CHI — Restaurant in Reno

I chose this restaurant for my birthday. I was disappointed 😞 the real disappointment comes from the obvious discrepancy between the price and the quality of food served. I'm fine paying $40-50 for a dish that is worth $40-50, but only one dish here lived up to the cost.

Ordered:

1. $18 calamari 🦑 appetizer
2. $32 prawn 🦐 with vermicelli and garlic
3. $40 sliced duck 🦆 with shrimp, chicken, pork and greens
4. $22 orange blossom chicken 🐓 (the only dish worth the 🤑)

Service: Needs Improvement! The individual who sat us was polite and welcoming. However, our server always seemed like she didn't have time for us. When clearing dishes, she would kind of reach over us in a way that interrupted the meal and take plates too soon. She also didn't seem interested in discussing the menu. If she is just that busy, then they should hire more servers. Our waters were filled quickly, but it never felt friendly. However, the guy who brought our tea was nice. Compared to other Peppermill restaurants, this was the worst service.

Atmosphere: Smelled of cigarette 🚬 smoke, but well decorated. Also, the tables feel a little large for the round booths so you don't get a lot of wiggle room.

Appetizer: The calamari was small, dry, and not up to portion desired for the cost. This was worth $12 max, not $18. The dipping sauces were nice though.

Entrees: The prawn 🦐 with vermicelli was tasty but it was really just some thin rice noodles with garlic and about 7-8 prawns (slightly larger shrimp). Underwhelming dish worth about $22, not $32.

The sliced duck 🦆 was okay. The duck was 4-5 dark, fatty slices of meat that I needed a knife to cut. They were under 3 shrimp, some sliced pork and chicken pieces and zucchini and baby bok choi. Again though, these were not big crispy slices of seasoned duck, but instead were wet and soaked with gravy at the bottom of the dish. The presentation was uninspired. It was not a $40 dish. It was a $30 dish at best.

The orange 🍊 blossom 🌼 chicken 🐓 was the best item we ordered. This was the only dish that kept the review from being 2 stars. This dish comes with about 8-10 huge chunks of breaded chicken (they were decent cuts) but the sauce is awesome 😎!! I thought it had good spice, a nice body, just a hint of sweet, and was perfect with white rice. This dish was worth the $22 we paid for it. I highly recommend this dish for anyone that likes chicken and a little spice 🔥

It is unfortunate that the dish that simply gave a bunch of meat was the worth it winner tonight. I would love to eat dishes with more complexity in both presentation and flavor but Chi did not really deliver. I can honestly say I will not be back...

This place USED to be amazing. Haven't went in a long time, and went on friday Dec 15th. The general chicken was amazing. The Mongolian beef was severely lacking flavor, and the sweet and sour pork was weird because it's not the typical breaded. I was told their other sweet and sours are breaded, just not the pork. That made it just not that good as the pork tended to be a bit fatty, and the breading can hide that much better and save the dish. The fried rice had a good flavor, but there was WAY too much pork in it and it was extremely oily. Normally the more meat the better, but literally the pork was almost more prominent than the rice. It was frustrating when we received the check as it said under 2 of the entrees side white rice. I guess most dishes come with rice. I asked about why that was on the bill and she told me they usually come with it if you want but she didn't think we would want any where we ordered fried rice... Very frustrating as they are polar opposites and the white rice would have accompanied the dishes very well. She wanted to get another dish to go because we didn't like the sweet and sour pork and was a bit pushy about it. I told her no Thank you that we would just take ebrrything home except that. She was a bit standoffish and said well my manager doesn't like to take things off of checks, but I'll try to talk to them... I didn't care if it was off or not as it was all paid for with comps, but the way she approached it was very off putting. In the past the food was much better overall, definitely a decline in a few aspects of the restaurant. I see now why they are never busy anymore, friday night in the holiday season and there were more empty tables...

This place advertises authentic food. It’s far from that. We tried it 3 times to be fair in our review but the food is very bad. They don’t cook their dishes together. Everything is cut up and when an order comes, they just put the ingredients together in a bowl and pour sauce on it. 3 times we ate there, once we ordered eggplant with chicken, the eggplant was warm, the chicken was just pulled out of the frig, the onions were lukewarm so the temperature of each ingredient are different. They do not sauté them together. We ordered whole fish for $40, it was boiled with leftover watered down bouillon from another customer’s plate as there were tiny bones on the so called gravy. It’s obvious the bouillon gravy came from a leftover dish otherwise why will there be tiny bones on the bouillon water? The whole fish hadn’t been touched. The Mongolian beef is also cut up beef that they mixed in a bowl with some Chinese sauce. The temperature of beef, onion and sauce were different, from warm to room temperature. How they get away with this kind of cooking with the very pricey cost of each dish, nothing less than $30. The spring rolls were frozen, hardly nothing inside the wrapper, the Costco spring rolls would have been better. They were so tiny that one can say it’s from a frozen box. After giving them 3 tries, we will never eat there again!! Fake cooking!! It’s all precooked and precut way ahead of time and then put together in a bowl with a canned gravy that they didn’t even put in the microwave to warm . Peppermill should be ashamed to have this restaurant in their name!!!! Panda is better, at least they cook the ingredients together. $180 for 2 people...