Yue X.
Yelp
Man, where to start. Was here with a large party of 20 for a friend's birthday and none of us had been here before. I really hate giving negative reviews for a restaurant unless it was outstandingly bad in some way, but for the TLDR: Great atmosphere, food was ok for the most part, service was awful, price is horrendous. For the rest:
So upon walking in, the atmosphere is quite nice. It clearly bills itself as a higher end establishment, and it looks like it. The wait staff were polite, and the restaurant was pretty quiet (though that might be because there weren't many people). Overall, it looks like the kind of place for a date night or event.
Problem is the rest of it. As I'm sure you've seen mentioned elsewhere, the food is extraordinarily expensive for what you get. Like I understand you're paying an upcharge for the ambiance, but $15 for like 4 dumplings and $30+ for a few pieces of dim sum? The dim sum might be good, but it's not twice as good as say Ding Tai Fung or King Wah. I could maybe understand the cost if it was a Michelin restaurant or something, but this is not that. Like the food isn't bad, but it's not nearly exceptional enough to warrant the price. My pictures probably make it look a lot better than it tasted.
So I personally ordered the Dungeness crab soup and kung pao chicken, and got to try another friend's dumpling/dim sum. The kung pao chicken was pretty awful; dry, bland (surprising for how many peppers they used). I do have to admit though, the Dungeness soup was the surprise of the bunch. I'd say that's the item I found actually worth the price on the menu. Excellent texture and taste, fair amount of crab chunks, and 12 bucks. If they scale all their items to that, this place would be far more popular. But that's if they improve the service...
Which was pretty much a mess. The staff were certainly polite, but it was probably the most incompetent service in fine dining that I've experienced. Like please, this isn't a Wendy's, and the restaurant was near empty that night. They messed up the order for almost every person on the table. Sure it was 20 people, but we had about 3 different people wait on us that night, and if you can't coordinate between that, write it down or something (if management doesn't allow that, well that's a separate problem altogether). At the end our table were split into 3 bills, and they gave those to the wrong groups too.
So if you're not paying for the service or the food, are you really just paying for the atmosphere? Maybe, but it's not worth that kind of markup and I'd rather just get some Red Robin at that point honestly. I see no reason for me to come here again when there are so many better options at this price point.