Star Fusion Express — Restaurant in Philadelphia

I visited Star Fusion as a part of Restaurant Week in Philly a couple of days ago and here is my review. Although the food was good, the service was honestly horrible, hence the 1 star, I’ll explain. I made a reservation for 3 people at 6:30pm and we arrived there at about 6:28pm. Our party got seated (keep in mind that they were not visibly busy during this time, the restaurant was not full as they still had other vacant seats). We waited 20 – 25 mins before anyone spoke to us or even gave us a menu, heck some water. I had to stand up to go look for a menu. At this point, obviously, we’re irritated but still trying to be patient and understanding. A young lady eventually walks up to us to ask for what we would like to order, we place our order and it’s time to play the waiting game. Our appetizers come out first, no biggie. Our food comes out next, only one problem, we didn’t have any cutlery (it took maybe 35 – 40 mins between appetizers and entrée). So, we wait until we see a waitress to ask her for cutlery, and of course, it takes about another couple of minutes before we get cutlery, so I get up, yet again, to go find cutlery for us, which I was successful. Minutes into eating our meal, the waitress brings us some cutlery. At this point, we have lost all patience and we are ready to leave. The waitress comes by to inform us that the dessert we order was out of stock (Laughable) and proceeds to provide us with options. I select an option and the other two young ladies I had dinner with declined to have any of the options provided and politely asked if it could be taken off their bill. The waitress says no problem, she’d take “something” off the bill. One of the young ladies I’m with, begins to express her concerns with the wait time, lackluster attitude and poor service and mid-sentence, the waitress claps in our faces and walks off while muttering words that sounded like she said she was going to get the manager. This is where things begin to go downstream. We are met with the manager and the manager asks for a recount of the events which led us to this point, she apologizes but then it comes off condescending like okay, I apologized, can we move on from this. She has a cool and calm demeanor, but it still wasn’t enough to pacify the tremendous amount of disrespect we were just met with. I ask if the owner could speak with us and while I am recounting the situation again, she proceeds to point at the camera and says something to the effect of she’s going to run the tapes to see what really happened because her waitress just told her that she did nothing wrong. In addition, she would review the tapes for future training purposes. At this point, we are all livid and I ask another customer if he saw what happened, because he did. The owner implied that I was lying about the situation. We decline any desserts, demand our checks and we got a whopping $6 taken off our overall bill, oh plus, we get a slice of carrot cake that none of us asked for or none of us actually like as some sort of consolation prize. I have never in my life been disrespected by someone who is supposed to be providing a service. What annoys me about this incident, is actually a couple of things: 1) The fact that we had to wait 20 mins to get a menu 2) The fact that the waitress disrespected us and went back to her management to claim that she didn’t. Where is the accountability? 3) The fact that when management arrived, their excuse and reasoning for the type of service we received was because they were busy and under-staffed. If you sign up to be a part of restaurant week, why is planning properly not at the forefront of your mind? Why isn’t scheduling a good number of individuals to support the volume of customers you will receive not common sense? Why is training your waitresses not important to you? When I initially read the reviews and people complained about the service, I thought to give them a chance and now that I have experienced this level of disrespect, incompetence and overall poor service, I know to...

I don't normally write reviews, but i had to in this case because of the terrible experience my friends and i had.

This past Saturday, 2 friends and i had reservations for 6pm. One of my friends and i got there around 6 and luckily it was relatively empty (maybe 10 people max seated). We weren't acknowledged AT ALL by the one waitress who happened to be out on the "floor". Typically you'd expect a "I'll be with you in a second" or a "please seat yourself" but that was not this case. She finished what she was doing and then went to the back where the kitchen was. After standing there for maybe 10mins, i decided to just seat myself and my friend followed suit. After sitting there for another 5-10mins, a second waitress came out from the back and delivered drinks to one of her tables, still no acknowledgement of new people sitting down before she went back to the back. Then a 3rd waitress pops up and goes to her table to check on them, then goes to the back. My other friend arrives and i tell her what has transpired so far in her absence, so when one of the waitresses pops up again (the 3rd one in this case), my friend grabs her attention and lets her know nobody has come to us yet. She apologized and said she thought one of the other girls had already come to our table but i told her that wasn't the case. She then says she'll go to the back and see who our waitress will be. She goes to the back and i notice her and the other waitresses peaking out at us from the back. She then comes back and tells us she'll be our waitress and asks for our drink order.

We eventually order food but the drinks and the food takes a long time to come out. The flavored lemonades were good to me, free refills too so that was a plus. I ordered the cheesesteak egg rolls (not that good), the seafood mac and cheese (good) and the apple pie spring rolls (eh). One of my friends ordered their ceasar salad as her appetizer and it came with half of a grilled cheese sandwich (which we thought was weird/interesting), but she didn't like the dressing it came with so she didn't end up eating the salad. My other friend had the thai chili wings as he appetizer which she said were good and the thai salmon as her entree which she said was ok.

Overall, i don't see myself coming back to this restaurant and I'm shocked that they managed to have a 2nd location opening up if this is their everyday service. The running theme with black restaurants are the not so great service and the slowness, and i was hoping maybe at least for Black Restaurant Week that these establishments could get it together, but i guess I'm asking for too much. You want to support black businesses but have to deal with stuff like this half the time, and it really sucks because it makes you not want to...

Ok I’m going to start writing real reviews on my experience so people can get a clear view on how a restaurant is. I love that this restaurant is African American owned. I always try to give support to African American restaurants and businesses. Ok sooo my first visit was when the restaurant first opened. The experience was great the food was delicious!! I really enjoyed. So the second time I brought my husband I was excited to bring him. But unfortunately we didn’t leave with any food. The workers were all playing around. Saying smart comments about customers and us right in front of are faces. And it took so long that I just left. Totally unprofessional. So now today I tried again a year later wishing and praying new staff would be in the restaurant and my experience and food would be close or like the first visit. WRONG. All the staff there today were very professional. It was the quality of the food. I ordered it on Uber eats for lunch. One thing that alarmed me was the food was literally done in 3 mins or maybe 4. But I still wanted to try and second guessed it because the last time they took forever 🤷🏽‍♀️ . I opened the lid and the smell of the seafood omg it smelled bad. I couldn’t eat it. It didn’t even look like the dish or smelled like the dish I first received when they opened. Either they don’t clean the grill, left the seafood out or aren’t storing the food there serving properly. The most important thing about owning a restaurant is consistency and professionalism. And I feel like the owners have given up the luster they once had and hunger they once had for the business! Which is super important to me. I don’t eat out often but when I do expect quality. Especially with there prices there food HAS to be good lol

Side Note: Not sure how to reply to the owners response but your comment was a clear indication of how you do not know how to professionally deal with customers. Call you after you just called me a liar! I think not. I just reported it to Uber eats that’s enough. I didn’t even refund the food because I still showed support which I shouldn’t have!!!! I’m totally done with this business if not before with my experience but definitely with this response. I actually loved the place when they open so I have no reason to lie I’ll actually show the photo off the food in the trash not touched for the owners liking!!! Work on your customer service and proper handling of the food. Take the critic. A HONEST ONE and do better instead bashing those that spend there hard earn cash here for terrible quality and service!!! Enjoy the rest of...