaurant, the oyster sauce was served on the side in a small bowl. In addition, with like the xiu mai, the shrimp filling tasted kind of rubbery to me.

Overall, the food was okay. The food could've just been the way it was due to busyness on this one particular Saturday. However, I will probably just eat at different dim sum place like Crown Seafood Restaurant from now on.

Customer Service: The customer service was great! The servers were really accommodating even though they didn't have to be with our requests, such as asking if our congee wanted to be warmed up again or served a new bowl of congee. No complains here.

Total Amount of Money We Spent: Here is a list of the food items we got (from my memory): Xiu mai Chicken feet with black bean sauce Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce Blood pork Beef tripe with ginger? I believe Congee with pork and preserved egg Fried shrimp with walnut in mayo sauce Salt and pepper squid Rice noodle roll with shrimp Shrimp dumpling (Har Gow) House Crispy Fried Egg noodle Shrimp on green pepper

I might be missing like one or two items. Please note that some items are from the Kitchen menu while others are from the Dim Sum menu. The total came out to be around $111 something not...

0/5 for service 2/5 for food

Okay I don’t know where to start this is NOT my FIRST TIME HERE, I had horrible experience with this place before and I stop going here for years. I decided to take my family out here again and gave it another try. But today experience was horrible! We came in to put our name on the list and was told the wait time will be an hour wait. I said okay! Seems okay, so we waited. An hr passed by I went to ask the host and see when I’ll be next and they told me about another 45min! I said 45min?! I been waiting for an hr. If I knew it was 1.5 hr plus wait I would have not even put my name on the list, I would have just left. So I waited for the manager to come to the front for me to ask him if it’s really another 45 min wait? And he told me it’s another 30 min. After the host had told me it will be a 45 min wait.. the way the manager was talking I felt like he want to eat me alive. He try to keep it professional but the tone didn’t seem like it. He told me the wait was NEVER at 1hr. It’s always been 1-1.5 hr long today. I told them well if the host would have told me 1.5 hr I would have left. He said I probably missed understood…? Uh no I’m for sure I didn’T . I came in right at 12. And got a table at 1:34. When we sat down we had no waiter for 5-10 min. The food came out (push cart dim sum) but no waiter to get our drinks. After the wait our waiter came and got the drink and I turn in the paper slip for dim sum everyone finish eating then our food came out. The waiter was no where to be found. He probably came to check up on us about 5 time the whole time we were there. I understand you get the gratuity on big tables and that’s an automatic tip! But doesn’t mean you do not service us correctly. We ARE PAYING CUSTOMERS. You get tip for the type of service you give us. We also got gratuity on a Togo order.. uh no? Overall food wasn’t even tasting like it did before (okay ish. Not worth it) SERVICE WAS BAD! INCLUDING THE FRONT HOSTs I think this is the end with me and ocean place! Never again. I’ll take my...