T.S. Ma Chinese Cuisine — Restaurant in Montclair

I leave this review with a heavy heart. Ts Ma has been my go to for lunch or dinner for the last 5 or so years. This restaurant was recommended to me from an old boss in which I recommended to many others in the Montclair area. The owner and staff inside of the restaurant are always very friendly and professional however, the delivery drivers are the worst.

It started with 1 delivery driver leaving my food on the ground outside during the rain and never bothering to call or ring my doorbell as a notification that the food was delivered. My neighbor was kind enough to pick up and walk my food over to me. Although I was upset, I’m very understanding and not one to complain so I just chalked it up as the driver having a bad day or he or she simply was too busy and just forgot to call or ring my bell. Cool no problem I thought. I was dead wrong!!

I didn’t order food for a while but after a few months, I hit up Ts Ma again to place an other order. This time the driver did call me however, he was rude af because he was lost advising that I gave the wrong address. I was annoyed that he even jumped to that conclusion since the restaurant confirms your delivery address on the phone and I’ve been ordering from them for years now. So I tried to help the driver get to my house but he was flustered and incapable of listening (not sure how he even got hired) so I had him tell me what he saw so I can just walk up to him and pick up my food. To add insult to injury, after I picked up the food, he was still rude, didn’t even greet me or apologize for anything and I left a decent tip at the time I ordered too.

So I called the restaurant and asked to never send that guy back to my place. They said that they left a note on my account and apologized about that which was okay. Really it’s the driver that is the issue.

Finally I get my food delivered by a different guy and this guy isn’t that much better. He calls you when he’s here. When you answer, his call, he doesn’t even specify who he is, all he says is, “food is here” click. At this point I was just happy that my food arrived hot and the driver could actually follow directions. That happiness was very short lived though. Sure this new delivery driver is a mute and can bring me my food hot however, that doesn’t mean it’ll be an enjoyable meal. While walking to my door this guy loves to swing the delivery bag of food like he’s Santa clause giving gifts to children. The first time I paid $30+ for a mixed puddle of food, I was annoyed but grateful to even receive it. But this time enough was enough and I had to share my experience with ordering from this restaurant.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading this and if you plan on eating Ts Ma, I implore you to just pick it up at the restaurant if you really want to enjoy food that you pay for at an...

I've tried this place a few times now for take-out, and I agree with other reviews that it seems like clean/healthy chinese food, and they have many vegetarian options, which is great. So far, I have been a little underwhelmed by the flavors - no bad experiences as such, however nothing that has come close to rocking my world either. I tried the spicy sechuan chicken dish from their specials menu and it was NOT AT ALL spicy, not even a smidge...but the really disappointing part was that it just had so little sauce that it was just dry chicken on dry rice. I'm not someone who likes their food smothered in sauce, so it really was surprising how little flavor and sauce it came prepared with, especially as it was from the chef's specials. The General Tso's chicken fared a bit better - still not enough sauce, but at least I wasn't expecting it to be spicy, and it had a nice flavor to be fair. More flavor and sauce, please TS Ma! White breast meat is already fairly bland - more flavor is required! I will try again, eating in, to see if there are other dishes that work better for me as I really want to like this place.

UPDATE: sadly, I'm taking off another star from my original rating as my last couple of meals here have been remarkably oily. The dishes had virtually no other smell than oil; my guess is that there is too much oil and it wasn't hot enough before cooking, because the eggplant was fully saturated with oil...just pulp pillows of oil. The shrimp toast oily and soft, just a greasy mush under the surface. Even fully cooled down and overnight in the fridge, it didn't set it any way. So...

So, We were seated upstairs, we had no idea there was an upstairs. Well, it took a while for the waiter to come to the table, even though there are only 5 tables up there, Pedro was his name. So, the manager was seating someone else, and saw we had nothing on the table yet, and asked if we had ordered drinks or appetizers yet, we said no, then Pedro finally showed up. We got hot tea, and ordered our food. The appetizer came, and it was a special, pork dumplings with chives, the only difference is that it was steamed, and looked more like dim Sum. Got our meals, and was very disappointed, the wife ordered chicken and green beans, with garlic sauce, and I ordered the chicken with hot green peppers. Both came with no sauce, and the green bean dish was awful, and no garlic flavor at all, only 5 spice powder. Mine was spicy, but not extra spicy like i asked. The waiter Pedro, made up 2 different excuses, so we realized that this was futile. The family behind us, ordered Peking duck, and they waited a good 5 minutes before the “expert” came up to make the dish’s for them. We were able to talk to the others around us because everything took so long to get done. We even got the wrong bill when we asked for the check, to which we knew it was true next table as we had been discussing how terrible everything was. Extremely...