China Live — Restaurant in San Francisco

The only thing live about this place was the pretty good Mai Tai's, other than that they need management and chef overhaul. We walked in on 10/18/17 about 3pm with our 3 month old baby and waited to be greeted for about 4 minutes. When we were tired of waiting , we walked around to look at the restaurant, and then we were greeted. We were placed at our table with any explanation of the menu and were told our waiter would be right with us. We looked around and we were happy because the place was pretty empty and had good ambiance, so we figured we would get great service.

The waiter came over and said, while explaining the menu, that there was dim sum that took 20 minutes. No problem we said, and he went to order that with our mai tai's first. He came back and we ordered their calamari, bok choy , mixed fried rice, chicken pocket dish, along with crab. The drinks came after 10 minutes and we were concerned because at this rate, we would be there for 2 hours. First the calamari came out after 15 minutes, and it looked over cooked. The color of the calamari was dark brown, and the taste was hiding within the color. Next the chicken pocket dish came out after another 10 minutes and it was really good. The bok choy and the mixed fried rice dish came out after another 15 minutes, and they were not bad. The pork in the fried rice was again over cooked, and was disappointing........

REMEMBER the dim sum we ordered when we first sat down, we had to remind the waiter that we had been waiting for at least 35 minutes. After another 5 minutes he brought it out. The dim sum was good, but not worth waiting 40 minutes, especially being an appetizer. The color was ok, but the bottom was burnt, the heat was luke warm on the outside.

Finally came the crab,,,,,

When we ordered the crab, the waiter said it was delicious and it was very very good. We looked at the crab and it looked good. Good color and cute garnishment. We started to eat the crab and the flavor was beyond bland. After 2 more pieces, we felt it was one of the worst tasting crabs that we have had. When my wife went to pick up a third piece, she held it to her mouth and I stopped her. I noticed something long a stringy , and found out it was A PIECE OF A METAL BRILLO CLEANING PAD. Being so mad and so disgusted with this place, we refused to eat the rest of the crab. I asked for a manager, and when she came, she apologized and took the item off of our bill. Thats all she offered, for finding contaminated metal on one of their dishes.....SHE SHOULD BE REPLACED for this emotional disconnect with a guest.

We asked that the Bok Chok and the fried rice be boxed up, the waiter only took the bok choy. Then a busser came to ask if he could box up our fried rice. We received our boxed up food and we paid without any followup from the manager, chef, or general manager. For a bill that was over $135, this was terrible...... It gets worse......

We walked into their merchandising area to look to see if anything was worth getting 20% off on, because we paid for our bill. We walked around for over 10 minutes, without ANYONE saying a word to us. A few cooks with what seemed to be a chef, entered the room and no one again acknowledged us. We left wanted to buy something, but the lack of professionalism was too much to over look.

We walked out and saw the female manager, who said sorry, but failed to try to win us back by offering a business card, or some form of communication. It gets worse.......

We get home, unpack the car, our baby, and bring the food upstairs......Only to find they didn't put the fried rice into our bag.......

My feeling is that they have a good bar program, but they are going to need more to pay all that rent space per month. By the look of it, they will be out of business in a year or so, because they can't keep operating with elementary customer service skills, and basic chef knowledge and ownership who doesn't feel a need to create change or...

Overall I was not impressed. It was mostly the service that made this experience less than what it could have been.

Arrival/getting seated: we had made a reservation, but we were a little early so we were told we could wait “by” the bar. The bar itself was full but they had these standing tables right next to it where people were both eating and hanging around. It was extremely busy so it was not clear whether this area was served by waiters or whether it was self serve. After standing around for a bit and unsuccesfully trying to get a servers atention, I just went up to the bar to order a drink. The bar men were very nice but seemed completely overwhelmed with the amount of orders they had to handle. Right after I got my drink we got seated (10 min after the reservation time). We got stuck in the back corner by the dumpling station bar. We were told “This is so much better than a table, because it will get super loud in the main area.” I call BS on that statement.

The food/drink: The cocktails my partner and I ordered were very good. However, they were a little pricey. They also took a while (overwhelmed bar tenders). We decided to order a bunch of apetizers rather than a main course as we wanted to try many things and we were only 2 people. I was also very excited about the peking duck as I had done my online research and saw that this place had good peking duck. In the end the food was OK. Definately a more modern take on chinese-american staples. I was a little let down by the peking duck, as we didn’t realise we had ordered the premade buns (pictured) rather than the dyi version where you put everything together yourself. Personally I am also more a fan of the “traditional” thin pancakes rather than the fluffy buns that go with the pecking duck. They made a big deal of the sesame buns that came with the duck and I was not that impressed, but honestly I also had different expectations. The other apps we had were pork buns and crab rolls. As I said it was good but it didn’t blow my mind. My partner and I also had some stomach issues after because it was all quite fatty (we live in the south and have had our fair share of fried chicken, so we can usually handle greasy food fine).

The service: This is what really let the place down. The servers were friendly but had way too many people to serve. It was ver chaotic. I saw several waiters jogging through the restaurant to keep up with things. We were seated and given menus. 5 minutes later the server came up and asked us what we would like. We hadn’t had a chance to decide, so we asked if she could give us a couple more minutes. The server came back 20 minutes later. We ordered a couple of items, which were plopped in front of us unceremoniously by a random server. We finished our food and our server was no where insight. We wanted to order more food but had to wait another 20 min until we finally got someones atention. We ordered one more dish. It was the pork dumplings which we saw being plated and then being carried around the whole restaurant because the person who picked them up didn’t seem to know where it was supposed to go. We were thinking of ordering another dish after that but decided against it as we didn’t want to be in the restaurant for 3hrs waiting on a couple of apps. We cornered a random server at the cashier that was located right behind us (we were really seated in an awkward spot) and asked if we could have the check. The check came fairly fast.

Overall: It’s a hip place with fun gimmicks like the bun and pecking duck stations. Probably a great place to take a family or people visiting from out if town if you have the money for it. Best to know what you want to order before you even sot down and don’t expect more than 5 face to face time with your server for the...

We had dinner here last night and I gave it the evening before I wrote this review. For background, we are long time SF residents and dine at quite a few Chinese establishments from neighborhood hole in the walls to Mister Jius.

We walked by China Live and the decor intrigued us. We decided to go in and look around as it had a shop area with various food related items for sale and 3 open kitchen layouts with people preparing food which look inviting so we decided to stay for dinner. We asked to be seated next to the dim sum station so we could have a view with dinner. This comes into play later.

We ordered the following dishes:

Our #1 Seller Famous Sheng Jian Bao 'SJB' Daily Made Pan-Fried Pork Dumplings

Sichuan Red Chili Prawns, Rice Lees, Bloomsdale Spinach

Sichuan Blistered Green Beans, Yunnan Olive, Pickled Radish, Salted Plum, Mushroom & Toon Paste (vg)

Shanghai 'Fat' Chow Mein Pork, Shrimp, Chicken & Seasonal Vegetables

1/2 Crackling-Skin Cantonese Fragrant Garlic Chicken (gf)

Within a couple of minutes of ordering, the Sheng Jian Bao arrived which I found odd. Upon biting into it, I found it lukewarm inside with no juice and the skin was soggy and mushy. The waitress came over and asked how our food was and I explained to her the issues and she quickly apologies and offer to bring back another one. She said this was the batch from 4pm and must’ve sat too long (it was already 5:30pm). As we were sitting at the counter, I then watched them pull another 5 out from the frying pan and bring it over. While it was hot this time, it was still mushy and undercooked with the skin being almost a slimy like texture. The waitress came back and asked how this new batch was and we showed her how the skin turned into a paste between our fingers. She apologized and to their credit, took it off our bill. We then watched them continue to serve the same batch to other patrons and also serve dim sum from under the main counter that had clearly been sitting for quite some time. As we were halfway through our meal, we saw them bring out more dim sum to cook up and it was all frozen so the fresh made daily is a bit of false advertising.

The next dish that came out was the chili shrimp. The shrimp was overcooked and had a rubber like texture. The sauce was also extremely salty that we couldn’t eat more than two bites.

Next came the Sichuan String Beans which was the best dish of the evening. It was cooked perfectly and well seasoned.

Then came the chow mein which was cooked perfectly noodle wise. Unfortunately, the meat they used was not fresh and had a funky taste and it just broke down into a mush when chewed on so we spit it out.

The last item was the crispy garlic chicken. The flavor was great however, it was either overcooked or had been sitting for quite some time as it was very dry.

In closing, it’s a cool looking place but the food is extremely lacking...