Xiao Ling’s Kitchen — Restaurant in Irving

Before I get started, I would like to say that I very much enjoyed the cheese bao in the appetizer. I have put off publishing a review, because I wanted to try their other bao beforehand. Bao are hard to find in DFW, but my expectations were dashed in the rest of the meal, so I haven't decided if I will return yet solely to try the bao.

The service and atmosphere are great. The food fell short by a lot. I was expecting fresh noodles or something close, not packaged Italian style spaghetti noodles. Noodles with an entree is $3.50, so that made them very pricy spaghetti. I've had better noodles at Panda Express.

[Also for that $3.50, they were presented under my entree, boiled and plain. For that price point, I expect noodles to be stir fried in oil and some basic sauce, if they're just going to be on the bottom. The way I prefer my noodles is stir fried with the entree, so that they absorb the flavors of the meal.]

The entree itself was mediocre. I ordered pepper beef. The flavors were pretty good, but the beef was too plump and the individual pieces were too large for chopsticks or for a mouthful if one is using a fork. The quality of the meat was fine, but it was about twice as thick as it should have been and the sear was overwhelmed by the sauce and the steak's own juices. Aside from sitting on top of a bed of plain, boiled, Italian-style spaghetti noodles, the presentation was great.

My wife ordered the sesame chicken. Its presentation was kind of bougie boutique style, with a glaze surrounding the individual pieces of fried chicken, sitting on the bed of fried rice she ordered with it. Despite clearly being white meat chicken, it tasted very much like dark meat. She doesn't care for a certain flavor component of dark meat (which is what was there), so she just ate her fried rice, retaining the rest for...

Pretty disappointing experience eating here. When we arrived, the restaurant was not very busy. I ordered the mushroom chicken with white rice. When the food arrived, they had made a mistake and given us fried rice(which comes with an extra $3 charge). I informed the waitress that I ordered white rice to which she said no problem, I will get you white rice and remove the extra charge when providing the bill. After waiting about 10minutes, I still had not actually received my white rice so I had to ask another waitress. After she confirmed my request, it still took another 10minutes to get it, by which time we were about half way done with the meal already...

When we were finishing the meals, our friend we were eating with requested the check. Again, it seemed like the waitress either forgot about us or didn't understand. It took another 10-15minutes of waiting before the actual check came.

At this point, our bill was incorrect and still had the extra $3 charge. My wife took the check to the front register to correct it. The server then ended up charging us the completely wrong table and charged our card $70 instead of the $40 total...My wife had to request them to completely refund the wrong charge and re-charge the correct bill to the correct table.

The restaurant did get very crowded with a big party arriving after us. So I understand it is very busy and very loud. But the servers should at least try to make an effort to follow through with the task they are helping with so guests are not waiting so long.

As for the food, the dumplings were pretty decent but the fried rice and the sauce on my chicken dish was a bit too salty for my taste. Unfortunately, we had a pretty poor experience here due to maybe the inexperience of the servers with handling a...

I ordered bbq baos and they were rotten, and not a little bit.. very very rotten: I am giving 2 stars because the waitresses were nice. It was a bit weird that they came super fast when the menu says “15 mins wait” as they are handmade. I ate the first one and thought “hmm.. taste a bit ‘fermented’” since it was the first time trying I thought maybe that’s the flavor. I picked the second one and the filling was slimy.. I thought, maybe the sauce is like that… When I was picking another one I realized one of the meat pieces had mold in it. Not a little bit but a whole grown grass looking mold on it. I immediately felt sick (not sure if i am actually gonna fall sick) and disgusted. I asked for a container as I couldn’t keep eating the noodles I also ordered. When the waitress ask if I wanted the bao to go I told her no, and showed her the piece with the mold. She called another person (not sure if she’s the manager) and show her the piece.. she said “I can take it off the bill” but honestly I just wanted to go somewhere to puke.. I told her no, that I just hope I don’t fall sick.. she told me “I will give you credit for the next time..” I thought, there’s no way I’ll have a second round here… like, zero possibilities I can give this a second chance… I told her, is ok, thank you… I still paid all my bill and even tip ( because is not the waitress fault) and left as soon as I could so I can just reach somewhere safe for me to undo what came in…

This is not ok. Ps: sorry, I didn’t take pictures because literally just the thought of it was making me want to puke… still they should not serve rotten...