Shanghai Chinese Restaurant

I love the fact that young students take jobs to supplement their income, but when they can’t even understand English, and this woman from South America had no clue that is not cool, because it brings the quality of service down.
And she knew nothing about Chinese cuisine, which made it doubly worse. The food here is really very good for a family style restaurant and the prices are completely reasonable.
I have no complaints but this waitress really ruined it.
First she brought us the egg drop soup with no ladle.
How are we supposed to serve that for two? You usually have the soup as an appetizer and then the dim sum plates come out and the server normally asked do you want them one at a time or altogether well, she didn’t ask a thing and brought the dim sum out with the soup so we had to return the dim sum. We ordered the soup dumplings, and she didn’t even bring a spoons. Then she brought everything out altogether never asking us OK then we asked her for some condiments like Chinese mustard.
It took out more than 10 minutes and there were only four other people in the restaurant. The problem here is that they didn’t have enough weight staff because she was also answering phone orders or taking reservations.
I like this restaurant and the fact that it’s close to the Galaxy theater is good however the service they really need to work on.

Owner response

Best dim sum spot in Austin.
I'm a fan of Wu Chow, Qi, Ling Wu, and Ling's Kitchen, but the dim sum at Shanghai Chinese Restaurant is the most authentic of all.
The decor is no frill but that's pretty typical for a Chinese restaurant.
The price is very reasonable for fresh made dim sum.
We'll definitely be back. I'd recommend getting the Zhaliang - fried dough sticks wrapped in rice dumpling sheets, and the Sticky Rice with Chicken.
And make sure to get tea to go with your dim sum.

Owner response

The food, let's just say it satisfied the craving.
We haven't been able to find one that meets our needs since the pandemic until we gave Shanghai a try today.
They are mediocre, but, I think they might be the only decent option in Austin these days.
Our family was able to find something each one of us liked: BBQ pork buns, egg drop soup, the pork rice soup, the sticky rice thing, the rice noodle wrapped shrimp, the rice noodle wrapped fried bread sticks, the pork dumplings.
The radish cake was a bit too chunky and plain to our liking, but we were happy that we could have it.
The chicken feet was missing the taro bites and peanut I usually saw in other dim sum places.
Although this isn't something I would come back on a regular basis, but I will come again if I ever crave for Dim Sum. Service, typical family owned Chinese restaurant service.
Note, someone will bring you water upon seating, then you order on your phone, no one will check on you until your food is served. Suggestion to the management, have someone check on the customers to see if they have questions about the menu about 5 minutes after they sat down.
Don't assume your app works ALL the time, don't assume your customers know everything about the food! The wait staff are friendly enough, but lack of proper training.
But you see these across most of the Chinese restaurants. Although 15% tips are automatically added for groups of 5 or more.
We always tip extra to bring that up to 20% to 25%, not because the service was so awesome, but to appreciate the fact that they are trying the best they know to serve us. One thing I love about the restaurant is that the tables are arranged with generous spacing, definitely a plus.

Owner response