Steam Kitchen - BEWARE of this restaurant

Decided to try the new restaurant at the Golden Court plaza in the little restaurant space under the plaza (that replaced Dickens Now). Left absolutely in shock and disgust at it.

STEAM KITCHEN
328 Highway 7 Easte
Unit B1, B2
Richmond Hill, ON
L4B 3B7

On first appearance, the restaurant is actually very visually appealing. Very modern and sleek with two TVs propped in the corners. Very much similar to Dickens Now, the hand before it.

Pretty typical 

In terms of interior, not bad on first appearance! So where did the problems start??

We began by ordering L22 - Stir fried instant noodle with Japanese Pork Chop. Now, unfortunately, I am ashamed to say that I am of Chinese descent and I can not read as much as I'd like. Looking back at this menu now, I do notice that it says "salmon" in the Chinese description for L22.

When the server brought us a steaming dish of cream-baked spaghetti, we were confused and said they brought it to the wrong table. This is where the service trouble began. The man who took our order before rushed over and said "No, this is the right dish, you ordered this" I was confused (as I didn't know about the Chinese and English confusion in the menu) and said I had ordered a stir-fry dish. He got a menu and pointed at the Chinese description, "See you ordered it". At this point I was getting a little upset because his tone insinuated that it was my fault the dish wasn't what I expected so I told him this was most definitely NOT a stir fry, or even close to what we ordered, and he argued with me saying the Chinese is right there saying what the dish was.

What? So the English portion of the menu didn't matter? I told him to take the dish away and cancel that order because it wasn't what I asked for.

The Chinese reads: Salmon and Ham Cream Spaghetti

Our next order was probably the only order they got.. half right. This was the L3 - Chef Special Spicy shredded Pork Noodle Soup. 

The menu called for pork.. we got chicken

Lastly, we ordered L24 - Stir Fried Spaghetti with Beef w/ Black Pepper Sauce.When it arrived, it was stir fry... but with Instant noodles, Pork chops and no black pepper sauce. When we brought this up to the same male server, he began blaming me again that I should have read the Chinese- portion because it's the correct one "See? This is what you ordered, so here it is!". As I began explaining the English portion was not right at all and it wasn't my problem that their menu was wrong. He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes and walked away to get another waiter to talk to me. Um, excuse me?! First of all, how dare he blame me that it is my fault for not reading the Chinese part of the menu when it's their fault for getting the menu wrong. Secondly, how can you just walk away when a customer is talking to you because you can't handle an upset customer? I was fuming at this point because they didn't even say sorry or offer any compensation whatsoever!

L24. Stir Fried Spaghetti with Beef w/ Black Pepper Sauce
This is the dish i got instead
No spaghetti, no beef, no black pepper sauce

The worst part was the wrong food orders did not taste that good. Everything was incredibly oily and my sister stated that her soup noodles were very MSG-heavy. So the quality of the meal regardless of the wrong order was not very good either. Then again, I may be biased because I was in a sour mood to begin with

Now I know that one could argue that since it is first and foremost a Chinese cafe, you should be reading the Chinese portion of the menu  but in my defence, I have been to numerous cafes and the English has never been this far off in translation. Sure, it's typical to get the occasional grammatical error or spelling typo (Magno Slush, anyone?) but to have and English translation THIS far off from the actual Chinese? Outrageous! Secondly, having correct menu items is one of the most basic things in running a business!!

Anyways, I decided not to tip them and wrote a note on their bill reading:

I am giving no tip because:
- Service was awful; servers were very rude
- Did not get what we ordered
Good luck with your restaurant, I won't be coming back. You can be sure I will be writing a review about this place from my bad experience here.

A few minutes later, the manager came over to our table and started to give us a story about their gas machine not working.. I cut her off saying it was irrelevant. She explained that she had not hired the employees but her co-owner had and even wrote down the rude waiter's name. After apologizing many times she gave us the meal free of charge. Hooray! At least we didn't have to pay for bad food and service? I did truly appreciate her coming over to talk to us and semi-explaining the issue.

I am not too concerned for this place though - no restaurant has seemed to last more than a year in that particular location... this doesn't seem to be an exception. Needless to say, I will not be coming back any time soon.

View Larger Map