August Gatherings富瑤 — Restaurant in New York

Decent food, though small portions for the price. The main issue was the service was abysmal. On your screen, in pictures this place probably looks pretty stylish and cozy - but read on to discover that there's more going on that warrants thinking twice before going.

Immediately upon seating they inform you of a time limit - understandable and I do appreciate upfront communication. However while deciding what to order, three waiters kept buzzing over us and asking if we were ready at 1 minute intervals. With the fakest lips-pressed-together smiles. When we were ordering, the waiter who took our order tried to upsell us on a much more expensive dish and made snide remarks about our selection choice. Rather than coming off as banter it came off condescending. We ordered 4 larger dishes for 3 people to share and weren't feeling like eating heavy. All 3 waiters who then brought out our food commented on our food choice. How is that professional? We are here to just enjoy some good food not be judged and wheel and dealed.

When they brought out the "Assorted Organic Mushrooms Rice In Hot Pot", they forgot to bring serving utensils, no problem we waited. The waiter who came back with utensils began to mix it for us and because my brother was watching closely, the waiter stopped when he noticed a piece of plastic in the rice and offered to make a new one right away. But the way he acknowledged it continued that weird, stand-offish energy. He didn't apologize for the wait or anything - he literally said "--ah. Uhh it seems there's something inside...I'll have a new one made right away." with that same 0.2 second pressed-together "smile".

As we were winding down our meal, a waiter came and served our check. No "how was the food" or anything - just slapped it down and asked if he could start taking some dishes away. We still had rice and instead of taking away our soup bowls he took away the rice bowls.

As we were working out payment, one of the waiters came out with a dish of 4 quarter sized butter cookies and said "here's something extra" with the cheesiest smile. Let's be real, those stiff glossy cookies are probably 4 cookies out of a 1000 pack from Costco, but even that could have been a cute touch if we weren't already coated with the feeling that this whole experience had been a cheap "pretend-nice" facade.

For the restaurant itself -- looks beautiful at first glance, but when you're actually in your booth you'll see that the decor is pretty dinged and banged up. Nicks and scuffs all over the decorations. They've got wine stylishly lit on display that attracts you as you pass by, but actually eating there you'll notice that the nice looking tablecloth is actually throwaway paper thin vinyl that they literally crumple up and replace with each new seating. Just placing a heavy dish on our table was enough to gouge a hole, was hard to take good photos and really drove home the feeling of churn and burn. Consider this - the waiters have clean uniforms and radios, to contrast.

Just checked yelp to look up the name of that mushroom dish, and found another person from 2021 who had a very similar experience - so I took my rating from 2 to 1. This is not okay - as a Chinese American I hate this paper thin veneer of...

Creative, original, fabulous flavor, pleasant presentation, consistent quality, excellent service, August Gathering Restaurant, which serves authentic Cantonese cuisine and Cantonese/Western fusion cuisine, deserves a true five-star.

I frequented August Gathering and had chance talking to Kenny, one of the two chefs/owners. Ken impressed me with his scientific, artistic and philosophical mind in culinary creation. Both chefs were trained and served as chefs in a famous Five-Star hotel in China decades ago. They had solid knowledge and skills in mastering raw material selections, cooking temperature effects, artistic dish presentations and other basics of being a top chef. With such solid foundation, Kenny has been on his journey searching for the next delicious taste. Patronizing wealth of restaurants of different cuisines around the world, Kenny found his muse here and there in creating his own fusion dishes; they varied from adding layers of non-Chinese flavors to an authentic Chinese dish, or adding a hint of Cantonese taste to a non-Chinese dish, or creating completely novel items. For the authentic Cantonese dishes which they served, they created unique preparation system in the kitchen to maintain the top quality of the dishes; they also maintained the traditional hand-made system even it requires massive manpower comparing to using machine to process the preparation. Among many dishes I enjoyed there, the grilled bone marrow was one of them. I had the similar dish in other fine restaurants. The one I had in August Gathering was added some Chinese flavor and was far superior to the ones I had in different restaurants. The bone marrow was grilled to the effect that its texture was like freshly grilled foie gras in a Five Star restaurant. The Salmon Salad combined the Japanese Sashimi with green salad. The vegetables in the salad were carefully chosen to bring out the flavor of salmon and the dressing added magic touch to the dish. Every time we dined there, we were happily satisfied with its authentic Cantonese and fusion dishes. There is no another restaurant in New York serving the such high caliber Chinese...

Our meal was terrible. We took a friend from out of town last week. We had never been there before so it was a first time for us all. We arrived around 4:30 pm for an early dinner. We asked the waiter for the lunch menu but he said it was over at 5pm. It was only 4:30...but alright we looked at the dinner menu which was difficult to order from as we had very little help from the waiter who was a bit terse with our questions. We ordered a half peking duck, chicken with mushrooms and steak with onions and asparagus. Our two appetizers were dim sum one order of diced duck with vegetables and the other was shrimp shumai. The duck was alright but the dumpling dough was gummy and not pleasing to the palate. The shrimp shumai was a bit better. Our entrees came and we asked for white rice which was an extra $2.00 per bowl. We were surprised to find the rice which is a staple in most chinese restaurants was an extra charge. We ordered a pot of jasmine green tea for $10.00 which was over brewed and bitter by the time we were served. Two of the entrees, the chicken and the duck, were barely edible. The peking duck was fatty and the fat was not rendered to get that crispy skin taste but left next to the duck meat making it very greasy and tasteless. The chicken in a porcini mushroom sauce would have been alright had the chicken not been tiny chopped pieces of chicken thighs which not only were so fatty but there were bone chips in the greasy sauce that cause us to keep spitting out the food. I had to take the greasy skin off the chicken which left a couple of bites on each thigh section. The steak with asparagus and onions were tolerable but the steak was tough and chewy. My friend could not eat it. The service was adequate but the food was surprisingly bad. We were told by friends this place had an excellent reputation and the food was memorable. The only things memorable were the bad food, the $200.00 plus tab and my embarrassment for taking my friend to a restaurant which I will try to forget and to never return. We would have been been better off getting take away from Wo Hop's on...