Sichuan House - Chinese Cuisine 老四川 (老字号) — Restaurant in Johns Creek

WARNING: Another episode of lacking competition. If you plan to dine at this restaurant, do not listen to any of the waiter's recommendations. Just order what you want to eat, and if they don't have what you desire, just leave. This place has issues with luring/cheating its customers. This kind of trick has been played many times for restaurants in Toronto Canada, a lot of those restaurants have already gone bankrupt. This is next.

Points:

1. The waiter "recommends" (lures) customers into ordering specific dishes.
2. The recommended dishes are extremely expensive.
3. They fail to inform customers about the prices when making recommendations, leaving you surprised at the bill.
4. They enforce tips by directly adding them to the receipt. Explanation: The reason it's called luring is that when we inquired about the dishes we wanted to order, they responded ambiguously, stating those dishes were sold out, and then strongly recommended their own expensive dishes instead.

A more detailed reason: We just came out of the restaurant and I'm really annoyed by the waiter's practice of pushing their recommended dishes on customers. Firstly, I have to admit that their food tastes okay, nothing particularly awful. However, the problem is that we wanted to order their Tengjiao live fish, but before we could say anything, the waiter immediately started promoting their steamed sea bass. Looking at the prices of other fish dishes on the menu, ranging from around 20 to 30 dollars, we thought, how expensive could a sea bass be? So, we agreed to the suggestion, given that the waiter emphasized that the dish we originally wanted was sold out. After finishing our meal and getting the bill, we realized they charged us 70 dollars for the steamed sea bass. We were thinking about arguing it, but we knew it would just lead to a heated argument, so we decided to let it go and pay to shut them up. And that's not all, after paying the bill, they even automatically added an 18-dollar tip without asking. At first, I wanted to leave a generous tip since I thought the food was pretty good, and we all understand how tough it can be to run a business, especially for fellow Chinese entrepreneurs. However, this kind of deceitful, or at least non-transparent practice, is something I can't tolerate. In the end, we spent 130 dollars for just one plate of wood ear mushrooms, one sea bass, and one plate of mushroom tofu.

Considering this experience, we definitely won't be going back there again, no matter how tasty their...

This was our 4th time here. As someone else noted, the Mongolian beef has 80% onions and 20% beef. This place has good food but the portions aren’t good. Also, they force you to pay a 15% or higher tip even if you don’t get any service. Imagine walking into Starbucks and getting your drink and snack and being forced to pay a tip. Their was no service but because you got your food they mark up the price. That’s what happened to us. The owner told me if they bring food to your table that means you must tip. No one gave us a refill, no one asked us if it was good, and no one brought us the check. We had to waiter, the cook brought out our food while the only waiter there played on his phone in the corner. We had to get up and go to the front to pay. As others have said, owner acts like she’s always right and has an attitude. This is the 4th time this has happened to us where they auto charge a tip. Great food but bad service. We go to a lot of Chinese places and MOST of them don’t make you tip if theirs no service. My wife is Chinese and Chinese people don’t even have a tip culture. Especially if you get no service. Why give someone free money if they do nothing for you? Owner tried to argue with me and forced us to pay the tip even with no waiter. I gave them $5 and they wanted more. She didn’t even give the workers the money but simply but it in the register. Owner keeps the tips and pays the workers a hourly wage. Great food but I don’t like being argued with over a few dollars. If theirs no service you can’t require people to tip. Read the law! Owner said because it’s COVID time everyone has to tip. Total bs to force people to tip when you don’t service them. Governor opened back up the state and all the restaurants are open, she’s openly scamming people to get more money. Sad the workers don’t get to keep any of the tips at this place. Great tasting food but we won’t be back due to how forceful the owner is. Was there only 35 minutes and we saw her yell at some guy in the back and argue with me...

The place is not very friendly. We had questions about the difference between the two fish dishes we wanted to order. The owner didn't explain it first but took another menu, showed us and then explained the difference - one numbing and one spicy. I ordered the spicy one. I didn't think about why she showed me the expensive menu before explaining the difference. The owner didn't confirm with us whether we wanted the expensive one or the cheaper one. As a native Chinese, I can tell the quality and the taste of the fish that was served to us was so so. But when we saw the bill, they charged us for the expensive version. I asked why, and the owner said because you saw the expensive menu, that was why we sever that for you. I told her that I said the spice fish. The owner's husband came out and apologized to us that his wife should have confirmed with us first. So, I ended up paying the money for the expensive one. However, the owner was very sneaky and showed us two versions of the menu and did NOT confirm which version we wanted PURPOSEFULLY.

Taste: As a Chinese, I can tell you that the taste of the food wasn't that good compared to other similar restaurants such as tasty china, cafe q in Atlanta. My husband is American, and he didn't have any good comment as well.

Environment: there was power outage for three times suing our one hour meal.

This place is a nightmare. PLEASE DO NOT GO TO THIS PLACE! It is...