Cooking Girl — Restaurant in Sugar Land

Actually I don't even want to give one star... I am totally disappointed with the food & mainly about the service and the way they treated.

I went to this place because my wife visited here couple weeks back with her office colleagues and she liked tofu dish so she wanted me to taste the same dish along with other dishes. So me, my wife and my 8yr old kid went to this Cooking Girl Sugarland, for dinner and we ordered 3 dishes. Mapo Tofo( the one my wife liked last time), Spicy Shrimp and dumplings. So, Tofu dish was horrible today may be by mistake they added double times ginger or some other sauces what ever it is but it spoiled our tongue and mouth. Spicy shrimp was salty only dumplings was good. So just after serving into our plates and tasting it we called the main guy and explained him about Tofu dish and asked to take the dish inside and once taste it along with chef. After 5-8 mins one lady came out with the same bowl and telling us that you already finished half bowl and we can't give refund bla bla..... even before we did not say thing about money or bill. Then I also told her we are not expecting any money back and we just served each two spoons into plates and its still in the plates. Also told her that we came here because my wife liked the food here last time... then also she continuously saying okay dish may be bad but we don't cancel it, I said okay leave us and go back with that worse food...

Then the guy came with the bill charging us for three dishes, I calmly gave my credit card and asked him-none of you asked us either we want some other dish or prepare the dish again but you brought the bill for three dishes does this looks good for you.??. no answer from him....I said him at-least someone from your restaurant should be nice and apologies when customer is not satisfied... then he was trying to say okay I will take out from the bill...the way he was telling us is like throwing free food to beggars....Then I said no I want to pay in full and he said okay and took the full payment and No Sorry nothing even at the end until we come out..... So I will never try or dare going here, if possible avoid...

The following are listed in order of the menu:

FISH Hot Diving Fish: 5/5. White fish fillet pieces cooked with a slightly thickened clear sauce to make it wet and slippery. Cooked with cucumber slices and green onions. We always ask for the spicy sauce on the side so that the kids can eat the fish, and then we can add the sauce according to our preferences, because the sauce is SUPER spicy.

PORK TMD Soft Bacon (“TMD” = The Most Delicious - name given by restaurant): 3 out of 5. pork belly (thick cut slices of very fatty pork), sweet brown sauce, Sichuan pickles. Not as flavorful nor as tender as better versions I've had at other restaurants.

BEEF Fascination Beef: 5 out of 5. one of my family's favorite dishes. Super spicy beef soup even though rated only 2 peppers. We ask them to make it less spicy, which makes it more tolerable. It's one of those dishes that make you sweat, but it's so good you don't mind constantly wiping away the sweat. We like to request extra noodles. Cooling Beef: 2 peppers but SUPER spicy. Not cooling at all! Made me sweat so much! But I think it was pretty good from what I remember from long ago. Broccoli Beef: ⅖. Do not order this! My son did not like it because sour sauce. I agree it's sour and I don't like it either. It's Not the typical salty and a little sweet. Beef and the broccoli themselves are not amazing either.

TOFU Seafood Tofu: 3 out of 5 stars--okay but nothing special. green and red bell peppers, egg Tofu, flounder, mushroom, shrimp. Made with a slightly thickened corn starch sauce.

VEGETABLES Eggplant Love Green Bean: 4 out of 5, pretty good, but not special. Long slices of Japanese eggplant, stir fried long green beans, garlic. Not as much flavor as Dry Fried Green Beans because no pickled vegetables. Dry Fried Green Beans: 4 out of 5; not 5 because no meat like some places do, but good otherwise. deep fried (but not battered like American style deep fried) green beans, which makes the surface wrinkly. Cooked with some chopped up, pickled...

My family and I have been to Cooking Girl many times and had great experiences. I haven't been back since the lockdown in 2020 and thought it would be a great place to enjoy lunch with my mom. For $50, we thought we were going to get a decent meal and service. Unfortunately, we were greatly disappointed.

We ordered red dumplings, soup, meat spring rolls for appetizers and pepper twins chicken (comes with steamed rice) for lunch. We expected about a 20-25 minute wait as fresh food takes time to make. We were both shocked to see that, within 2-3 minutes of taking our order, our lunch came out before our appetizers. When our lunch came in, my mom was quite taken aback and asked the server why we didn't get the appetizers first. It is customary in most Asian restaurants to serve soup and appetizers and then lunch. But we got our lunch in 2 minutes (which made us believe that the food was precooked).

I don't even know where to begin with lunch... It wasn't even spicy as we had requested and it was loaded with Sichuan peppers - completely numbing our palates, and the dumplings had a funny taste to it. We didn't even bother to speak to the server about it since he and another server were busy sitting on the other side of the restaurant chatting amongst themselves. We then realize that we never got our dumplings. The server never came around to check up on us, so my mom had to call them from across the room to get their attention. I then asked for our dumplings, since we never got them, and the server said that he forgot to put in our order, and came out with the dumplings a minute after. We ran out of water too, and my mom again had to holler across the restaurant to get their attention to get water for us.

It was saddening to see Cooking Girl to come to these standards. We used to love this place, but this experience has confirmed that we will never be coming back. Really...