Chopsticks Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Oak Ridge

Upon entering Chopsticks, it was my intention to do take out. I had a calm, reasonable, & cool demeanor throughout my experience & I made a point to keep calm & polite. After asking if entrees included egg drop soup one time, the young lady’s response was, “no that is not possible.” (She was not attempting to be mean, however how & what she delivered her response appeared to be rude) At this point I decided to dine in instead, to see how many “no that is not possible’s” I would get. I got three. When I ask questions, i know I will not always get the answer I want to hear, and that is ok. However, there are better ways to handle my questions. Like, “I am sorry but we do not have __, have you considered this?” I have several years of experience in the hospitality and customer service occupations. One must politely acknowledge the question, express empathy, and offer an alternative. Before asking for the check, I wanted to test her one more time with a question to see what answer I would get. Her response was different this time. She acknowledged my question & expressed empathy. I was going to give the restaurant 2 stars, but she gave the right response just before the check, so I am giving the restaurant 3 stars. I give the food 5 stars, it is pricey so I give that 2 stars for not including soup with the entree, I give my server a 2 as well. However, she does have great potential. She appears to be very bright &...

It's been a very long time since I gave a restaurant a one star review, but I need to for this restaurant. The service was just about non-existent, just the absolute bare minimum and maybe 7 words were spoken by the waitress. The food was absolutely awful. The steamed rice smelled and tasted old. I got the lunch special of cashew shrimp. According to the menu, it comes with white or fried rice, and egg drop soup or hot/sour soup or an eggroll. I ordered the lunch cashew chicken and white rice. Before I could mention the soup, she walked away. Later, when my meal came, she plopped down an eggroll and said, "comes with," and hurried away. The cashew shrimp contained 5 shrimp, and 90% chopped celery. The rest was water chestnut and a few slivers of carrot, followed by cashews. I had also ordered crab rangoon, which seemed to be quite popular with people ordering to-go. The sauce was the typical dipping sauce you find at any Asian restaurant. The innards were very loose and barely any hint of crab. The exterior was only crispy on the very edges, with the rest having the texture of dough that was put into oil that was too cold for a good fry. The restaurant had the feel of a diner and it was pretty cold inside. I do think this was perhaps my worst Asian food meal ever. I guess the shrimp were well cooked, so that's where the 1...

Was excited to see one of my favorite dishes (mapo tofu) on the menu here, but they so severely missed the mark... just tofu in generic five-spice flavored goop. No discernible broad bean paste flavor or tongue-tingling szechwan peppercorns. The portion was large (at least half a block of tofu), but thats of no benefit if you don't want to eat it. Shockingly, at 9.25$ the dish is actually more expensive as takeout from this stripmall location in oak ridge than from the boutique restaurant I get it from regularly in downtown knoxville (9$ @ Kaizen, which is 5-star awesome btw) so its sadly neither adequate quality nor budget friendly. My wife ordered veggie (just broccoli apparently) pad thai in the same transaction and also ended up tossing it. You may well have a more positive experience than I did if you go for the more NY-style chinese offerings like general tso's etc., but if you're looking for actual chinese flavor or a passable pad thai, your options are to (1) drive to knoxville or (2) be...