Yen Ching Restaurant — Restaurant in Lakewood

CHEATED. Stay far away from this place unless you want to be scammed. I was an original customer of Yen Ching restaurant years ago then moved away. I returned to town 3 weeks ago and placed a large order over $100 for take-out at the restaurant. First off, the area where the restaurant is located is no longer safe. Scary. At first sight, I thought the restaurant was closed down. The entrance looks like its been through a fire. You can barely make out “Yen Ching” through the blackened soot. After arriving home with my order, we thought the food was “okay” but noticeably different was their signature sizzling rice soup. According to their menu description: soup with shrimp, water chestnuts, mushrooms and sizzling rice. I remembered I used to love it so I ordered the XXL size($20). It was truly so disappointing… only broth, sizzling rice, a scant amount of frozen carrots, peas and a topper of floating spinach leaves. No shrimp, mushrooms or water chestnuts! Fast forward to my next visit to Yen Ching… in the following week. I decide to give them another chance thinking it must’ve been an honest mistake where they missed putting in the main ingredients. This time I order another XXL size of sizzling rice soup and I make mention of the missing ingredients on my previous order. The lady assures me it’s “all in there”. I drive home and guess what … it’s worse…again No shrimp. No water chestnuts. No mushrooms. I’m furious now. Now I feel cheated. I’m throwing a dinner party with the sizzling rice soup as the first course and now it looks like I’m serving hot water with a pea in it.

I quickly called the restaurant and explained what happened. I told them I was upset and embarrassed about what they had given me to serve my guests. I let them know it’s happened to me twice in the last 2 weeks and it’s unacceptable. I asked them for either a refund or even a credit. “Alex” put me on hold for several minutes while he spoke to someone who had authority then promptly dropped my call. I called back and he said “there wasn’t any shrimp supposed to be in there and they don’t take special requests ???? I explained to “Alex” how all the ingredients were listed on the giant billboard sign menu they have out when you first walk in and that the shrimp, along with all the other missing ingredients were clearly listed in the description and were definitely supposed to be in that soup- that’s why I ordered it! Basically, we went round and round for over 15 minutes with him giving me a bunch of excuses and placing me on more holds finally saying he had the authority to issue a credit or refund but wasn’t going to because in his words, “there was nothing inherently wrong with the soup”. What a joke! Then don’t have a misleading menu sign or they need to black out the ingredients that won’t be in the soup so a person knows what they are getting. False advertising. The 15 min. phone call on top of my experience was a waste of my time! It was surreal. I felt as if I had went to Macdonald’s ordered a cheeseburger and only got the buns, ketchup and mustard. Who wouldn’t feel cheated and upset!

Ultimately, I’m shocked the restaurant has such poor customer service skills and wouldn’t even correct their $20 mistake by issuing a credit or correction. At the very least give an apology in order to try and retain a customer. I would’ve spent hundreds of dollars there in future visits had they done that. Instead, I’m writing a bad review. Poor business acumen. I feel as though I’m not the only one this has happened to at Yen Ching. Bottom line: I will NEVER set foot in your Yen Ching restaurant again to be embarrassed by or taken advantage of and I’ll tell everyone I know how poorly I was treated as a...

The three of us chose to each get the dinner combination which gives you a choice of an appetizer, a soup, entree, and fried or steamed rice. I can honestly say I have found my new local favorite Chinese restaurant. This restaurant is definitely one of the nicer in the Lakewood area. The atmosphere was relaxing and the decorations were very interesting and unique. My favorite dish is sesame chicken which was not one of the choices for entrees however the waitress said there was no problem selecting that as my entree choice. The staff was polite and attentive. From the outside the restaurant seems like a whole different place, however once you step inside you will be surprised. I was excited to see they had a koi pond and off to the side there is a small bar with a billiard table. We also got the appetizer sampler which arrived hot and perfectly cooked. My family had a great sit down dinner. We will definitely be returning.

I took some time to read some of the other reviews and was happily surprised to see that the restaurant has been in service for over 30 years and has many excellent honest reviews, however I did notice several of the low reviews are from customers that didn't even have their verified Google review stars. Also another consistent low review point is from individuals that have chosen to order using a delivery service. Please keep in mind when using delivery services they do not have the individual experience for each customer as a top goal. They are focusing on getting as many orders delivered as possible, and a lot of times the food does not arrive to you in a timely manner, which people choose to blame the restaurant for. I do not believe that is fair because this restaurant in my opinion works very hard to get the food out to your table quickly and they are striving for excellent customer service. You cannot expect that when you are using a delivery service that focuses on mass...

Came in to place an order to go, gal upfront kept telling me to hold on, which is totally fine, I get they might be busy. But then an UberEats driver comes in minutes AFTER me, and she tells me told hold on again and proceeded to help him. Then, after helping him, ANOTHER UberEats driver comes in and she tells me to wait and then helps him. Then, of course, the phone rings. She puts them on hold and I think “okay, she’s going to take my order”. Nope, she answers the phone again and starts taking their order. THEN, after about 10 minutes of standing there she goes into the back, DOESN’T TAKE MY ORDER and doesn’t come back out. I’m standing there for a few minutes and a male comes out and finally takes my order. I asked him if there was a way to order online so this doesn’t happen again and he tells me I can order through UberEats or Doordash, I said “why would I do that if I’m picking up my own order? I don’t want it delivered”. He just says sorry and said “maybe she didn’t see me”. I’ve worked in restaurants since I was 16, and that’s just poor customer service.

Overall just poor service. I’ve been coming here for about two years and they’ve always had pretty poor service. When we were able to dine in it would take about 10 minutes for your server to come over to refill your drink, the server wouldn’t even walk the floor to help their tables, you could hear them all in the back talking. (Since that was the case we couldn’t flag our server down) We’ve continued to come here because the food is good, but I think I’ll be finding a new restaurant.

Just my opinion: You should help the guests inside your restaurant first, it’s not fast food and we’d be more likely to tip versus someone ordering...