Han Palace Mclean — Restaurant in Tysons

Based on what I experienced today, I should've given this restaurant 1 star. But I will return again to give them a second chance because I have high expectations. Here is what happened:

I've been to many newly opened restaurants and I gotta say Han Palace was the worst. The management was chaotic. I totally can understand that the service could be slow but the wrong orders, wrong receipts are unacceptable. I know the way many restaurants key in the customers' orders into the system, like if Table A ordered food X, Y, the server would add X, Y for that table inside the system. If X were not brought out, the server would know and could cross X out of the receipt leaving only Y on there. I don't understand how they could mess that up so bad, it's like they added one's orders to another table's orders. And that didn't only happen to me. I kept hearing 'questions' from other tables because they got something they didn't order too.

They tried their best to follow the social distancing policy but due to the chaos, we all shared the soy sauce, vinegar dispensers... luckily, there's a hand sanitizer close to me. I was there early because I knew the place would be packed later, and the experience would only get worse but nah, it was bad at the beginning. After seated, I waited for 20mins until the server came back and asked "How may I help you guys?", looking at me with confusing eyes. I asked her for the dim sum menu and a glass of water. Just like many places, you will mark on the dim sum you want but she forgot giving me the pen. I ordered the pan fried scallop dumpling but it didn't look 'pan fried' to me at all (see pic). BUT IT WAS GOOD! I also ordered the Black Pepper Beef Ribs but they brought me the Steamed Pork Ribs. I told the server so, and she said at that point, it's on the house, I could just have it. And then she brought me another dish that I didn't order. Then I reminded her that I was still waiting for my other dishes and I had to repeat all over again because I ordered a lot. How come she didn't save what the customer ordered?!?!!? I don't know if she hasn't entered them in the system or she has but there were too many ppl ordering it so it's slow. The Steamed Rice Crepe came out. I expected it to have char siu pork inside, but it had mince pork instead. Umm!?!?!? (See pic) After 30mins of waiting, (I'm a very patient customer), a server brought out some dim sum on a tray for other tables, and yes, one of them was wrong again, they didn't take it, so I ended up eating that too because otherwise, I might have to wait forever for my right dim sum to come out. After another 30mins, the server brought me a check, I was so confused because I didn't ask for it, and ofc all the items in there were not mine. I told her that was wrong and I was still patiently waiting for my food. SHE ASKED WHAT I ORDERED AGAIN. And I happily told her one more time then she said "Oh, we ran out of them, so that's why I didn't bring them out". THEN WHY DIDNT TELL ME???!? I WAS WAITING FOR NOTHING. Then after a while, the server brought out a steamed pork dumpling for the table next to me and OFC IT'S WRONG AGAIN. So that customer gave me his dim sum.🤣🤣🤣

So after 2 hours of dining, I got only 1/3 of my orders done (including the wrong orders). And I also had to pay $13 for parking because it had been over 2hours. This was the worst experience for me but luckily it's still within my limit.

Again, I will definitely come back to try the things I haven't tried. There are still soooooooooo many things I want to try. The food was great, including the soy sauce and the vinegar. And LOOK AT THAT PLATE! I LOVE IT!

P.S: After all of the above, I didn't hear any "Sorry" or "Apologies" from the staff. I guess they were too busy messing up the orders. Btw, The ones who gave them a 5 star reviews are either the owners...

The restaurant is still in the midst of its soft opening (according to their Facebook page that is September 17-30th). I called in with a pick-up order but after waiting for over an hour (after already waiting 30 minutes before going over to pick it up) it turns out they had lost my order and I had to re-order. This is a rather long review but please read for my honest feedback.

Let's talk simple pro cons. Pros: Food was delicious, and honestly reminded me of dim sum that I used to get as a small child living in NYC Many patrons were (in many cases rightfully) rather upset due to the understaffed service HOWEVER the staff still tried their best to be understanding and apologetic. You can express displeasure without being in-your-face rude about it, we're all people and in a stressful situation where you can't necessarily fix everything all we want is some empathy.

Cons: There is a very obvious understaffing problem that needs to be addressed, which leads to painful delays in service. I would strongly recommend people come to this restaurant to support it, but only with the understanding that it might take a very long time to get food/service and you must be patient and understanding.

Review & Suggestions: To me, as a person who grew up going to dim sum restaurants, I can tell you that it was very ambitious to try and open a cart-free dim sum restaurant. You open yourself to the inevitable cultural differences and communication gap. I don't think all the servers/staff are aware of the English named items, so referencing items by their menu code (A1, etc) will be helpful, or even better would be if you are able to pronounce the chinese names (honestly even if you slaughter it, with some google translate helping you along it'll probably improve your service). The advantage of carted dim sum is that you can just point at what you want.

If the restaurant owners are reading this, I think they need to spend more time getting more staff as well as training their staff. This is entirely different in terms of execution from your standard Chinese dim sum restaurant -- you need to lay down expectations and understand the demand. Items being sold out is inevitable yes, but having communication with your patrons is also important. People are there to eat delicious food, they just want to be told if things aren't available. I hate to say it but with cart-free dim sum, the communication barrier is more pronounced and not knowing the English translations of several dishes makes it harder for servers and patrons to communicate.

Hopefully the soft opening will help them gauge what items to prioritize and round out the jagged edges. I would also recommend temporarily only allowing in-house dining AND clearly communicating that out on social media + public listing. Give it some time and...

We were really excited to try this new restaurant, but this was a really disappointing experience. This was our first time here, and before we even sit down, three waiters come over and start shoving food in our face, not explaining what everything is. We said yes to some of the items they were offering quickly, as we felt pressured to say yes. Then, after being bombarded with dim sum in the first few seconds, the waiters did not approach our table for another ten minutes. In the meantime, all the other tables were being served. We tried to get the attention of one of the servers, and when she came over, she said she had to go get someone else. Finally, someone comes over after another 5 minutes, and we place an order. My friend ordered the house noodles, and specifically asked what meat was in it. The server said chicken, which was what my friend wanted. I ordered the cashew shrimp, with a side of fried rice. We also ordered more dim sum. They took the order, and another 15 minutes pass without anyone checking on us. Meanwhile, all the other tables are being served more dim sum, and we were not. Finally, our food comes out, but not my fried rice. They said it was coming shortly. My friend who ordered the noodles with chicken noticed some strange meat in her food. She asked a server what it was, but they said that they had to get our server specifically because they couldn’t answer our question? when our server came over, we asked her what meat was in the dish- she said squid. Which my friend who ordered the dish is extremely allergic to. My friend said to the waiter “I thought this was chicken” to which the waitress replied “oh sorry that was the bartender”. I know this was a soft opening, but all staff serving guest should know the meats/items on their menu for situations such as these. My friend asked if they could take the dish away and take it off the bill, to which the waitress replied “that they couldn’t do that.” Eventually they agreed to take it off the bill, but it shouldn’t have been that difficult when they were the ones who made a mistake. In addition to that, my fried rice never came to which I asked the waitress to take it off the bill because I had already finished my meal. We also noticed that the serving staff became very rude to us after the noodle confrontation. They made sure to take their time with the surrounding tables, while we finalized our check. This experience was unfortunate because although the food was decent, the staff clearly needs more experience with serving. I would give this establishment 0 stars if I could, however a 1 will suffice because of the food. If you really want to try this place I recommend ordering take out instead of dining in. Will not...