Far East Restaurant — Restaurant in North Bethesda

Food is good but beware, older hostess discriminates against non native speakers.

Some examples:

1. I was standing right in front of the podium with my kid to get status of my table. The hostess walks up and then two separate groups run up next to me and starts speaking to the older hostess( i think in Mandarin)... hostess proceeded to ignore me and starts addressing whatever they were asking... even adding them to the list without even asking why I was standing there. I understand that the hostess is only partly to blame. The rude guests running up next to me are equally to blame.
2. I come up to check status of my table again, on the way to the bathroom with kid, and notice I am next on the list for party of 6. I also notice directly after me on the list there is another party of six. (Note that I then have a brief interaction with hostess right then because they just called the #25 which was the group right after me on the list with the same party of 6. It turns out its a #23 instead of #25 so we are good... this detail is important later lol). I run to the bathroom with son and when I come back I hear the older hostess call out... #23!... I was like what how is that possible...did they call out #30 while i went to the bathroom and moved on? Nope she just chose to seat the other group before me. Thankfully as I approach the podium to address this issue, the younger hostess proceeded to point directly above the number she called out showing the number she should have called out. Honest mistake? I doubt it since this happen almost three minutes after we just had that interaction noted above. The #23 group were native speakers chatting the hostess up right next to the podium. Unfortunately, I don't understand what they were saying but I image it was either , "sorry, I tried to give you the table first" or "sorry, I'm blind and bad at my job"

I can imagine how many times this happens where the lady was just seating native speakers first.

Just understand it's probably gonna happen again. How much additional time would have lapsed if I didn't happen to walk by and hear what was going on? Who knows. Another 1 min? another 45?

Once seated, service was great and since we were with friends we just joked about needing our native speaker with us...

Since my first (WOW in a positive sense) review we've visited this place 4 times (would visit more if every following experience would not failed us more and more). But today it was the last drop of aggravation that surely prevent us from even thinking about this place in a future. The taste of the food quality and atrociously rude attitude of most of the staff we dealt with was just unbelievable. It was not even just ignorant, it was ignorant with attitude of "why you are here? We don't what you here! How dare you insult us by asking for enough containers and plastic bags to fit all you leftovers if we know better then you how much to give you!" The carts didn't come to our table for a long time and when they came there was not much of appealing to us dishes to begin with, but when we asked for some dishes we like to order (chicken feet and chive fried dumplings or roast duck dim sum portion we've been told they don't have it) though a bit later when the cart with some of those items finally came to our side we saw that it's not true. And can you believe that it's possible that dim sum place do not have a STAPLE of the dim sum cuisine (chicken feet) at the PRIME time (Saturday noon)?!?! UNHEARD OFF!!! NEVER EVER we've experienced anything like that in any of multiple places all over the North America region we've visited many, many times. And we are not those people who expect perfect or even "nice" service from the places like this. By now we've learnt that if it happens in Chinese restaurants in those rare cases we can count on the fingers of one hand it's more of a surprising exclusions you feel lucked out with. So even with this low expectation we were just WOWED (in the most negative sense) by the whole experience. The management and their staff should be ashamed of themselves to offer such an awful tasting food and service to patrons. Too bad there is no 0* rating, because that's what they deserve! I've finished my first review with the words: "GOD BLESS THIS RESTAURANT and give it a LONG and SUCCESSFUL LIFE TOO!!!" I am finishing my second and last review with the words: "GOD DAMN this place and make it's existence as short...

It's been a long time since I last visited this restaurant. I believe it underwent renovation after the pandemic. So, from the outside, it still looks the same, but inside, it's bright, clean, and upscale.

When we went, it happened to be Mother's Day, and it was packed! Even at lunchtime until 2 p.m., the entrance was filled with people waiting in line.

The service was very warm. The waitstaff was very attentive and caring, constantly checking on us and promptly replenishing our food.

There was a wide variety of dim sum options, and you could also order regular dishes.

Overall, the dim sum we tried was all pretty good, no disappointments: durian pastry, steamed shrimp dumplings, steamed spare ribs with rice flour, tofu stuffed with shrimp, stir-fried beef noodles, steamed rice noodle rolls with tofu skin, almond balls, and fried shrimp dumplings.

Durian roll: It had a hint of durian's unique flavor, but the pastry was crispy on the outside and soft inside, very nice.

Steamed shrimp dumplings: They tasted good, with the shrimp meat very tender. However, all the dumpling skins were torn.

Tofu stuffed with shrimp: Very tasty. The shrimp was slightly salty, but the tofu balanced the flavors nicely.

Fried shrimp dumplings with taro are made by mixing shrimp meat and shredded taro, then frying them. They were crispy on the outside and tender inside, highly recommended.

There are plenty of free parking spaces around the restaurant.

Overall, Far East's dim sum lives up to its reputation, and I highly...