Shanghai Restaurant — Restaurant in Lake Jackson

July 10th 2024.

DOESN'T SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY AFTER WE WERE SLAMMED BY HURRICANE BERYL!!

After a long long day of hurricane clean up, I called here to see if they were open and they were. So I got together the orders for me and the volunteers that helped with clean up and called them back and placed my order. It was 4 entrees and 3 appetizers. Was told it'd be ready in 20-25 minutes. Got there about half hour later to be given a total which I paid. Then I told oh wait it looks like we didn't have some of your items after all.

Was it missing an appetizer? Two appetizers? Maybe an entree????

Nope. It was missing 3 ENTREES and an appetizer. So they only gave me 1 meal and 2 appetizers. I didn't know about you but that won't feed 4 people and especially won't feed 3 guys in their twenties. I asked why no one called to say they were out of all of that and offer us alternatives. The manager gave excuses left and right. I asked if they can make something else then and was told the kitchen was closed. There was no sorry, no let me give you a discount for your trouble and the fact that 75% of your order wasn't there and 75% of you have no meal.

LEARN HOW TO TREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS AND COMMUNICATE WITH THEM. WILL NOT BE BACK!!!

March 2023 I just had surgery and had cancer removed from my nose and had it reconstructed. So after a long day my friend said that they would pick up some Shanghai for me on the way from lake Jackson to Surfside Beach. I placed the order and asked to pay for it so my friends could pick it up and was told that there was absolutely no way I can pay for it over the phone or online. My friends would have to pay in person. Needless to say I was not going to have them do that because they didn't have the money for it and were kind of enough to bring me the food. So I had to drive over there pay for it myself and bring it back. When I complained they're like. Oh well.

I've worked in retail before. I know your system has the ability to punch in a person's credit card numbers and CVV when the card swipe doesn't work or there's something that's not working correctly on the card. So you cannot tell me that it couldn't be done. Maybe you just didn't want to do it. I don't know. Not very...

I have grown to understand that in the past two years, restaurants have increased their prices, sometimes exponentially. You'd like to think, at the very least, those increased costs are going to increased employee pay, quality ingredients, and other costs associated with owning a business.

My meal today at Shanghai Restaurant was the most awful I've had in recent memory. Let's call it 10 years.

Pu-Pu platter was disgusting, uniformly tasting of "multi" day unchanged oil. No flavor profiles in any of the components to speak of. Dry and hard, oily and lacking flavor about sums it up.

The Shanghai chicken noodles, or whatever it's called, had damn near a 1/4 inch of oil in the bottom of the container. Again, no discernible flavor. Where was the 5 spice...white pepper...garlic...hell anything?! Literally tasted like oil. The noodles were so overcooked as to be mush.

Nothing was remotely palatable. Thankfully, I served for 14 years so I was able to stomach about 1/3 of the meal to get enough calories to "get by." I'm sure the exit strategy for this meal will be one for the ages.

In a way, I'm thankful to Shanghai. Over the last 18 months I've found that a very, VERY few restaurants have not only maintained or elevated their food, but also raised prices that felt...comfortably needed (based on our economy).

Now, I am certain that most of my meals will be sourced by one of the better cooks I know. Myself.

Sorry for the length. This meal was...

Ordered a to go order of General Tso chicken, egg rolls and fried rice. Turns out to be $20 (little pricey) but figured I'd give this place a shot. I get my order from a kind gentleman, however they gave my steamed rice on accident so I asked if he could change it to fried rice. He said no problem and went to go get it. They come back with another order of steamed rice so once again I send it back.

The part that really upset me is when this other lady came out to make sure I wanted fried rice. She asked for my food and started rummaging through my bag to make sure i had the right order even though I already told her everything else is right, but she insisted on seeing even after I showed her the rice was steamed. She wouldn't let me keep the steamed rice even though they made the mistake of giving it to me, and in the process she busted open a cup of sauce and made a mess in my bag (didn't notice til I got back home).

Considering we are in a pandemic, this made me very uncomfortable with her reaching around in my bag of food without any gloves on. She was wearing a face shield but clearly didn't have respect for my order or my concerns about the coronavirus.

The food was decent, but definitely not worth $20. Wish I could've had a better first experience. Probably...