China Chef Restaurant

Horrible SERVICE! A co-​worker and I came here for lunch today. We had a 45minute lunch break. My co-​worker ordered the Moo Goo Gai Pan and I being a vegan, ordered the SHIITAKE mushrooms and Asparagus dish. Being in the restaurant industry (professional chef) I tend to be very understanding to restaurants. We ordered our food promptly, the waitress let me know that there would be a charge for my brown rice, cool, not a problem. (Although it was not stated on the menu).
She proceeded to sit at the other end of the restaurant at a table and talk with a friend for the entire length of our visit, not even checking on us when our food came out or if we needed more water, which my sriracha loving friend was in dire need of!
Our food came out and I was served white rice, I kindly told the man dropping our food that I had ordered brown rice and he ran back to retreat it. While sitting there, I realized that the mushrooms were not Shiitake but button mushrooms. I had ordered the near $ 9 plate for the health benefits of the shiitake mushroom, delicious button mushrooms are pretty much garbage health wise. The man looked at me nervously when I asked why I didn’t get shiitake mushrooms almost trying to tell me they were, but not quite having the nerve to come out and say it, I can only imagine. Oh it’s just a mushroom, well fish is fish but if you were to order Salmon and get Catfish I’m sure you’d have something to say. I said I didn’t want button mushrooms and the guy says «okay» and leaves not to be seen or heard from again. Although the staff was Asian, I do not believe any of them to have had an english language barrier that I could identify, if anything these were very educated and refined individuals.
I didn’t eat my food, with the exception of one bite of mushroom that was like biting into a cluster of volcano. The mushroom was searing hot and full of molton hot liquid, when you bit into the huge mushroom chunk it sent scorching hot liquid into your mouth that tasted like moldy water, very hot moldy water. The brown rice I tried to eat was completely dried out from sitting in a warmer for too long and was crusty and chewy as well. I sat and waited seeing as just short of staging a musical number inside the restaurant, we were not getting the attention of our server. We were the only table there.
The server finally gets up and brings our check to us when I am finally able to tell her about my meal, the next set of events shocked me.
Me: Ma’am, I’m sorry but I ordered Shiitake Mushrooms and Asparagus and I was given button mushrooms instead.
Server: Well, why didn’t you eat it? (!)
Me: Because I ordered shiitake mushrooms…
the server gives me a disapproving look, uncomfortable I make a pseudo uncomfortable joke
Me: Besides, asian mushrooms are the best anyways (Don’t worry, no one laughed then either)
Server: (Angrily, I swear) Well, you should have said something to the guy that dropped your food and not waited until I handed you your check!
Me: Ma’am, I did and he walked off.
Server: (rolls eyes!!) Yeah, sure.
My (19 year old) co-​worker: No ma’am, really, she did. The man ran off and he never came back, but she told him.
Server: Well, why didn’t you come to my table and get me, I was in the same restaurant as you! (I swear she yelled this and passionately pointed to where she’d been sitting.) Her friend looks up from her green cased blackberry and quickly looks away.
Me: Because you are our server and we thought that you would come to us. (Now I am starting to lose patience and this woman is really beginning to bother me) Ma’am, just take my meal off the order and we’ll be on our way.
Server: I’m not doing that, you waited until the end of your meal to even complain!
Me: (becoming even more agitated) Ma’am, I didn’t eat this! You never even came by to check on us, instead you sat and talked the entire time we were here, now take this off and I’ll be on my way. Don’t worry, I am never going to return here again.
Server: I don’t care if you never come back, I am not giving you a discount on food that you wait to tell me about when I hand you the check, I am not taking it off!
Me: Ma’am, you WILL take this back and I want it done right now as you have wasted enough of my time.
(some uh-uh’s and nuh-uh’s ensue, finally the server says she will take 50% off my food only and that’s all.)
Me: BUT I DIDN’T EAT ANYTHING! Why am I paying for food I am not eating?!
The woman proceeds to stare at me. I hand her my card and pay for it and my coworker’s meal leaving all the food there. The woman walks back to her friend and is saying all sorts of things about us in her language to her friend. How do I know, because she is pointing and yelling in our immediate direction in an empty restaurant, I would surmise it was about us.
My teenage co-​worker cried about this when we got back to work, feeling the blame for choosing the place, she’s just a kid. That sucked and so does China Chef.

I used to stop in here pretty regularly with some buddies from work, and even when we got out of that habit, I would still come here on my own for lunch from time to time. Until today, I hadn’t been back in quite awhile, but even after that hiatus the friendly hostess/​waitress remembered me, commenting that she hadn’t seen me for awhile. Definite points for China Chef.
The menu is of the simple lunch-​special variety, but China Chef is a step above most similar establishments. The small space is clean with hardwood floors, nice tables, and Chinese art and calligraphy hanging on the walls. It was a bit incongruous, however, when Tim McGraw started playing over the speakers. I ordered the General Tso’s chicken, which came with a thick hot and sour soup full of shoots and tofu skin, plenty of button mushrooms, seasoned with cracked pepper. They used to have a small salad bar with some fried wonton strips for your soup, but it may be a sign of the times that it’s no longer available. Further, it looks like the prices may have gone up slightly. But when I inquired after the fried strips, the waitress happily brought some out to me.
After the soup, my order came out on a large, sharply dressed plate, with about six huge chunks of juicy white meat chicken in a thick sauce with just enough fresh jalapeños to give it a kick. The fried rice was on the side with a crispy spring roll and some steamed broccoli. The other plates like Szechuan or Kung Pao are just as tantalizing, especially when you’re in the mood for Chinese.
As I left, the hostess implored me to «come back again soon.» When I said I would, I wasn’t lying.