Peony Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Oakland

A Disappointing Decline After Years of Loyalty

We’ve been coming to this restaurant for several years, often eight or more times per month. For most of that time, we had the good fortune of being served by one exceptional server who consistently took great care of us. Her attentive, kind service stood in stark contrast to the rest of the staff, who often provided only the bare minimum. We appreciated her so much that if she was on vacation or unavailable, we simply wouldn’t dine at the restaurant.

Unfortunately, that server is no longer with the restaurant—and today was our first visit since her departure. Sadly, the experience confirmed our worst expectations.

The server assigned to us this time was not just indifferent—she was rude. When we asked if a certain item (clams, which we know are often limited in quantity) was available, she replied “yes” while walking away, without offering to take our order or secure the item for us, as any halfway-decent server at another restaurant would.

We also prefer to order using the provided tablet device rather than our phones, and when she dropped it off at the table, there was no greeting or explanation—just a cold handoff.

At that point, we decided to speak to the manager and asked if another server could help us instead, given our long-standing patronage and the kind of experience we were used to. The manager recognized us and said he’d assign someone else.

But that’s when things went from bad, to worse.

Despite the manager's assurance, no one else came. After about seven to eight minutes, the same server returned to our table—still with the same attitude. I went back to the manager to ask about the change, and he confirmed he had asked another server, but again, no one showed up. A second follow-up was met with a noticeably colder response. It was clear the switch wasn’t going to happen.

My wife later recognized that the manager's intended replacement server (when seeing who the manager followed-up with), is who had previously told us a few months ago (during a different visit) something we found odd—that their duck could not be cut warm and had to be served cold. At the time, that seemed strange, but today it all added up: this was the same person.

In the end, we paid $9 for two cups of tea and $10 for a broccoli dish we barely touched before deciding to leave. The manager made no effort to acknowledge our dissatisfaction—he simply charged us full price and let us walk out.

After years of being loyal customers, it’s disheartening to see a restaurant fall so far in terms of hospitality and service culture. Sadly, it seems clear that either there is a management issue or they just don't care to provide...

This afternoon turned out to be quite disappointing, thanks to some mix-ups with reservations and less-than-impressive food. If you're looking for a Cantonese restaurant, you might want to consider another option next time. A heads up: don't bother booking online because, apparently, they won't actually save your table.

We had a large party, so we gave them a call to reserve. However, we were swiftly redirected to make "2 table reservations online, just use the same name." After confirming with an employee about making multiple reservations under the same name, we showed up only to find no tables saved for us. Their excuse? "We didn't know it was the same person," but it felt more like they forgot about all the tables we had booked. No apologies, just attitude. The management didn't leave a good impression, adding fuel to the rumors about this place going downhill.

The staff, from waitresses to the manager, weren't exactly friendly when we inquired about our reserved table. Asking for an extra chair turned into a bit of a snappy response from the waitress, saying, "你自己唔識攞咩？(Translation: You don't know how to get it yourself?)" Yeah, I know, a rude waitress taking out her frustration on us for their planning failure.

The food took its sweet time, with the main dish finally arriving right after we requested the bill, after about 1.5 hours of waiting. We had to scratch a few additional items off our order since they never showed up. The management blamed us for ordering late, but who could have predicted it would take that long? The manager even insisted we couldn't cancel after ordering, even though we hadn't eaten the items we crossed...

This was my third time eating here. I took my son for dim sum and I have to say this will be the last time I will be going here. We took a number and waited in line. We were told 15 to 30 minutes at 45 minutes I went in to check the board and I saw our name third from the top. I waited another 15 minutes and checked and saw the position still hadn’t changed even though I saw numerous people leaving. When I went to check again, I was told don’t worry I was the next table. I then waited another 20 minutes, and when I went back in my number was completely gone from the screen and they said that they had called me even though I was sitting right out front of the restaurant so then I had to wait another 20 minutes before I was finally seated. Ironically, all three times I have eaten here. They have seated me in the very back room where it seemed that all the other non-Asian groups were seated as well. I happen to be half Chinese in my is a quarter, but I guess it wasn’t enough to qualify for the big room lol. Just an interesting observation. Then when we order dollar of our food which was decent, however I one part of our order was not brought. After we finished everything else, I was finally able to flag someone down after 20 minutes and ask them where this remaining dish was along with a side order of rice. Then told me that they forgot to start it and then they would start it right away. I asked them just to cancel that part, but they said they couldn’t because it was already in the queue. After they finally brought that dish out, they still did not bring out my rice. So this endeavor ended up taking almost 2 1/2 hours just...