Chef Jiang — Restaurant in New Haven

So where to start? My wife and I stopped in yesterday after finding out Chef Jiang replaced the old Great Wall. The menu looked decent and the photos online looked good. What we ordered and where it all started to go wrong: so chef jiang is listed under google as a szechuan restaurant, the key distinction of the regional cuisine is actually using spice in the food. Beef and Tripe - the chili oil tasted like nothing. Proper chili oil has chinese peppercorns for the mala tingle, chili powder for smoke and pepper seeds for bite. The oil they used was functionally red food coloring. Cumin Lamb - the lamb was cooked well. Meat was tender, but I assume they used the slightest amount of cumin powder because I couldn’t find a single whole cumin seed (the proper dish calls for toasted whole seeds for aromatics) in the entire bowl. White pepper chicken - it tastes like oil and breading. Presumably it was visited by the ghost of pepper past but truly, it tastes like nothing. The chef needs to take notes from either Roshi in hamden or JBC on the BPR as to how its supposed to be done. House fried rice - zero complaints. Rice kernels were not clumpy like proper friend rice. But frankly 1 out of 4 is a bad average. Service - random back of house staff just came by and dropped stuff off without a word. Thankfully I know what I ordered, but less experienced diners would find this very offputting.

Tl;dr- Great Wall replacement is a far cry from Great Wall. The food photographs well but is...

Ok! I am not a very picky person but I would test both food and service differently! The food are some what average, not as good as the near by restaurant (ex: taste of china). However, the price is a bit cheaper comparing to Taste of china pricing for similar food. They have many variety more than other chinese restaurant around. However, the pictures from the menu are from online pictures, it does not look similar to what you get at all. For example, the chicken feet supposed to look red in the menu came out in reality look brownish black. The taste is not exact because the pictures in the menu present a dimsum style chicken feet, but the one served are not. I would say the taste of the food general around the common chinese fast food place, it cannot be highly dedicate restaurant quality yet! Overly marketing without good quality! A lot and too much oil!!! The service is long waiting time and quite impolite when talking behind customers back in Mandarin about tipping. I will never come back...

My partner and I go to this restaurant from time to time, especially when we go shopping at the Chinese supermarket next door. Last night we went and ordered fried dumplings, camellia oil chicken, chicken fried rice, and hot tea. To start with, the camellia oil chicken was completely different from the menu photo (we just asked for the food to be unspicy). The camellia oil chicken was served with only pieces of chicken on the bone and celery; there were no chicken breasts or other vegetables seen in the photo. The waiter's explanation was very simple: it was because the order didn't include any hot peppers. But the worst part was that my partner found a small, completely burnt insect in his plate of chicken fried rice. The supposed restaurant manager's explanation was, "Sorry, bugs sometimes get into vegetables." In the end, they made us pay for the meal anyway, claiming they weren't authorized to cancel the bill because the owner was away. We will never...