The Essence of China — Restaurant in West Linn

Let me start off by saying THE FOOD HERE IS AMAZING! It’s so unfortunate that the sever who used to be here regularly is now gone. Ever since this new server has been here she has been so absolutely rude to us every time. I’ve tried being the bigger person and just laughing it off & trying to joke with her about how she treats us but I’ve had enough. Just today, I placed an order for Lo Mein & Fried rice. THE SAME THING WE ALWAYS ORDER. I recognize her voice on the phone and she knows mine too because her tone always switches up. We pick it up & I notice something different in the bag… a bag of crunchy things. I open it up & it’s some white sauce vegetable dish. My husband takes the order back in & she tells him no, that’s what you ordered. He tells me so I come back in (I’m waiting in the car)& tell her that we ordered lo mein & are unsure of what this dish is? She YELLS at us that we ordered CHOW MEIN! & slaps down the box. At this point, I’ve had enough of this lady. She’s been rude to us every time we come in, just no customer service WHATSOEVER. Always talks to us like she’s annoyed we are there. But we always over hear her being extremely kind and easy going with other customers. She’s capable of treating customers with kindness just not us apparently. I don’t know what her problem is with us but we never even ask for special accommodations, we don’t send food back & the one time we get a wrong item from them we calmly ask if it can be switched out because e that is not what we ordered… she flips out. Mind you, there was a table of customers & she still made a scene in front of them. Even if I had ordered something completely different like sautéed green beans & meant lo mein, any other restaurant would have been much kinder EVEN if it was our own mistake! I’ve never been treated like this anywhere else & it makes me so sad because I LOVE this restaurant. I HATE leaving this review but I’ve been insulted enough here & I’m done with it. I’ve been here atleast 100 times, I’m not just a once in a while customer so I’m so deeply hurt that this is how I am being treated now since this new server has...

The service was exceptionally fast. The Happy Family had 4 superb shrimp in it, best I’ve ever tasted. But I wasn’t nuts about the dark sauce. The scallops were tender and good. The beef was tender. The vegetables were okay. The separate sticky rice was good. The price was reasonable and less than most.

The tea could’ve been a tad hotter, and the pot didn’t seem to be very full each time it was refilled for us. Unlike most, there was no preliminary soup. Appetizers, like most, must be ordered separately and none are complimentary to most if not all dishes

My wife’s #2 combo of chicken almond, fried rice, and sweet and sour chicken was a bust on all counts. It looked good to me, except the large pile of rice was quite brown, more so than I’ve ever seen, and not much of any other ingredients besides rice. She ate little of it. The sweet and sour chicken was strangely tough. She has teeth issues and can’t comfortably bite hard. She couldn’t bite off manageable pieces. We had to ask for a knife. I tried one - there seemed a layer between the breading/sauce and meat that indeed was almost rubbery. The flavor seemed okay, but it wasn’t exactly tender, given it was just chicken. The almond chicken is one of her favorite mainstays, but this version she said had some oiliness she wasn’t fond of.

This was the nearest Chinese place to New Hing’s in downtown Oregon City where we went first, only to find they aren’t open Mondays, despite what review sites and Hing’s own website say. What a disappointing 41st anniversary...

I've been ordering from this restaurant for quite a while. Their food is the typical Chinese fare. It's good enough, but nothing extraordinary. But I'm a loyal patron. And they've always been friendly and accommodating.

The thing I really loved about them was that they were so flexible with their menu. I'd order their "four of a kind" menu item and switch it up. I'd double up on rice or chicken or whatever, and the worst that happened was that I'd pay an extra buck.

Well tonight, they would rather see me not order anything at all from them and lose a loyal customer because they suddenly don't do that with their combination plates. There's nothing on the menu about this change. And the lady on the phone didn't seem very concerned about losing my business when I explained that they were about to lose a loyal customer and that I'd be posting an unfavorable review on Yelp. Granted, she was a new employee. I was very kind. And a bit surprised at the cavalier attitude she was expressing.

The manager was also "too busy" to speak to me when I voiced my concern and asked to speak with him/her. Strange. They must have recently had a change in ownership, because the way they're doing business tonight isn't the way to keep a business running. Looks like I'll be finding another place to get my take...