This is hard because I had high expectations going into this meal. Thinking it was going to be good I brought my grandma for her 76th birthday only to be met with disappointment. I’ll simply write an in depth analysis of my experience with my...meal as to not confuse people with both my and my grandmas opinions. It started the moment we walked in. i was expecting a chinese restaurant, but the decor was European? Almost old school French, table style aside, the plates, utensils, and overall decor was extremely confusing in regards to the type of meal we were having. I really thought we went to the wrong restaurant. The lighting was dimmed with a yellow hue, almost as if the restaurant was running out of electricity, but because of the yellow decor on the wall, the lighting made the restaurant very depressing. My grandma is a vegetarian so she took the 2700ntd option for her meal while I had the Dinner set at 3880ntd. My dinner started with the Ding Xian "Premium" Appetizer which consisted of 3 cherry tomatoes, 3 pieces of black wood ear mushrooms, 2 tiny pieces of radish cake and 3 slices of a very sad looking Taiwanese sausage. When I saw this come out as an appetizer I thought to myself, "huh this is kinda sad looking, but cant get worse than this right? Boy was I wrong". The second course was a fish maw and shark fin porridge. This dish is typically bland so it wasn't too far out of what I expected but still when you drop close to 4k for a meal, there are certain expectations. The third course was a stewed abalone and sea cucumber in oyster sauce. How do you mess up Oyster sauce to the point where it's just gloop with no flavor? The abalone was dry and chewy (not what good abalone taste like) It's to the point where I've had canned abalone that tasted far better than what I had. I ordered a wine pairing of two wines (by the glass), a Chardonnay from Argentina, and a typical Bourgogne Pinot Noir by Joseph Drouhin. (a negociant) The Chardonnay was ok, its what you expect from a table wine (light, fruit forward, and a simple every day wine. (No complaints here). However, it was when the red wine came that I got a bit upset with the staff. Having worked as a sommelier, I know when a wine has gone bad, and the wine they served was exactly that. The first thing I asked as soon as I took a whiff was how long ago the bottle was opened. This is because the wine was completely oxidized and had completely lost any of the fresh aromas a pinot noir is supposed to have. The manager lied and said that it was opened today but took the wine back and later came back and said, "this wine is supposed to have high acidity, it's what its supposed to taste like". I explained to him that the wine has probably been oxidized because it had no acidity left over due to oxidation, and the fresh fruit-forward pinot noir now tasted like a pruny mess, completely unpalatable and I couldnt even bring myself to swallow it. (I've had this bottle countless times since it's a relatively cheap wine you can find anywhere, and it was my job) He came back almost 20 minutes later, and asked me if I wanted another wine (Cabernet Sauvignon from Argenitna). This is an even cheaper wine but I could tell they opened a new bottle (thank god) just for this. At this point, I wasn't going to argue over a few bucks and just wanted to move the meal along. The fourth course was a steamed grouper with a slice of truffle, not bad, but not outstanding. No complaints here when compared to the rest of the meal. The fifth course was a pan fried iberian pork, and this was when I kind of lost it and started ranting to my grandma who was also ranting about her meal. (my grandma never complains about food, so when she does.. it's a big deal for me. Her meal cost close to 3k and we've honestly had better food for 1k) My pork was this flimsy looking piece of meat that was dry and overcooked. The sides were disgusting, with what was supposed to be crispy garlic, but god knows how long fried garlic has to sit to be that soggy. (I was literally playing with it and was able to roll it into a cone) It had a dollop of day old mashed potatoes (you could tell its old because the butter had already started to smell off, and it was just clumped into a small scoop (like cafeteria mashed potatoes, the kind you scoop with an ice cream scoop), and this piece of broccoli that was just sad looking. I was so upset with this course that I kinda gave up on the restaurant right there and it was at this point that I called another restaurant to book a meal for tomorrow for my grandma's birthday to make up for the experience from this place. The 6th course was supposed to be their signature noodle dish, but it was the saddest bowl of noodles I've ever seen. The noodle itself was good, but the soup that came along with it was bland and tasteless and I swear to god the first thing I said to my grandma was that it tasted like watered down uni-president cup noodles. It had this one overcooked limp shrimp just floating there, almost like if a fish had died in your fish tank and floated up. I was enraged after this course since this was pretty much the end of the meal itself and I still felt hungry and was wondering what I spent 4k on in the first place. I won't talk about desert since I didnt bother to eat it. It was just a scoop of vanilla ice cream that was served on some jelly and eh, I figured I was still hungry and didnt want ice cream before going to a McDonald drive through. Overall it was a disaster of a meal, and I'm still blaming myself for bringing my grandma to such a place for her 76th birthday. Jesus Christ do better please. Spent over 8k and still had to go to McDonald's after. The pricing was just because of the location on the 86th floor, but the decor ruined even that. I honestly don't even know what else to say or how to improve because there was just so many things wrong with this place that I get mad just thinking about this. I've eaten all sorts of things around the world, and this is really the first time I was this upset about a restaurant from start to finish. Bull testicles, and bear bile tasted better than this place. Please do better if youre going to charge these prices. I've written over 6000 characters and I still feel like I haven't done my anger justice. Sadly I didnt take too many photos since I was too pissed to take out my phone half the time.More
11
12
13
1
4
