Szechuan Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Waldorf

I will start off by saying I am extremely disappointed to write this review as I’ve been going here for over 5 years and have thoroughly enjoyed the food. This restaurant usually has great food. My husband and I come here sometime when I want their beef with fresh peppers. This is a treat because they are far from our home and a bit pricy, but we go because the food is usually of high quality and really tasty. We have never had a problem up until Thursday. This Thursday, July 16, 2020 my husband and I ordered for just he and I since we would be in the area. We paid over $75 for four dishes; we usually spend upward of $150 to feed our family of five. Well, this Thursday the food was completely bland and flavorless. Like absolutely no flavor at all. My husband doesn’t use salt or soy sauce on his food generally, but this time he needed to use both. He said to me “they must have a new chef.” The crazy part was that everything we ordered had no flavor, all four of our dishes (General Tso, Combination Fried Rice, Beef Lo Mein and Beef with Fresh Peppers), just completely bland. It was pretty late when we were eating, so I called first thing the next morning. The person that answered gave my phone call to another person. That person said if it was one dish they could have fixed it, but since it was my whole order I would need to talk to the manager, but he wouldn’t be in until Sunday. I told him sure and I called back first thing Sunday morning. When the manager got on the phone I explained to him the situation. I told him we have been coming there for 5 years and have never experience food with no flavor. I told him that I didn’t want my money back, but I did want him to fix the issue by fixing the food over. I had all four dishes from Thursday sitting in my refrigerator that I would bring back so that he sees that we were unable to eat any of the food. He told me they fix sauces in batches and since no one else called to complain that it was my issue. He told me that he would give me a 10% discount on my next order. My next order, really?!?! He was unwilling to compromise, not even offer to fix one or two of my four meals that I paid over $75 for that was still sitting in my refrigerator completely full. Well due to this horrible customer service I will no longer patronize this restaurant. I can get good food closer to my home for a third of the price. To not lose my money completely, tonight I literally recooked the food. I used sesame oil, soy sauce, general tso sauce (that I went out and bought from the grocery store), and hoisin sauce on the applicable dishes to give them flavor. Well, the food tasted much better after I went through the process of literally recooking with seasoning. Thanks for nothing...

This restaurant is great until you have a complaint. I ordered food “to go” late Saturday evening. I live about 20 miles from the restaurant. As soon as I got home and opened the containers I knew it was not what I ordered. It had gotten too late to go back to the restaurant to return the food for the correct order so I called to place the restaurant on notice I would be returning the order the next day. The person on the phone okayed me to return the order when able as long as I have the receipt. I returned the order but didn’t get a good reception. The manager refused to make amends. He told me it had to be returned the same day ordered. When I tried to explain to him that one of his workers confirmed that it was okay to wait to the next day he then accused me of lying. He then started accusing me of just wanting a new order. He was rude and very defensive. He told me he owes me nothing. Right in front of his face was the returned food and the receipt as evidence. It was very difficult getting my point across so I just left. It was a sad display of a manager failing to accept a mistake and finding a way to bring satisfaction to a customer when his lost was less than $20.00. At that point I realized my only recourse was to post a review of this experience. As I left the restaurant I told him I would be posting my experience and it won’t be great. Can you believe his response was that I’m being unfair to him to post a negative review. I told him what was not fair was how he refused to either redo my order or simply return the money for...

BEWARE! Gave 2 stars because our food was really good and our waiter was helpful, efficient and friendly - however, since using my credit card there on December 20th, I have been the victim of credit card fraud attempts. Multiple attempts trying to get cash advances (around $200 and one for as much as $900!) at a Giant food store. They didn’t have the pin because I had never set up a pin so the bank knows these were fraud attempts. They actually got food at Chipotle, made another $60 purchase and set up a travel plan for Florida! There are other attempts that I will get more detail about because I now have to go into a Wells Fargo Bank branch (with my photo ID) and straighten out. My credit card thankfully has been frozen (but this will cause work for me down the line calling auto pays with new expiration dates, etc).

I don’t go there often, however, they are the reason that I started more carefully keeping track of my total credit card transactions (food bill plus amount of the tip) no matter where I go. Probably a year ago after eating there I noted on my credit card bill that it was larger than I remembered. Since I could not prove it because I had not made note of my exact tip and because the difference was fairly small ($5 or so), I let it go.

DO NOT USE A CREDIT CARD THERE IF YOU...