Mr Holy Gao — Restaurant in San Diego

If there is a way to rank lower tha 1 star, I will do that. It is terrible on Food, service and also atmosphere. We tried the breakfast today as the sunday. firstly, i think they violate the laws. We ordered the food based on the menu at the front desk. There are plenty of copies there, ( white color, on the side of front desk) (You can still find that in the google). And we got several copies from the waiters when we were ordering the food. But in the final bill, I felt weird to see the different prices in at least 3 dishes (Chinese donut) . I asked the cashier that the prices were different from the menu, she just told me the menu you saw is out of date, insist (several times) that you should use the ones shown in the bill. Then I asked if the menus were wrong, why the waiters gave them to us and why the menu was there. Then when we were arguing, another waiter/cashier came to see what happened and took over the waitress. He called the boss and finally updated the bill with the prices in the menu. The bill wasn't changed very much (from $53 to $50), but their service is disaster. I do not think if there could be two different prices in any restaurant. The food is disaster. We have orderred several dishes, but I can tell all of them were worse than I expected, except (the chinese donut). (1) The congee with pork & preserved eggs, really just congee + 1 tiny pork+ 1piece preserved egg (you can imagine). The congee is not very good. The tiny pork is very hard to find. I spend a while to figure out that there is a very tiny one. The preserved egg is a small piece. I don't think anyone there really taste this popular food in China. (2) salty Chinese style Tofu, not much really taste of Chinese style tofu, it is salty with soy sauce. Taste really weird with soy sauce dominant; (3) sweet chinese style tofu, not much chinese style tofu, like sweet water. (4) original soybean milk, nothing special, I doubt it is got from the super maket. (5) porridge 6 side dish. We tried pickled mustard green-too salty, salted duck egg-too salted, no special, dried meat floss-- just so so. The other 3, fermented tofu+olive+edamame, look very ugly ( a black lump) and are hard to convince me to give them a try. (6) shanghai Veggie & yellow croaker wonton soup. Stinking smell as of rotten fish. I had a bite and almost throw out. We decided not to try at that time and took it home, but after several hours, the smells prevented us to try again. I think they were wasting the food, waste my time!!! 3 There were only few visitors and 3 tables near the noon. I tried to complain the food twice, it was ignore first time. And I tried again second time, but I don't think they really heard my comments and no any feedback or response any more. I don't think they really take the suggestions into consideration. The waiters/waitress look not very busy, even so, I did not see much communications between the waiters/waitress and the customers. This is a minor thing. But the food and the services are disaster. I think they probably just want to make money from us one time, try to take out of the money as much as they can!

STRONGLY NOT...

They have the same owner as Mada Sao, which was a malatang/Shanghai restaurant we used to enjoy on Convoy, but during the pandemic they moved their Mada Sao menu over to combine with Mr Holy Gao in Sorrento Valley.

The malatang at Mada Sao was set up so you could go up to a buffet and pick out a set number of skewers of your choice and then they'd cook it for you in a spicy-numbing broth and then bring it back out and serve it with your choice of noodles or rice. Now you have to ask specifically for the Mada Sao menu but it's all in Chinese and you just write down which skewers you want. Its about $25 for 25 skewers, with variety of seafood, meats, and veg to choose from.

We opted for a malatang set instead of skewers, which allows you to choose just one type of meat and comes with variety of set veg like cabbage, daikon, lotus roots and mushrooms, as well as rice or noodles of your choice. We went with beef, flat glass noodles, and medium spicy broth, all for about $15. Honestly we coulda just split this because it was a lot of food 😍 That broth was magic - slightly spicy with only a touch of the citrusy numbing so it didn't overwhelm our senses or kill our taste buds from tasting anything else the rest of the day 😂

We also got the Yu Hsiang pork lunch set which came with rice, hard boiled egg and a spring roll. They have lunch specials from $10-$14 , which is a great deal for the portions they give. They have banquet space, so their menu has plenty of family sized traditional Chinese...

We ordered take out. It was ready within 15 min. from our call. We had house fried rice, honey walnut shrimp, Kung Pao chicken, Mongolian beef, chow mein, egg rolls. It was a lot. Adored the honey walnut shrimp -- big juicy tender shrimp with broccoli. The Mongolian beef was also tender. We really enjoyed the flavors of the dishes, none too spicy. The egg rolls and chow mein were just okay. The shrimp and beef were outstanding. The fried rice was still good 3 days later; it had a nice mix of stuff and was tasty. The shrimp was so good that there was no leftover shrimp. We had loads of leftovers, portions were way more than PF Chang's. Can't wait to go back and try other menu items (they have duck, so we really want to go back). The restaurant is in a tiny almost dead looking corner strip mall. From one street you can see the sign for Mr. Holy Gao, but from a different street and from within the parking lot the restaurant has a different name. GPS told us where to go but when in the parking lot we couldn't find it until we pulled out and saw the Holy Gao sign from the other street and had to double back to the strip mall. It's not far from...