Da Hong Pao Restaurant and Bar — Restaurant in Washington

If you've eaten at enough restaurants over the years, you know that every now and then you will have one of those nights that is so bad it defies explanation. That was our experience at Da Hong Pao. It was a busy Saturday night, granted, and they were able to seat us with only a 15 minute wait, but things went straight downhill from there. Although they claim to have a full bar, and although every bar stool was occupied, there was no bartender, and the pre-dinner martinis we ordered never came. Meanwhile, we waited a full 10 minutes at least before anyone even filled our water glasses. Our waiter spoke next-to-no English, and communication was extremely difficult. We ordered 3 appetizers and an entrée. Two of the appetizers showed up immediately (before the water), and while my wife was literally chasing down the waiter to cancel our drink order and just get us a couple beers, the entrée arrived wrong. Had to send it back. Finally the beers and the entrée arrived but still no 3rd appetizer. The waiter seemed to aimlessly go back and forth from kitchen to floor empty handed. After finishing the entrée we flagged him down (multiple times) to ask for the check When he finally arrived with it he had the 3rd appetizer in hand! Which we declined and made him take off the bill. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. How was the food? Boring. Very little spices and flavors. Ah well. Place was packed and 80% of the customers were east Asian so clearly Da Hong Pao is doing something right. It just didn't happen for us.

P.S. 03/22/2023. Since posting this review I’ve learned from my wife’s niece-in-law, a Chinese national, that meals in China are very different than meals in the west. Instead of a leisurely repast with maybe a cocktail to start, the Chinese meal is a hurried affair. Sit, order, drink water, food arrives, eat fast, get up and leave. That certainly seems to be the experience Da Hong Pao was attempting to provide. So it’s possible I somewhat judged them unfairly. (The waiter was terrible, though. That part...

This was one of the places we bookmarked as "had to visit" while we were in DC. Bloomington, Indiana lacks dim sum restaurants and by lacking, I mean there aren't any. We arrived an hour and a half after they opened. The restaurant itself is a lot smaller than I expected. We waited approximately five minutes for a table and our server came over immediately to get us waters and tea. Carts came quickly and our little table was covered in different foods. Everything was great. There was always more dishes coming out from the kitchen in the back and getting placed on the carts. I liked how they had chow fun on one of the carts. Other places I've eaten at only had chow fun available as a special order, which meant it was more expensive. It took awhile before someone (who was not our server) came over to refill the water for our tea. It was very busy so when our server gave us our check I went up front to pay. This was my first visit so I wasn't really sure if I was suppose to pay at the table or up front. I paid up front and the lady (possibly the owner) rang us up. No big deal. However, when we were getting to walk out the place our server yelled across the little restaurant, "did you leave a tip?!" I told him it was on the table and he just turned away toward our table. I looked around in utter confusion like what just happened. That was highly unprofessional, and I was slightly baffled at him saying that loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear. So yeah, I'm still baffled and I wouldn't stiff the man. I left a pretty darn good tip for the amount of work he had to do for us (ie. Get us water, tea, ask us if we are okay, and brought us...

Guys, If you wanted to pay a high price to get diarrhea please go for it. I went home ended up in the bathroom until 4am because of the stomached and diarrhea. The taro cake was hard as rock and we had to try so hard to just separate it, the fish cake was so hard to even lift it up from the plate, it stucks to the plate because it’s not fresh, it’s sour actually ( please see video in attachment) ; the meat in chowfun was dry and hard and my dad can’t even swallow it, and one of the dish the meat turned sour unfortunately— they put the food in their fridge for 3-5 days, didn’t want to waste it, then when we order (and pay for $7 per plate of 3 pieces dim-sum), they took it out again from fridge and have the chef to heat it up or fried again, making the dimsum even harder to bite. And most importantly, the waiter was not having it when I told him the problems, he was very busy and needed to go back to his own business, ( we were the only customers that time) he said”nah I can’t do anything about it, you want me to steam them up for you I can steam them again for you. What do you want”Then he left again while still talking. 😂😂I don’t think he likes his job but it definitely killed our passion for this place and lost our interest to come back again. Ps, I was very excited to bring my dad to this dimsum place again after 5 years and after all the drive and parking we thought it’s worth it. Unfortunately the business went downhill -The hurrying waiter ( he was hurrying back to watch his YouTube or TikTok , I had to bring the check to the front desk to pay myself at the end) and the pricy expired food gave me an “unforgettable experience”—paid...