Tasting China Restaurant Canberra

We were visiting Canberra and also celebrating a family birthday. The food was delicious and we would highly recommemd the Kongpao Chicken. The Mongolian lamb was also superb and we also tried the eel stew which was very tasty. The service was friendly and attentive. This is quality chinese in a nicely decorated restaurant. We will be back.

We thought we would try something new. Our entree and seafood fried rice was delivered without much delay and then we waited for over 30 minutes for the Angus beef dish that was never delivered! In the end we left, very disgruntled and were given a short insincere apology. Do not recommend this restaurant at all. Seafood fried rice very light on seafood and very poor customer service. A shame really as we like to try new places!

This place was great before COVID, the food and the service. But everything goes south after lockdown, we went there after lockdown the first time, the food was different, the service was fine. Second time, we’ve been waiting for 40mins to be served, we left in a disappointment. Never gonna go back!

Having had family over for the first time in a year due to covid we booked a table to celebrate together. Dressed nicely, drove 35 min into town, parked ages away but with long lost family elderly parents and 6 y.o) we were all happy to make an effort and looked forward to the dinner. No time limit on the table like most other Civic restaurants) but you need the whole night to wait...and wait...and wait. First sign something was wrong was the dirty mop in the mop bucket left out in the dining room. It took 15min to have even drinks taken and then another 15min for it to arrive. There was two waitstaff on and around 20 people in the restaurant hardly busy. The Riesling was served warm!! No glass with the beer. Ordered Peking duck pancakes, sweet and sour chicken, Cantonese style fried rive, dumplings, pork buns and spinach w/garlic. Everything came out at once, thrown on the table and wait staff were not to be seen again so we were forced to go to the counter to get service for dropped cutlery, water top ups etc. At one stage the dining room was left completely unattended for a substantial amount of time we watched the wait staff come out of the kitchen, they had obviously been eating their own dinner as they came out wiping faces with hands and full mouths. Totally wrong for restaurant service staff to be eating their meals in the middle of service when guests are not being attended. When we tried to make eye contact for service we were ignored completely. No opportunity to order replacement drinks for the warm wine obviously there would be no replacement cold anyway). The duck was dry and grey, hardly worth the $48. Dumplings soggy and falling apart, and the Spinach never arrived. Fried rice and sweet and sour were nice . Upon departure we were confronted with another angry couple who were absolutely livid that they had not even received their meal and had been waiting over an hour for service ignored as well). I don 't think anyone wants to be confronted with agro on what is supposed to be a stress free famiy dinner so yes, we were dissapointed that we were confronted with that. The most unprofessional service I 've ever encountered. Infact these waitstaff seemed totally disinterested and they didn 't know the first thing about restaurant service and it HURT to pay the bill. Not one IOTA of acknowledgement about the warm wine, the missing spinach and the dry duck and how would they know, they never even returned to the table to ask. No itemised receipt available and only given basic copy of eftpos transaction so not able to even dispute the bill. This restaurant doesn 't even have a basic level of service let alone a friendly or welcoming vibe the experience was frustrating, stressful and dissapointing and the food was lacklustre :

For $27.90 expected sweet and sour pork with pineapple to be a safe option. VERY disappointed pork was pork mince. Similarly, for $19.60 expected fried rice with prawns and chicken to be a reasonable meal addition. Was as average fried rice with no prawns and minimal chicken bits. Very disappointing meals at top price point for this type of place