Sifu Wong Kitchen — Restaurant in Sunnyvale

Tips: You need to be strategic when ordering food. If you are planning on ordering dishes from the main menu (fried rice, noodles, entrees, etc), I recommend putting in these orders first for the kitchen to fire them up. Then while you wait for these carbohydrate dishes to arrive, you can fill your hunger with the dim sum items.

We arrived on a holiday weekend where we expected the restaurant would be packed. Sure thing when we arrived at 10:32am (the restaurant opens at 1030am), the parking lot was already half full with people running out of their cars towards the restaurant hoping to beat the crowd. Although the inside of the main dining room was fairly full, the host immediately seated us by the "sun room". Outside the sun room, there are additional seatings with the pool view (Ramada Inn's pool) that appears to be an overflow extension of the restaurant using temporary tents and patio furniture. Definitely not your romantic dining experience with candle lights but the food makes up for it! 😆

The sun room is packed tightly with 6 large tables and a few 4-seated tables. We were quickly given two menus, one main and another dim sum menu for you to fill in. We opted in for Pu-erh tea which came in loose leafs form and piping hot. We ordered a total of 13 dishes, mostly dim sum dishes. Food starts to arrive about 15 minutes into ordering.

Food: Dim Sum dishes were flavorful, in decent portions and tasted freshly made. I would skip the Chinese Broccoli with the oyster sauce dish as it cost $17.30 for a bunch of stalk broccoli that was hard to chew through (and why is broccoli so expensive? 🤯) The spare rib was tender and the portion is the most I seem compared to the dim sum restaurants in the area. Overall we were very happy with the classic dim sum dishes and the taste was satisfying.

Service: This is the area where you need to be prepared for. On a few occasions we tried waving at our server (or just anyone), they heard you but they also passed you quickly. So you do need to speak up (in the nicest possible way). I see customers get up from their seats and walk up to the servers a few times.

Because we came on a holiday weekend, I also noticed the wok station is backed up severely. I believe this is usual for them since the servers were warning the customers how long they have to wait for a dish. We also ordered a veggie dish to go and it took 40 minutes to receive it. There were several tables where I saw customers upset that they didn't get the dishes in time and wanted to cancel. Another table where a customer got up and walked over to a server with the check, stating they didn't get this fried rice dish and the moment turned awkward when the fried rice came at the same time. The lady could have told them no thanks but she was so nice and said okay when the server offered to pack it to-go for them (but who gets to take it home?) Like I recommended, get your main dishes in for the wok station first then you can wait patiently with your dim sum.

Overall, I like Sifu Wong as the quality of the food is what would bring me back. Also, they don't impose an automatic 18% gratuity for parties of 6 or less, which...

This is our first time here. First impression, the place does not look clean at all; it's dark and has a grimy feel. The table cloth was sticky and plate looked dull. However, when the food cam out, we were impressed with the size and portion of our meal; they were huge and piping hot. The flavors were all great and delicious. The food came out fast, but we didn't really get attentive service. The ladies stamped what came out—no mention of what the plate is or acknowledgement of us. No one checked in on us, but that's ok we are at a Chinese restaurant and we were immersed in our conversation--two friends catching up from life, right.

When we were ready to pay, I gave my credit card to a server to process; he came back with my credit card with a receipt. I thought we paid, but when I showed another server where I put the tip, he said wait. Next thing I know, I was asked to go up to the front and this older, very angry lady barks, "You didn't pay!" Excuse me. I thought we did because I handed my credit card and the server gave back a long receipt. I did not know how their system worked. All she had to say nicely was, "we did not process your card yet or you didn't pay yet." Simple right? Nope, she gave me a bad attitude and pounded the card and receipts down--typical bad service that everyone talks about at Chinese restaurants. No wonder the Yelp rating is not as stellar. I'm stewing inside because, really, do I deserve this? No. After I signed the bill, I walked out and told the lady, "You can be a little nicer, you know. Have a good day!" She just growled at me, lol. Wow. Ma'am, you are a lovely person.

I should have known better. When she walked us to our table for two, she took one plate away leaving one of us without a plate! Like, what?! Who does that?? She came back with the plate and slammed it down on the table. I had a gut feeling she was not nice. This lady should get another role in the restaurant or not be the hostess. What a meanie.

Come here to eat the, overall, average food. Don't expect smiling, joyful people here. Definitely expect rudeness....

The service here is absolutely abhorrent. Would ABSOLUTELY NOT recommend coming here for a meal.

We had a party of 10, a reservation for 10 people at 12pm, and the whole party arrived on time. We waited 1.5 hours and decided to leave. I’m totally fine with waiting for a packed, popular restaurant, but the thing that has me incredulous and writing this review is that there are 5 completely empty tables that could seat our party, and these have been close to empty for over an hour (although we’ve watched parties of 2 dine at these huge tables). We’ve watched multiple people come by, questioning why no parties are being seated here and get absolutely no reasonable answers at all from staff. We just watched a party of 9 (with no reservation) get seated ahead of us, and when we when asking the host why they were seated, she kept changing the topic, saying they were 6 and blatantly lying (we spoke to people in that party, they confirmed 9!). The hostess was raising her voice, yelling at people, even groups with elderly and children. The staff here are disrespectful, and we watched them be rude to diners just trying to find the bathroom.

Honestly, this place is so packed that I don’t think this review will have any kind of impact on them, but I’m genuinely so frustrated at this experience and want to share my experience so others can at least have a chance to consider this before coming here. This was the absolutely the worst service experience I’ve had since relocating to the bay over a year ago, and it was abnormally bad even considering the busy restaurant scene...