Chung-Shin Yuan — Restaurant in Newton

We went there with two American friends for Taiwanese-style breakfast. Food was ok, but the service was terribly bad. The waitress came by right after we being seated (ironically that is the only good thing about their service). We tried to order some dishes as starters. The waitress refused rudely and said she would only take our order once. That was so rude and impolite that my friends (they don't understand Mandarin) asked me if the waitress was mad. I know they have a lot of customers to serve, and have heard some complaint on their service before, so I wasn't too surprised/unset about this.

What happened next went over the limit and made me decided to give them my first one star. Our waitress even tried to argue with me about the tips. Seriously? Based on her ridiculous service, I could have left no tip. Instead, I wrote about 10% tip (more than 10%) on my receipt. I can't believe the waitress came back with my receipt few minutes later and asked for 15% tip. The way she said is like we are idiot and have no idea about the "American norm".

We've been to so many restaurants and never been asked for extra tips, not even mentioned in such shameless way. This restaurant used to be a popular place that every weekend people line up for a seat inside. Recently, only a few show up. It is clear that this restaurant is going downhill with the unprofessional, rude, and arrogant waiting staff. DON'T GO THERE unless you are willing to tip 15% and be...

Ah, I'm so torn about CSY! It's pretty good, especially for Taiwanese breakfast in Boston which is pretty hard to find. I think it's one of two restaurants in the Greater Boston area that serves salty soymilk for breakfast -- sadly, it wasn't very flavorful! I had to add vinegar and soy sauce; otherwise, it just tasted like regular soymilk with some floating pieces of youtiao in it, none of the spicy oil and dried shrimps that normally make salty soymilk so delicious.

The youtiao are actually pretty good but I found the chive pancake undersalted and the radish cake texture-wise excellent but also bland, without the typical bits of ground meat and dried shrimp. The glutinous steamed pork ribs were pretty good, and probably my favorite item on their breakfast menu that I tried, with the chunks of sweet potato on the bottom of the steamer soaking up all the fat and oil. Very yummy.

Overall, this is a great place to come to on the weekends if you're craving traditional Taiwanese breakfast...but that's more a function of Boston being such an Asian food desert than anything. The wait was about 30 minutes long on a Sunday morning at 11:45am, so not terrible -- and service is friendly and quick. We paid $40 after tax and tip for 5 things, so the prices are...

Weekend brunch "taiwanese dim sum" menu: Comes with complimentary tea. Got savory soy milk, peking meat sauce noodles (Chinese jjajjangmyeon), scallion pancake beef roll and pork steamed buns ( xiaolongbao, which is actually a steamed dumpling rather than a bun). The savory soy milk was tasty and came with some youtiao pieces in it, but a bit more sour than I'd like compared to other savory soy milk soups I had and didn't have any tiny salty shrimp in it. next time I'd try the sweet soy milk with a side order of youtiao to put in it as many of the other patrons were doing. The Chinese jjajjangmyeon was pretty decent. But I think I personally prefer the sweeter and saucier Korean jjajjangmyeon. The scallion pancake beef roll was kind of amazing. It was a crispy fried scallion pan cake rolled up with tender beef slices. I would 100% get this again. The pork steamed dumplings were pretty basic imo and nothing really out of the ordinary. I probably would not get it again. I was expecting a fluffy meat filled steamed bun/bao type, but the translation of the menu seemed off. The place is pretty busy and there was a little bit of a wait but they seem to cycle through the...