Maria Alvarez
Google
My family made the honest mistake of choosing Phoenix Palace to celebrate a personal milestone, and the way we were treated from the moment we arrived was sincerely the worst dining experience I have ever experienced. Our party was large (17 people) and so we requested two tables to be pushed together to ensure we could all eat together. The woman serving (whom we believe is the owner) initially refused to push the tables together, claiming this would disrupt the flow of the space. The restaurant is large and there were only two other couples eating in the far corners of the other side of the room the entire time we were there. We should have left right in that moment, but after a lot of back and forth, my dad talked her into seeing that we were celebrating a family event and that it was important we were all seated together. That seemed to sour the owner’s mood. She proceeded to serve everyone with a frankly bizarre and patronizing attitude. At one point, she made a remark about the amount of food we ordered, and since there was only one cook, the food came out platter by platter over the course of 20 minutes instead of all together at once. She also made a comment implying that the food was coming and that we needed to wait, even though no one was making demands of any kind. The worst was when she took a platter of leftover beef that everyone had already served themselves from and scraped it onto my dad’s half finished meal. He asked her, “how did you know I wanted that?” She said, “I didn’t, but that’s what you get.” We were all shocked by the audacity of her action. I have never seen a server take leftovers and just dump it onto someone’s plate on which they were still eating. My dad then asked her for a fresh new plate as he had not intended to eat what she had scraped onto his his original plate. My mom proceeded to ask her why she was acting so rude, and the owner practically waved her off. I think it must have clicked after that moment because from then until we left, she became overly friendly the rest of the evening. As for the food, it was sincerely some of the worst Chinese food I’ve ever eaten. The fried rice was burnt and dry, with a strong smoky flavor that overpowered anything else. The shrimp had not been deveined. Everything was overly sauced. The water tasted as if it had been siting in a dirty tank. Just nasty, hastily made food. The bill came out to $400, with a side of attitude and snark. We will never return to this establishment, and we will make sure everyone we know in the East Valley is warned about the horrific service and the mediocre food. Horrible experience.