Joy Luck Place

10/03/09

Great if you want additional STRESS

by gahm123 at Citysearch

This is over a period of several years so we're rather familiar with this restaurant. Many Chinese restaurants are not known for great service, but have great food. So expectations for service are minimal. If the servers take your order, give you tea and deliver food to you, that actually meets our expectations.

Sometimes you get that service here. However, more often than not you get unusually bad service. One senses it is a management/worker issue because this place is almost uniquely awful. We're talking Ishtar the movie, Gigli, Plan 9 from Outer Space terrible. Food service at Pelican Bay must be better than this place.

If you get a response at all from them it's a quick "hai, hai" and then you can proceed to wait and wait and wait... It's interesting to watch customers flailing their arms desperately trying to catch their attention, like we're all scrambling for that last helicopter before the volcano explodes.

Once when we somehow got a waiter's attention, he yelled at us for asking for water. We were very polite but it didn't matter. So he brings us bowls instead. I suppose it's better than nothing.

On one occasion we saw a more knowledgeable customer pay a waiter upfront before seating. Maybe that's the way to get decent service here.

The only reason we even go there is if we have guests who insist on going there, or it was over a period of years in a forlorn hope that they had a change in management. Nope.

They truly are Cupertino's finest No-Star restaurant (negative stars if possible).

• Pros: It's possible to have decent food
• Cons: Service straight from Hades

11/29/06

one of the better dim sum places

by Ailin419 at Citysearch

I have to agree with most of the review, its is one of the better dim sum places but it is very busy during dim sum hours and the service is very lousy. But that sort of comes with authentic chinese restaurants, hehe.

Service is lousy but not bad. If you love you food enough I guess you can put up with it. Dim sum is good here but there are always long waits so go at your own risk.

• Pros: good food especially the scallop dumpling.
• Cons: long waits, service is just so-so

10/07/06

Avoid at all costs

by sslin001 at Citysearch

Don't go there if you want to have a good time, or if you are trying to make impression on your guests.

After the hassel of finding parking space, I was hoping for a good meal. The service was much worse than before, not worth the 10-20% tips from $350, 10-course, dinner. The cook even screwed up an everyday dish---fried rice. It came out hard as rock, can not chew and swallow it, but had to since it would look bad spitting it out. I was ready to over-turn the table and throw chairs.

• Pros: None
• Cons: Everything. There are many other better Chinese restaurants in Cupertino.