Spicy Charm 辣魅 — Restaurant in San Gabriel

Bosslady started off as a friendly little old woman but towards the end of the meal, her true colors came out. But before I talk about her let's talk about the food.

Ingredients are NOT FRESH, as I hand picked the items I saw that many items look dried up and bathed in murky waters.. CROSS CONTAMINATION between raw seafood and vegetables! I chose mild spice, the second to the lowest heat level and the food came out extremely SALTY and very spicy. I think she mightve slipped and poured on more salt than she intended because it tasted like it was enough salt to make peserved meat. I ended up eating a quarter of the meal and packed the rest to go. Food 1/5

When I sat down to eat, the lady sat at the table right NEXT TO ME and then started blasting the drama she was watching on her phone. I kid you not, I was the Only customer in the store and she chose to sit RIGHT NEXT TO ME and turn on her drama with volume on max.. I was in disbelief.... When I asked her for a to go box, she brought me the CHECK instead of the BOX... I asked her for the box and she said "sign the check". I asked her for a box again and she went and grabbed it, then demanded that I sign the check. My food still wasn't packed yet but she was demanding that I sign the check. She was literally hovering over me until I signed the check. I packed my food and signed the check, I wrote my total and didn't give her a tip. I've worked in the restaurant industry for pretty much all my life, if a customer doesn't tip you AT ALL, 9/10 it's because the service was bad. Service 0/5

I ain't gonna lie, I really wanted to just leave after I took the first bite, realizing how salty the food is but I didn't want to be rude. My total came out to $57.64 definitely not worth it. Stay away from this place, don't make the same mistake...

My experience here yesterday was so different compared to my previous ones, in a bad way! Their food was delicious, yes. We ordered the dry pot and spicy soup.

I am giving a 1-star rating because of how bad the service was and how the waitress (whom I believe is the owner of the place) was constantly making us feel uncomfortable. The first thing I noticed is they don't have their menu up on the TV above the counter (that's where the menu used to be), I have a reason to believe this was done on purpose as she is a liar. She then told us to help ourselves with the drinks but we only wanted water and she was unhappy about it because now she can't sell her extremely overpriced drinks! While we were working on our food, she constantly made uninteresting conversations with us and I stopped responding to her. Fast forward, when we were done with the food, My boyfriend asked for the check and to-go boxes, she then asked what payment method we would be using, we used credit card and she charged us $3.50 for it! Wow, great! Now, after she swiped our card and brought the check to our table and she kept telling us to sign the check (at least 5 times in 1 minute) my Gosh!! Can't you see we have to put our food in the to-go boxes first? We didn't have the space on the table to sign it! Oh did I mention we ended up spending $97 for the 2 dishes we ordered??? Rip-off! Lesson learnt and I am NEVER coming back here again!

P.S. I think this restaurant had a change of ownership, it used to be good and now is run by a mad lady. PLEASE DON'T COME HERE OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!...

Food poisoning aware. we visited this restaurant on December 28 2024 by around 10:30 PM, and ordered the spicy bowl, dumplings, and pickled garlic. in the same night and the day after, I had vomitted and diarrhea more than total of 10 times. due to the severe dehydration, my hands were even cramped. We were only travelling to LA for a couple of days and that we our last day. We missed our original flight due to my sickness. I tried to reach out to the restaurant but the owner only picked up the phone once and never answered....