Dim Sum Palace — Restaurant in New York

Chinese restaurants are not known for exceptional quality and outstanding services. That’s why there aren’t many 50 or 100 year old establishments like Italian or French. But this one stands out on its own, especially in the middle of Manhattan. We went there tonight on seemingly good reviews and thought we’d try our luck. What a mistake. It felt like either the owner was trying very hard to drive the restaurant out of business or the employees are so mad at the owner that they are trying to sabotage it. Some of the dishes were so bad that it felt like intentional. The chef simply threw in the whole Chinese Broccoli stems into the wok without bothering to cut them. Dim Sum port ribs are supposed to be finely cut lean pieces and steamed in fine small dishes. The ones we had were the low quality meat 4-5 times larger with all the fats and connecting tissues…. Ugh. It just so happened that we ate at a Korean restaurant in Korea Town the night before. The contrast could not be more stark - the quality and the service, despite of the fact that some of the Korean ladies were struggling with English. But they were warm and caring. You wonder why Korean businesses are thriving! Oh, one more thing. This Dim Sum place has a Karaoke room next to the main dining area without any sound insolation. And the door was always left open. We ate the entire meal enduring the kind of bad singing that only reminded me of wolf howling. Not only the waiters and waitresses were oblivious to that, they were talking so loud among themselves - back and forth next to you - that added to the noisy environment. That’s it, I guess. This one is off my...

Too expensive for the portion and taste. It or miss on the dishes we ordered.

Ambiance (4/5): We arrived at 11:20am on a rainy Saturday and we were seated immediately. The establishment is fairly small with only a few tables. Not sure if there’s an upstairs for additional dining.

Service (4/5): The service is decent as they checked in on us and the food was prepared and delivered fairly quickly. You order by marking their paper menu with the number of items you want. There are no rolling carts to choose from.

Food (3/5): Only half of their food was good. The price to the extremely small portions ultimately decreased my overall score. Several dishes would be a fraction of the price in Queens. The food bits were of lower quality (more tendons than meat, tough to chew, soup buns may have been frozen). We ordered 5 dishes for 2 people and were still hungry; the bill was approx $55 before tax. $8 for a pot of tea?!

From best to worst:

Roast pork rice roll - there was a healthy helping of roast pork in the rolls. The flavor was there and the meat was not dry. Chicken Feet - the taste was spot on. There’s some peanuts used as filler to the dish! Pork Soup dumpling - this was tasty but far from the best I’ve had. The broth was decent but the inside meat was congealed indicating that the meat could have been frozen but I’m not 100% certain Chive pork dumpling - I liked it but it was biting to write home about. It could have used some more seasonings Spare rib - this was practically inedible as the pieces were mostly tendons and impossible to chew. There taro chunks used as...

Please listen to the 1 star reviews. This restaurant has terrible service and the cheek to demand for 18% tips as I was told by the server that customers pay 15%- 18% tips most of the time.

Long story short, the service was OK initially (the lady server who served me initially was decent), but things changed when I was packing up my remaining food items. A guy server came to my table and removed my plates while I was still packing up my food. He did not do a check in to see if we were done packing and left my partner and I in shocked to see our plates getting removed abruptly. There was still food item we like to pack. As such, we decided to give 10% tips.

This guy server had the audacity to come up to me and spoke to me in mandarin that I was giving him way too low tips and demanded for a 18% tips. I questioned back if 18% tips is mandatory and he said that it's not a fixed number, but customers generally give 15%-18% most of the time. This attitude and behavior is totally unacceptable. I told him my rational behind giving 10% and was firm that the fault is his and there's no way i'm giving more.

A few of the 1 star reviews here have gone through the same exact situation as I had today. Interestingly enough, the replies from the management to those reviews are the same, stating that such behavior of asking for tips by their staff is unacceptable and the staffs will be told to not do that. It seems that the management isn't really trying to improve things and educate their staffs.

I highly recommend anyone who reads this to not patronize this...