Tropical Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in South Miami

Great food at moderate (a bit above average) prices! Excellent cocktails and a large selection of menu items. Our favorite Asian restaurant of all those we have visited (about 40+) in South Florida! Usually busy but if you come early (8:30PM) the crowd isn't so big as prime time (~7:30-830PM). We haven't made a reservation for any of our dinner visits (usually 8ish). Don't really know if you can but we have never had to wait for seating. Their signature cocktails are superb, always perfectly mixed with ingredients that complement each other...never too boozy or too weak, always tasty! Try their selection of martinis! A favorite of mine on the menu page preceding martinis is the "Tropical Colada". The barbecued pork ribs app is deceptively good. Their bbq sauce appears almost too red, but is really tasty. Sweet but not too sweet with just a tiny bit of tang. They go down easy! The soup menu is large & varied, with standard chinese offerings such as won-ton, egg drop, & Hot-n-Sour, made the Tropical Chinese way, as well as other soups not generally found in many Asian type restaurants. My favorite is the chicken corn soup, a chowdery soup with corn & a small variety of slender noodles in an egg-drop base with just enough chicken. A real palate pleaser! With about a dozen varieties of fried rice on the menu, there is sure to be a favorite of yours! They don't mind a bit of cook-to-order either. We ordered the veg fried rice, hold the mushrooms, and add egg (no change in price!). Great rice! Of course the menu offers lotsa mains with beef, pork, or chicken, as well as many seafood varieties. Think shrimp, scallops, fish, lobster, clams, or several mixed seafood offerings. And yes, there are multiple vegetable & tofu offerings for the non-carniverous folks to enjoy. What full Chinese menu would be complete without Duck? Tropical Chinese offers several mains with Duck....and Peking Duck has a prominent place in the menu. Check it out! The Dim Sum menu has over 20 options that you may mix-n-match for parties of all sizes. Surely all the selections make for great Dim Sum dining to satisfy a multitude of palates. Tropical Chinese has a large staff, necessary to properly prepare all the food & drink as well as serve diners in a timely manner. Peter was our primary server on this evening, assisted by at least a half dozen other wait & bus staff during the course of our meal. It was never difficult to find a smiling face, happy to fulfill our requests. Overall, service was timely without becoming intrusive. I gave only 4 stars (couldn't do 4.75, lol!) because the soup and 2 of our main selections arrived just a bit tepid, necessitating a brief return trip to the kitchen for additional heating. On our last visit the soup also required a reheat. These are the only negative criticisms I have! So much at Tropical Chinese is SOOO GOOD, it is hard...

Very bad experience! Please do not come!Despite the food being okay, the service was shockingly bad. Here’s why:

The waitress, an older Chinese lady, was very rude and condescending. Very degrading to us, in a contemptuous tone, came out of nowhere, “You guys don’t look like you have had a dim sum in a long time, do you?”

My girlfriend has to have soup with her meal, but the rest of us don’t care that much. So, we have asked for one order of spicy and sour soup, she said one order is two bowls of soup. We said that is fine, we are going to share. Then, she started to judge us “6 people for one order? It’s still pandemic period, you guys should be careful with your personal hygiene.”

We ordered one Roasted Peking duck, one order can make 2 different dishes that we can choose, Peking duck skin wrap and one of others. Normally, I mean in most cases, we will get to choose after they peel off all the duck skin. But she brought us one dish of shredded duck meat before the skin wrap. We said we didn’t order this, she responded very impatient “This is your order!” Okay, fine, perhaps this restaurant has a different rule or maybe one of my friends ordered this and we didn’t notice. After we started to eat, very salty, a man who looked like a manager or owner came and said this dish should be served in another table, so he took back that dish to the kitchen.

When she helped us warp the Peking duck skin, she wrapped 10 pieces. Since we have 6 people, and we saw there’s still some skin on the duck, so one of my friends asked if she can warp two more pieces that would be easier for us to split. Then, she started to talking, bla bla, “You guys should tell me before I warped”, “Do not put forward a request after I warped” , “Nobody can warped two more at this time of period”

If you don’t care about the tips that you paid for your service, this restaurant is fine, but if you do care, I recommend you to find another restaurant. (Yes, we paid the tips. They emphasized their rule that a meal for 6 is a mandatory 18% tips)

Btw, the unconventional use of Mexican tortillas as duck skin wrap, while not necessarily bad, was unexpected given the price...

"Amazing Food, Disgusting Service, Discrimination Apparent"

I am not one to review anything in general, but this establishment warrants a review for how poorly and unprofessional the runners and the waitresses were to me and my mother. The food is great; however, it took 13 minutes for someone to attend to us. The food arrived late as well but it was understandable since there was a volume of people in the restaurant. However, every time ANYBODY passed us who worked there, they would look at us and ignore us. This happened at least 5 times. Finally, I was able to talk to one of the females who worked there, and she literally waved us off and mumbled something. It took another 10 minutes for someone to arrive. All we wanted was tea and dessert. And now for the reason I am writing the review. A “gentleman” who works at the restaurant took my pay and was angered that my tip wasn’t “sufficient” enough for him. He complained to me, the customer, that the tip was NOT SUFFICEINT. And to make matters worse, as I was walking out of the restaurant he grabbed money from the tip jar, offered it to me and yelled at me that he didn’t want my tip. We exchanged words and then me and my mother left. I tipped low and with services like this I am safe to say that my tip reflects the service and the DISGUSTING display of professionalism displayed at this establishment. I don’t know if it was because I came in wearing a jersey or because I have tattoos or because I’m Central American, but this place treated me and my mother nasty. I noticed everyone else was being attended too besides myself. I urge the owner to investigate this matter because I can understand slow wait times but having staff members ignoring us on top of having an actual staff member trying to start a problem with their customer over a tip is repulsive. I cannot recommend this...