Kong Pao Palace — Restaurant in Newark

I used to love this place, it was not only my favorite Chinese restaurant in town, it was among my favorite Asian restaurants of anywhere I have lived, and that's saying a lot because I've lived in a lot of places. Well, recently this place has had a series of major changes, all of which I think are for the worse. The interior, which used to be warm, cozy, and comfortable (really comfy booths with plush seats, nice spacious round tables appropriate for big groups), was completely gutted. There was really cute custom artwork on the wall that had pictures of fruits and vegetables with cute faces, and it was all completely removed, the seating, tables, the wall art. They redid the interior but it is much more minimal, a sort of cold, industrial look with hard floors. There is much less seating and the tables are smaller, the seats hard and less comfortable. Thankfully, the menu didn't change much and the food stayed good. But...this was only the first change. Recently, I went here with my fiance, we were trying to have a date night at one of our long-standing favorite restaurants (we have so many happy memories here), and the place was like...weirdly hectic and deserted. We asked to be seated and the person said we could seat ourselves, and no one ever came out. We sat for like 15 minutes or so but no one came out, so we peeked back in the other room, but like...no one was even manning the front counter. We would have had to go into the kitchen to get someone's attention, so we just left. I don't know if this place doesn't offer service any more, like maybe do you have to use the touchscreen to order? If that is the case, they have done absolutely NOTHING to communicate this. They could put up a sign or something. The one person working the counter here barely speaks any English, which is fine, but seriously you can just have someone translate and make a sign (it doesn't even have to be good English it just has to get the point across) saying that the restaurant no longer offers service and is just self-serve cafeteria style ordering up at the front. That's fine by me IF you communicate it. This place didn't, so we wasted 15 minutes of our life and then just left without ordering anything. I don't know if I am ever going to come back. It left such a sour feeling for both of us. It's just really rude, when you have YEARS of being a sit-down restaurant with wait service, you can't just change without announcing it. Just put up a sign or something, it's fine. It's like the owners don't have a clue and don't care and don't value me...

Avoid, better places in the city. Location is half a mile from us and we wanted to try it, was not successful due to how poorly run this restaurant is. They gave our order to another 3rd party delivery driver. They initially told our delivery person that they would remake the order. Then they told them that they, the driver, needed to contact doordash to get the other driver to return the order before they would remake it. The restaurant then called me to tell me to cancel the order and reorder it instead of just remaking the order. It was over an hour and half after we ordered and more than 45 minutes from the estimated delivery time. This behavior is unacceptable. Again avoid...

05 Oct 2022: dinner take out. Stir fried veggies $15. The food was good but too full of eggs and very little veggies. The amount of chilly or jalapeño that made it spicy was in excess. I can handle spicy but this food was like just peppers and eggs with sprinkles of veggies. I had higher expectations for the price. Taste was good though so will give it a try another try. The girl at the counter was courteous and they seem to have...