Precious Island Tea Shop — Restaurant in New York

Brought my group here to celebrate my mother’s birthday, who specifically wanted dim sum. Regret this decision. Here’s a summary: Arrived to an incredibly warm restaurant, extremely bright lights, no background music, decor etc. unwelcoming. Given menus without dim sum. When asked for dim sum, the waiter shrugged. I ordered several apps for our group of 8. Then after ordering, was given the dim sum menu. Nothing explained, waiter actually seemed irritated. Now, I realize dim sum service can often be weekends only. But I called and asked before reserving and was told dim sum all the time.

No wine list. The waiter pointed to 2 bottles on a shelf. Kind of odd because pricing per glass didn’t jive w bottle pricing. Felt like he just winged it. Even tho pricier, opted for bottle to simplify.

WATER is not provided. When asked for tap water the denied us water. They only offer Costco small bottles of water at 1.5$ ea. This is unacceptable on several levels. Some ppl, like us, don’t purchase plastic bottles of water. NYC tap is fine and eco friendly. Also, for a group of 8 ppl, let’s say, everyone has 2 bottles of water … 24$ in water? So they’re either padding sales by not giving water to diners or their tap water isn’t potable. Either way, not good and I hope they remedy this.

The food was fine. Not good, it bad. Staff plopped our food down without any explanation of what we were served. Sauces? We had to request and then request again what the intended use was for them. The staff was not hospitable.

We frequent many dim sum restaurants. Our lackluster experience isn’t from a cultural miscommunication. The restaurant felt like we were their first customers, or we were being punked.

Couldn’t recommend it less. I’m sorry to give such a poor review, but what we had planned to be a special meal, was instead quite odd and disappointing.

The highlight of our meal were these cute pigs. Otherwise no recs. Also disappointing, that while I told the restaurant that this was a birthday celebration, they completely ignored this. Usually a restaurant would take note or acknowledge. I mean, we were a group of 8 eating in an otherwise empty restaurant. They could have said happy birthday and thanks for celery here.

Again, odd and...

Precious Island steps away from the typical American Chinese fast food fare to offer more traditional style Chinese food. Given that the Chinese population on Staten Island is one of the fastest growing, it is not a surprise to see this spring up, but it certainly adds to the diversity of Staten Island's offerings.

Dim sum is what many people come for. Even with two levels of seating, this restaurant can get busy on the weekends if you do not arrive before 11 am for dim sum. Waiting can depend on the size of your party and whether you are willing to have a communal table experience. There is a good variety of dim sum on offer, all pushed out on carts as is customary. The food quality is good, and the volume of people they serve keeps the items hot and fresh. The cost of a typical meal is definitely in the affordable range, and you can be well satiated for the price compared to other restaurants.

The roast pork buns (char siu bao), roasted pork pastries (char siu so), shiu mai, and egg tarts are all good ones to try. Salt water dumplings (pork inside a deep fried glutinous rice dough), fried taro dumplings (wu kok), rice noodle rolls (cheung fun with beef or shrimp) and the porridge are all good as well.

While dim sum at Precious Island is a main attraction, night time dining offers more traditional plates to be shared among family and friends. Fresh lobster, fish and crab are all in publicly accessible tanks in the back side of the restaurant, ready to be made fresh per the diner's desires. Lamb chops, fried rice, e-noodles, and steamed fish are all good. While the menu here is a little smaller than some other larger Chinese banquet halls there is still quite a number of things to pick from. If you have your heart set on dim sum, you can get it at night as well, though sometimes the dim sum orders stop towards the end of the night.

The staff are all quite used to serving non-Asians and are accommodating. They accept credit cards. The only difficulty here is the parking lot is rather small, but on street parking can often be had on...

I am an Asian. Today, I went to this Chinese restaurant (Tea Shop) with my other Asian friends today, the Labor Day 2022. The front door waiter was extremely unprofessional and I felt that he was discriminated against to Chinese and/or other Asians. When 3 of us got there to ask for a table for 8. The front counter waiter did not offer us a table but he kept telling me to wait until all friends showed up. After a short while, all of us showed up there after parking, the same waiter told us to wait there or stand outside of the front door.

During the waiting time, I saw that few young girls who said they had 7 people but they did not have all yet. The same waiter offered them to a table in front of us. After a while, I also saw 3 Americans with blond hairs came it. The same waiter was so polite to tell them "Boss , how many? please go upstairs for a table" but these Americans had not said anything yet. What standard rule did this waiter do to us? I did not understand that why we were treated unfair. Even our skins are different but we use the same US money. My group had young kids waiting there with us but felt suffering because of this waiter's rule.

After a very long time, we finally were given a table. Then, we ordered some Chinese Dim Sim, but found two dishes were spoiled with bad smell. They were the white noodles with spareribs and fried clams.

This restaurant had bad waiter serving the front desk. The foods were pricy and were bad. I had very...