Creek House Dim Sum Restaurant — Restaurant in Walnut Creek

I have read other reviews about this establishment and wanted to try for some time. I grew up on Dim Sum in San Francisco on Clement Street but always wanted to give other areas a chance. My reasons for a 3 Star – which is good! The true Dim Sum experience is with carts of food coming out of the kitchen rolling up to your table with the names of the dishes called out. At Creek House Dim Sum you do not get this experience because there is no room for carts. Ambience: The place is clean, well-lit and furnishings kept up. Located in a small shopping strip mall there seems to be plenty of parking. They have an electronic sign-in at the front where you leave your name and cell number and you get a text when your table is ready. No reservations. Bathrooms seem decent (they are not storing restaurant furniture and supplies in the women’s room- LOL!) Ordering: You mark up a double-sided piece of paper with the quantity of orders you would like of each dish. There are no full ingredient descriptions like a menu. If you have never been to Dim Sum this could be tough, I recommend you go with someone that knows the dishes. Optionally you can scan the QR code with your phone and view the menu. There is a pretty extensive selection of your traditional Dim Sum and other lunch time noodles and side dishes. Dim Sum small plate prices range anywhere from $5.25 to $13.50 while the large lunch plates go anywhere from $12.50-$22.25. The wait staff comes by your table and picks up your order then prints out onto a smaller tab then tapes it to your table. As each dish comes out one by one, at any time, the server will cross out the item(s) they have brought to your table. Be patient and make sure you are prepared to eat leisurely! We arrived when the restaurant opened on a Sunday – 10:00 AM. Our first dish came out around 10:30 AM and our second dish came out maybe 15 minutes later. The restaurant was full by 10:30 AM but we noticed that patrons that came before us had nothing on their tables either. I am somewhat surprised because every time I’ve gone to Dim Sum in the City its fast and furious when those carts are coming out and dishes start to pile on your table. They want you in and out and your table turned over fast! Not here, its very leisure. The food was delicious! Please note that if you are sensitive to MSG, like I am, the food does contain some MSG – notably the fried items. They do offer tea at $3.50 per small pot, no refills. We will come back and try dinner here and I will provide an...

Horrible service and will never set my feet into this restaurant again. I have been to this restaurant for three times. The first time I went there, the lady seemed quite nice towards other customers, asking them how they feel about the food, but the moment she passed our table, her smile was frozen and she awkwardly looked away. I told my husband that might because other customers were neighbors or frequent visitors. The second time we went there, we ordered three dishes and they were kind of too much for us two, so we had to pack two of them, one of which was super spicy. The waitress brought me one box and told me that I could pack them together in one box. Later I asked for another smaller box and she complained why I did not put them together. She finally got us another tiny box and left us with a bitter face. We were out of mind when we went there again the other day. We waited to be seated and the waiting area had a fridge. The boss/waitress came and she did not welcome us, in stead, with a face of you-still-owe-me-one-hundred-bucks, she said"Excuse me" because as we waited in line, we blocked the door of the fridge. She put some food into the fridge and after that she stood there as if she had not seen us standing there for at least 10 minutes while there were plenty of seats available. We walked out of the restaurant right away. You were treated as nuisance at this restaurant. They are really good at making you feel that you are bothering them when you have your meal there. So we decide not to bother them again in the future. This is the worst...

We were 12th in line when I arrived with my aunt and uncle on Sunday at 1pm. They had never been and I’m not local so we were excited to try the dim sum. There was a steady flow of people leaving so we did not have to wait long before we were seated. Ordering is extremely easy. There’s a picture menu and a sheet of paper to mark what you want. We tried a variety of dishes that were hot and delicious. They do an amazing job of serving the well prepared food quickly. Trays of food from the kitchen are placed on a table just outside the kitchen with each dish labeled for individual tables. Servers descend on the table, grab a dish or two, and deliver the hot food to each table. Their system is worth noting for two reasons. One is that they serve food so quickly and efficiently that people can eat and move on. The second is that you get your food freshly cooked while it’s hot. Their staging system is the most efficient way I’ve seen for delivering a lot of dishes to an entire restaurant. A time lapse video would be a fun way to see the dance of servers as they descend over and over on each tray and speed out across the restaurant. We really enjoyed our dishes, with the only regret that we couldn’t eat more. There was a slight hitch in getting our fried sesame balls. Once we pointed it out, a server investigated and told us it would be a few while they fried them for us. We needed the time anyway since we were so full. When the zhìmaqiú arrived, they were so hot we could barely eat them. Yum! I can’t wait to visit my aunt and uncle again so I...