A Tale Of Two Restaurants

Our extended families recently had our Chinese New Year dinners at two local, very popular, restaurants.  We celebrated once with my father-in-law's side of the family, and once with my mother-in-law's.  Both dinners had approximately 40 people people attending.  And for both we ordered off their regular menu instead of opting for one of the restaurant's banquet set menus.  In my opinion there was clearly one restaurant more superior than the other in terms of service, food taste, and overall value.

We visited Grand Lake Chinese Restaurant on the weekend immediately following Chinese New Year.  The restaurant was packed and every inch of floor space was used to accommodate the Chinese New Year rush.  I felt the tables were extra 'squished' together making it quite uncomfortable.  The food obviously was prepared in advance and reheated as most of the dishes came out barely warmed.  Note that a lot of Chinese restaurants pare down their menus during Chinese New Year, offering only a select handful of their most 'popular' dishes so they can prepare  the food in advance and just reheat.  This is suppose to allow the restaurant to provide quicker service so they can turnaround the tables to do more business.  Even though they did this, our dinner still lasted over 2 hours!  There isn't much to say about the taste of the food - just average, however the portion sizes were small and, I felt, wasn't good value for what we were served.

On March 1st we visited Fancy Chinese Restaurant.  What a great difference it was from the previous weekend.  First of all, the restaurant gave our party of 40 a private area even though the restaurant was packed.  They have a great 'build your own set dinner' menu as well as their regular menu.  The portion sizes were larger than the previous week's and the taste so much better.   The cost of this dinner was over $100 more than the previous week's but I consider it a much better overall value when you factor everything from taste, portion size, service and comfort.

I definitely know which restaurant our family will be making our regular go-to one from now on.

Y.C.