Chef Chen

We tried Chef Chen for the first time on Christmas Day and were so pleased! We got a fairly large to-go order and they got everything perfect. The food was hands down, the best Chinese food we've had in this area. So excited to have found them!

We usually go to China Lake, but they're closed on Tuesdays (which, of course, is when I wanted Chinese), so we tried Chef Chen.nnMy husband and daughter shared the sesame chicken and enjoyed it, but my Chow Mein with vegetables was a disaster.nnUpon opening the container, the chicken was translucent... not a good thing to see with chicken. I decided to try a bite, but it was undercooked, so I spit it out. We tried cooking everything, but with the rice it was a gummy mess, and the chicken was still a strange texture. Everything went into the trash.nnDespite the rest of the food being okay, I will not be visiting Chef Chen again. Definitely was not a good experience.

Terrible customer service, if they forget part of your order they do not care. I understand it's the holidays during a pandemic, but the customer service issue we encountered went beyond that. We ordered at 545PM and the food arrived at approximately 7PM, incredibly reasonable turn around. Unfortunately, they forgot half of the order. No big deal- it happens- so we call and report the oversight. The manager immediately claims to call the driver to have him come back with the second half of our order. We received a promise they would call us with an update shortly. We called them again at 735PM and they advised they were making the second half of the order having it delivered. Ok, we were understanding and said that was fine. We called again at 834PM and were told the same thing. Again, we chose to stay calm. Its the holidays, people are busy- we get it. But when I called for a 4th time at 9PM and was told again, the order was going to be delivered shortly, I finally got frustrated. As of this time, it was more than 3 hours after we had ordered. Chef Chen never bothered to reach out to us, we had to call them each time. This is when we have officially become frustrated and finally ask for a cancellation or a refund of the missing items. The restaurant argued. Insisting on the order being delivered and offering a 15% discount on a future order. At this point, we have no desire to order again in the future, the food was no longer needed and we had to change meal plans for half the family. I had to ask numerous times for a refund before one was finally agreed to. A refund of $20.19 was offered to offset the items we had not yet received. At 910pm the food was delivered and we received a call from Chef Chen saying that instead of just refunding the items they would just have the driver leave the missing items and $20 and call it even. So, half our meal was 3.5 hours late, and were given $20 cash instead of a proper refund. The staff was very short on apologies and lacked understanding of how to correct an issue. Instead we were told numerous times it wasn't the restaurants fault because they were busy and just didn't have time to fix the mistake. Again, I understand it is busy- but when a restaurant makes a mistake it should not be a punishment for the customer. If they were not going to get the items out timely, we should have been told that upfront and given a chance to cancel the missing items. instead we were forced to call 4 times and request a refund multiple times before action was finally taken.

First time trying a new place for Chinese and god is it awful... I got orange chicken and hot/sour soup.nnMy orange chicken is hard as a rock... can’t even bite into it. Hot and sour soup tastes old.nnAt least they didn’t mess up steamed rice..... hopefully this is a one time issue and not their normal food service.

I usually don’t do bad reviews but I was so embarrassed because we planned a big family lunch and the second we walked in the restaurant smelled so bad and rotten. The floors were super sticky and mirrors were disgusting and not wiped down. You can tell if they don’t clean the seating area then imagine what the kitchen would be. The food came and it was all old and rotten. The rest of our family left and we ended up staying and got a horrible stomach ache. DO NOT go here. I understand it’s covid but the restaurant was NOT clean at all. I almost threw up. Even the seats were sticky, the guy kept hovering over us and watching us which made us uncomfortable. Never going here again save yourself the embarrassment.