Wanna Bao — Restaurant in Houston

The food: It's actually pretty great. The fact that they have a few soup dumpling options alone is amazing in Houston, and they were delicious. The crispy bottom dumplings were also great, with good textures and flavors. The dry fried green beans were a bit salty, but that is always fine with me, especially when paired with some plain rice. I was very impressed with the mapo tofu as well. I have a favorite place for that dish, but this place came very close to usurping that spot. The food was a bit pricier than competitors of comparable quality, but that could be forgiven since it's actually outside of Chinatown which is a nice change of pace.

The restaurant: Outside looks a bit drab, but I like the interior. It's relatively modern but without losing the feel that you're in an Asian restaurant.

The service: The biggest problem with the restaurant. The hostess just sort of seemed confused. She kept saying she would give us a number, but then proceeded to make no motions to doing so until we explicitly asked for a number. The wait time was a big issue because they didn't have enough staff to bus the tables and the hostess just didn't provide much information or help. We ended up waiting for an hour and a half despite many tables being empty. Also, there isn't really an area to wait, so we just stood outside the front door.

Overall: The food is solid. I really enjoy it and will come back. Unfortunately, I won't be returning until I'm sure they've settled this whole staffing issue and figured out their system for having people wait. It just makes the trip far too much of a hassle.

Update: The wait is not as crazy as it was right when this place opened, but the efficiency hasn't improved much. We still had to wait on a Saturday night even with eight empty tables. It seems odd to me that on a busy night for eating out, they just don't have the staff to actually work the tables they have set up. My latest experience was not great. They were seating parties of two who arrived after our party of three. After asking if we could sit at the empty table with the exact three place settings we needed (which had been empty for the entire 40 minutes that we had been waiting) the hostess said that they didn't have anyone covering it. This table wasn't in some far off corner either, it is literally right next to the tables for two. After it was obvious we were not happy with her answer she said she could seat us there. Overall the way they manage the restaurant is so poor it's hard to justify coming here unless it's a weird time and completely empty. I definitely was going to lower my scoring, but another employee gave a pretty sincere apology and said there was some sort of confusion so I will give them the benefit of the doubt this time.

Side note: It's not that the people working here are necessarily rude or anything. The main problem is the very poor handling of the...

Came here to eat because my fiance and I were just randomly driving around Houston. We drove pass the restaurant and thought, ok that place sounds great since it's busy with a ton of cars parked out and people waiting in a line outside. So we came here to eat last night....and boy oh boy. What a horrible experience.

We looked through the menu and thought since they specialize in bao & dumplings, then they have got to have a ton of different varieties (even vegetarian ones, since him and I are both vegetarians). Well, come to find out, they had not a single vegetarian option for any of the baos...but we did see a vegetarian dumpling, so we ordered those. Then we also ordered the vegetarian fried rice. Mind you, the prices seemed reasonable, assuming the fact that maybe it would have been decently sized to offer more than one serving.

Keep note: we ordered our food at 8:19pm We received our FRIED RICE, ONLY, 30 minutes later. We also noticed that we only got the rice and not the dumplings, and we ended up waiting another close to 10 minutes to see if they were going to eventually bring out the second dish. We sat, ate our rice, didn't say anything about not receiving our dumplings because we were patiently waiting, you know, since they specialize in baos and dumplings and we really wanted to try them. We it started to get late, we saw everyone else around us who ordered dumplings and other main entrees get their food... (Multiple parties/customers came in way after us too....but still no dumplings for us).

So we ended up asking for the check after they took away our ONE plate of rice (which btw: feeds one... So it was definitely not worth it as expensive as it was....but that's a whole other story for next time...)

She didn't even mention or ask how the food was or didn't even notice that we were missing a whole dish. So she came back with the check, we saw they STILL charged us for the dumplings, so of course we had to tell them to remove it. She goes about telling us, oh do you still want it, I can see if they're still making it, that it takes "time" since they're made fresh, blah blah blah. We just said nope. Got our new check. And left.

Personally next time if they're "made fresh" and that it takes time to make, then they should note that on the menu or tell the customers prior to ordering.

Honestly how...

Food was good and consistent. One of the servers, specifically the one who delivered my wine, however, made an off putting comment about the wine I chose. The rest of the staff was fine.

It just so happened that I ordered the “cheapest” bottle of red wine, because I was in the mood for a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. Now mind you, I have visited Willamette Valley in Oregon specifically to visit select wineries for their Pinot Noirs and enjoy their quality of wine there.

I also selected the wine because I thought it would be an easy drinker and crowd pleaser since I was dining with some friends. I didn’t want a cab sauv, because I didn’t think it would pair with my meal well, even though my husband asked if I wanted to order the Stag’s cab, but I told him this wasn’t the right occasion. And their reds list only consisted of an Oregon Pinot, French Pinot, and some cabs that I wasn’t interested in for the meal.

Anyway, the server brings out the wine I chose and literally asks, “you know the wine is 40% off, right?” And stated that, “there are better wines on the list”.

I don’t take many things personally, but I took that comment personally. I didn’t think I needed to explain or justify to someone why I ordered a particular wine that I wanted to drink, but here I am because the server didn’t know how to keep his comments to himself.

I have visited almost 60 countries and collected over 500 bottles of wine from all the major wine region wineries that I have been to around the world, and NEVER has anyone ever questioned why I ordered the “cheapest” bottle of wine on their menu.

Why even sell it if you are going to ask why I’m ordering it?

Appalled is...