Chow's Asian Bistro — Restaurant in Santa Fe

Ater a week of craving Asian cuisine or some good Chinese food I was happy to stumble across Chow's Bistro in Santa Fe. Having just picked up my children from a local boarding school. I decided to treat my two hungry teens to a nice meal but after walking in the host informed us that the restaurant opened at 4:45... Very understandable. We decided to give the place a try and wait around until it opened up for business, we waited patiently for 20 minutes at the front entrance. We were happy to wait and willing to pay whatever the food would cost. As time came for the business to open up and start seating customers we grew anxious, 4:45 came and we were expecting to be seated but I stead the host stood behind his register while his coworker stood next to him focused on at to go order. We did not mind, after all they were barely opening up for business. We sat there and watched another group of people walk in and to my amazement the person fiddling with the To go order turned his attention to the people that walked in and greeted them kindly and with familiarity while he ignored us for the entire 20 minutes we sat there waiting with out fuss. The group that entered the restaurant after us was seated immediately while we stupidly sat there confused. When the host noticed my disappointment he frantically tried to have the other man sit us but by then I was upset and just walked out. Sad to say that I settled for Santa Fe Place food court and got myself food court Asian cuisine. I would not recommend this place to anyone. If you have the time and are willing to travel for good Asian food I might suggest taking the time to drive to Albuquerque and stop in at East Ocean Asian restaurant... Worth the drive and money. Chow's is trash as far as I'm...

I was excited to try this place on a recommendation from a local friend, so I went there Sunday night, January 2, 2022. The food was pretty good, but a few things probably need attention:

I know that high-quality jasmine rice is used, but charging extra for the rice (both white and brown) seems unfair. It would at least be better if the customer was told ahead of time that there would be an extra fee for rice.

I ordered the spicy chicken and orange chicken and ranch spring rolls. I think the best dish was the orange chicken. Very tasty and big portions! No complaints on this one at all. Really good!

The spicy chicken entrée was very spicy and had an inordinate amount of red chili peppers in it. See the pictures. Also, what doesn’t show in the picture are the large chunks of garlic in the dish. The garlic was mostly raw, maybe sautéed a little bit. Although I love garlic and I love spicy, this combination was too much for me. I don’t know what happened with the chili peppers. It seems that the chef may have overdone it on my dish. Again, see the attached photos to give you an idea of how much there was.

The ranch spring roll was fairly good. My complaint would be that it had mostly lettuce in it. The lettuce comprised about 80-85% of the volume. The other 15-20% was rice noodles and carrots. The dipping sauce had a strong garlic flavor, which I didn’t really mind. I was expecting peanut sauce, but maybe that's what they serve here.

Would I come back? Yes, I think maybe the place is better than I experienced. They had a busy night of takeout and I waited about 30 minutes for my meal to be prepared. Perhaps the chef was in a hurry or just made some uncommon mistakes. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but wanted to report...

We absolutely love Charles Asian bistro even though they're extremely overpriced for what you get We would prefer to dine in but for some reason this establishment has decided that they're no longer going to serve their Santa Fe customers maybe they prefer being a drive-in restaurant like McDonald's they used to be pretty high-class dining You could take your family there for birthdays anniversaries or just to celebrate graduations or a romantic date night their staff used to be really friendly and a joy to be around but now they just have a couple stuffy people who work the front end when you place an order with them you get attitude what else what else what else what else I don't know how many times I heard that over the phone when placing my order sometimes I don't know why I even try with this restaurant anymore if you don't have phone skills why are you on the phone it's not hard to say hello can I help you what would you like is there anything else I can get you not what else what else what else what else it's disgusting behavior from complete adults you just don't want to do their job because they're unhappy. So as of today it's a three-star rating used to be a five star but sadly enough it's just going downhill with a lot of local businesses around Santa Fe and it's not even something we can blame on the people of Santa Fe but the establishment themselves because they refuse to strive for better...