King Valley Tea House — Restaurant in Pinole

Ordered food through a delivery service yesterday night. Very good portion sizes. I ordered the Dried Scallop with Egg White Fried Rice, the Stir Fry Beef Cube w/ Honey Sauce, and the Salt & Pepper Pork Ribs. I specifically requested no black pepper for the Stir Fry Beef Cube dish due to my allergy. I can tolerate a little black pepper, but cracked black pepper can be especially irritating to my throat and cause it to feel like it’s constricted. The restaurant followed my special request, which is great. (Note: It was my first time ordering that dish. I don’t know if it is usually made with black pepper, since it’s not in the name of the dish or in the item description. I just wanted to be on the safe side.) King Valley’s Salt & Pepper Pork Ribs were beautiful. Crispy, but not greasy. Flavorful, but not overly hot/spicy. For those Mikey Chens out there who like it really hot and spicy, I’m sure you can ask them to kick it up even more. The Dried Scallop with Egg White Fried Rice was also good. It went well with the other items I ordered. It would be a good dish to have for breakfast, in case you have a craving for rice in...

King Valley has got to be one of the best Chinese restaurants in the Hercules East Bay area. The restaurant service is a no nonsense approach typical of many Chinese restaurants. The food comes out quickly after ordering. Dim Sum is always available during mid-day and all on the menu is very tasty and well made as I've had everything on the menu. Ordering from the a la cart menu portions are large, prepared well and extremely tasty. The food is well seasoned and balanced very well.

King Valley is a great place to go with family or large groups of people. Be prepared for a whole lot of shouting between the staff to the kitchen and all over the restaurant. It adds to the ambiance. The shouting doesn't affect the patrons as the restaurant has a perpetual flow of customers coming to the restaurant.

There is ample free parking outside of the restaurant. You won't regret going to...

Ok.

So we came here for a family dinner. Yes, I understand that they were probably overwhelmed with big parties and last minute diners, but this is not acceptable.

We had three tables and we ordered first of the three tables. We ended up getting our order “lost,” while the two other tables obviously got the food we ordered. They decided to lie about this and then said they found the order. Then we started getting not our ordered food but we have been here for almost 2 hours now with no food so we took the food anyway.

Then I saw this.

Yeah. That’s a wooden, cooked through, sauced through, clothing pin. Thankfully I didn’t bite into it.

They took the food back and wasn’t even sorry, literally asked us if we wanted a replacement and would only “comp” us that dish.

Wow.

Whatever you do, don’t come. You might...