Congee Village Flushing — Restaurant in New York

This is my first yelp review, I am not one to complain but my experience was so horrible today I felt the need to take to share my experience with anyone who may consider going to this restaurant. I went there with my boyfriend today who has a severe seafood allergy. When the Chinese broccoli came I smelled shrimp paste and asked the waiter if there was any seafood in it and was informed there was shrimp. We take full responsibility in acknowledging that that was our oversight and we should of asked. That is fine and we will pay for it. Upon the food arriving, we start eating and I overheard the waiters speaking in Taishanese completely unaware that I speak the language fluently. A waitress asked whether they should inform my boyfriend there might be seafood in the chicken congee and the male waiter responded, "I'm not sure but he is already eating it anyways so let it be. What's done is done." I felt offended and disrespected when I heard that. THEY PURPOSELY DECIDED NOT TO INFORM A CUSTOMER WITH A SEVERE SEAFOOD ALLERGY THAT THE FOOD THEY ARE CONSUMING MIGHT GIVE THEM A DEADLY REACTION. THIS IS NOT OKAY. I decide to confront the waitress and spoke to them in Taishanese. They were caught off guard I understood every word of what they were saying and assured me that there SHOULD be no seafood in the congee but made no effort to ask the chef or a manager to make sure. Instead, the waitress took away the congee even though we never said we were done and the congee was still half full. If you are so sure there is no seafood in it, why did you take it away? Could it be a liability issue or the fact that they didn't want their managers to know I overheard their conversation? Moments later, I ask a waiter why the dish was taken away. The waiter apologizes and said he was going to check on why the congee was taken away. That was the last time they addressed us that night and made no effect to replace the congee or even respond to us regarding that question. Congee village management was very dismissive towards us tonight in general. They made no effort to addressing our needs and at the end of the night, we were charged on the bill for a congee we barely ate because they decided to take it away when it was half eaten when we didn't ask them to. Upon addressing that issue, they completely ignored us and never got back to us. I am an American born Chinese and my boyfriend is Ecuadorian. I have gone to this location many time in the past with my Chinese mom and have gotten great accommodating service from the same dismissive waiter who served us today. When I went with my boyfriend, I got a completely different level of service due to the fact that we mainly spoke English. A language barrier should not be grounds for discrimination or lack of communication regarding food allergies. I am used to receiving a different level of service in Chinese restaurants when I go with my boyfriend however, this is a whole new level of dismissiveness. I have been going to Congee village restaurants for the past 18 years but I will never go back to one after my experience today. Congee Village, you need to retrain your wait staff on protocols regarding allergies. A language barrier shouldn't be grounds for being dismissive to important information regarding someone's deadly allergies. I am very disappointed and feel discriminated against today. They made no effect to acknowledge that they are wrong in this. I love the food but I will not be coming back here again. Anybody who is not Chinese, I hope the review serves as a guide to the descrimination and poor service happening at this restaurant.

No longer your loyal...

Awful Services, Lie about their food and ridiculous bad attitude to their customers. Just don’t go, believe me there are better places to save your time and money. I am so offended not 1 or 2 but more than 3 times, if any parts is better, I won’t leave this comments. If you interest what happened, please read.

I am looking forward to this dinner for a week, gathering my friends and expecting a good night, but they give me a terrible memory.

I called and made a reservation, when I arrived, they showed my name on their reservation book but tell me “we don’t have table now”. Seriously? Do you need google what’s the meaning of “RESERVATION”? We wait for about 20 minutes and they finally got our “reserved table”. And that’s only the start.

When they lead our party to a table that missing one chair, I told them I need another chair, a waiter with some annoyed face saying “I know, just wait”. Am I begging you to give me some chair? Can you just pretend to care your customer?

Then we order ONE fish to made into two different dishes. There was no problem or notice when we order, but they only give us half dish(sliced in pieces with half head and a small tail). We thought that’s reasonable because we have another half is coming. But when we ask about another half, the annoyed-face-waiter just reply us with the same impatient voice, “oh we don’t have two dish”, and suddenly take that half fish away. If there weren’t that dish, why you wrote that on the menu? Why no one tell us when we order?

Then the most drama part comes. When we check the receipt, they write the fish with quantity “2” we try to explain, we didn’t get 2 dish of fish. They said, oh that was a “whole” fish. and the 2 is for 2 pounds weight. I am not the first time eating or cooking fish, I know what a 2 pounds fish supposed to be. They clearly trying to fool us. Check the right part of the pic, only half head. If it was a whole fish, what’s the point of removing half head?

When I show the half fish head in my dish, They just repeat that was a whole fish. So I asked this fish is just exactly 2 pounds? 2.0? Not round up? They said yes, we will write 3.5 if it’s a 3.5 pound, write 3.8 if 3.8 When we ask a any recipes with .8 they just run away and change another people here(the waiter was so smoothly move the evidence away, while other plates were still on the table).

They are the one trying to lie to their customer and don’t even want admit it. Until now, I can still be comfort if they admit their mistake and apologize. But they keep change people to explain this is a “whole 2 pounds fish” and 2 is the weight.

The whole time no one show good attitude of solving the problem, just trying to argue that we were wrong. And finally a waiter with ridiculously attitude saying, “so what do you want? Some $30 discount? Is that fine?”. So I am the one being wrong here? The original price is over $350 and you offer me something like I am begging?

I just stop arguing and I don’t see a way they are solving this problem, it’s just wasting my time. So, save your time and there are way much better...

It's not a bad choice if you just like to have some Asian food not from a typical, American styled Chinese food place commonly found all over the US. Plus, you don't need to reserve, generally, just because the New York Times wrote about the place (and so, many will actually flood into and mar the whole usual good experience just because so many are already showing up).

We decided to have Asian food on a Friday evening even if our original place was full and won't accept reservations anymore. We figured out we could find parking, which we did and went about looking for another place to eat and we found this. It's big enough from what we saw outside and I saw people were already having their dinner ahead of us.

Of course, we were rather the odd couple. I am Asian from the Philippines and with darker skin than those Asians inside the restaurant then, plus my husband who is Black American. It's not really friendly to disabled folks but we managed without demanding for help to get to our table. You to use the stairs to get into the dining area. I think their banquet area is off limits that Friday night.

Food was good, overall. You can peruse their thick menu book and you can find what suits your taste. Honestly, I have had better tasting, more carefully prepared versions of what we got here from other Asian restaurants. But suffice it to say we enjoyed ourselves.

Our server asked that we give cash tip instead of etching an amount using our credit card. And we obliged. We're pretty aware the tip is really part of the salary of the server and so, we were happy to do our part. Not taking...