We took my mother to the Great Wall in New Haven for a belated mother's day brunch. She had a great experience at Hei La Moon in Boston and was excited to go for dim sum again.
The five of us arrived at noon and it was packed. There was no sense of organization and the people waiting just stood in the take out area not knowing what to do or how to get "in line." The takeout area was pretty neat, one could pick a selection of hot foods and get it to "to go." Dim sum was also available for take out for those who didn't want to dine in. We should have done that.
I should have known, it was commencement season and the restaurant was full with diners celebrating. There were empty tables but the staff was slow to clear the tables and turn them over. At one point, I wanted to get a bin and start busing the table myself. After all, I used to waitress.
After a 30 minute wait, we finally got a table. We tried to get drinks and the girl told us to get it ourselves from the fridge. We wanted to place an order for a few things of the menu and there was no one that came by for our order or drinks. We finally pulled aside a girl with a cart and she kindly put the orders in for us. Typically at the dim sum places we frequent, there is a server who handles our drinks and additional orders as well as the check then there are the ladies who just pushes the carts. It seemed like the girls with the carts also took orders and served food from the cart.
The dim sum carts were slow to come around. Usually, I'm overwhelmed with all the carts coming at once to showcase their goods but in this case, I had to flag them down. We got the dim sum dishes that we typically order: Shrimp Garhow, Shrimp rice noodles, fried tofu with shrimp, steamed curd, turnip cake, boneless spareribs and chicken feet for my mom. Everything was either too salty or too bland on top of being SUPER GREASY!
We got the special chow mein dish and the noodles came out undercooked. It was still hard and crunchy. After sending it back, the noodles still came back hard. The dish lacked flavor and it seemed like it was assembled as a salad instead of cooked together.
The best thing we had was the fish fillet in Szechuan sauce. The fish was crispy and the sauce was spicy.
Everything else was below average. I probably won't be going back.
The five of us arrived at noon and it was packed. There was no sense of organization and the people waiting just stood in the take out area not knowing what to do or how to get "in line." The takeout area was pretty neat, one could pick a selection of hot foods and get it to "to go." Dim sum was also available for take out for those who didn't want to dine in. We should have done that.
I should have known, it was commencement season and the restaurant was full with diners celebrating. There were empty tables but the staff was slow to clear the tables and turn them over. At one point, I wanted to get a bin and start busing the table myself. After all, I used to waitress.
After a 30 minute wait, we finally got a table. We tried to get drinks and the girl told us to get it ourselves from the fridge. We wanted to place an order for a few things of the menu and there was no one that came by for our order or drinks. We finally pulled aside a girl with a cart and she kindly put the orders in for us. Typically at the dim sum places we frequent, there is a server who handles our drinks and additional orders as well as the check then there are the ladies who just pushes the carts. It seemed like the girls with the carts also took orders and served food from the cart.
The dim sum carts were slow to come around. Usually, I'm overwhelmed with all the carts coming at once to showcase their goods but in this case, I had to flag them down. We got the dim sum dishes that we typically order: Shrimp Garhow, Shrimp rice noodles, fried tofu with shrimp, steamed curd, turnip cake, boneless spareribs and chicken feet for my mom. Everything was either too salty or too bland on top of being SUPER GREASY!
We got the special chow mein dish and the noodles came out undercooked. It was still hard and crunchy. After sending it back, the noodles still came back hard. The dish lacked flavor and it seemed like it was assembled as a salad instead of cooked together.
The best thing we had was the fish fillet in Szechuan sauce. The fish was crispy and the sauce was spicy.
Everything else was below average. I probably won't be going back.