Teaday喝茶天

Recently, I might have been unlucky as it was easy to encounter pitfalls while dining ⚡️

🚶‍♂️‍➡️ Let me share my thought process on the rating and clarify the origins of my star rating:
I initially wanted to give this place 3.5 stars (I thought the food was decent and the service was okay), but in the end, the way the staff asked us to leave flipped my entire evaluation, making me want to give it just 1 star. However, considering that we were allowed to finish our meal, I decided to give it 2.5 stars instead.

This visit was recommended by friends and family. Their previous experience dining here was great, so they suggested I come along.
But surprisingly, this time it was such a disappointment that even my friends and family couldn't accept it. I was fortunate that my habit of taking pictures and writing food reviews for Fooday helped us avoid some pitfalls, or we would have truly taken a big loss!

📖 I'll let the photos explain the dishes, but let's talk about the service experience and what went wrong!

👉 This restaurant specializes in casual Chinese meals, where after eating, you can enjoy savory and sweet snacks paired with good tea at a leisurely pace – a dining style that my friends and family really enjoy.

However, located in a tourist area, I understand that there might be dining time limits.
But the time limit was only stated on the menu, and the staff didn’t explain it to us. We didn't really think about how this time limit was calculated, which I believe contributed to the issues we encountered later.

The menu simply stated: "Dining time limit: 90 minutes," and following our preferences, we ordered our meals accordingly. After taking our order, the staff merely reminded us, "There are a lot of people here, so the food will take some time," and then left.

At first, we waited happily for our meal, and when the air conditioning wasn’t on, I asked a staff member in a shirt for assistance, and soon after, it was turned on; they didn't provide napkins at the table, but after notifying a staff member, we received them – none of these were major issues, and we didn't mind much.

Until, halfway through our meal, my friends noticed, “How come the diners who came in later have received all their courses, and we haven’t?” 🤔 At that moment, the staff member in a shirt happened to pass by us, checked to confirm that our meals had indeed not arrived, and then, in an authoritative tone, instructed another staff member to check.

We then realized that this staff member we had kept interrupting was likely the store supervisor or manager, who was the only one to notice the issue at our table.

Just as we were nearing the end of our meal, and the tea and snacks had just arrived, suddenly another staff member (not the supervisor) came over and said, "Your dining time is up," standing right beside us as if to urge us to leave.

We were quite astonished 😨.

Without any prior warning about the time, shortly after serving us the snacks, they were asking us to leave.

My friends and I fully aware of our slow eating pace in our group knew it was impossible to take an entire hour just to finish a single meal. With the 90-minute dining time limit, we never had a problem with not having enough time, and how could it suddenly be up when the tea and snacks had just arrived?

I looked at my phone, and the time showed 13:25.
I could tell that this notification was problematic.

Initially, I realized this notification was wrong because on the way to this restaurant, we happened to pass another very popular restaurant with a long line outside. To check if it was the mealtime causing the crowd, I took out my phone and confirmed the time was 12:09.

At that time, we were still a few hundred meters away from this restaurant, so no matter how you calculate it, it was impossible that we had exceeded the 90-minute dining limit by 13:25.

But I had no proof, struggling to argue with the staff, after all, who remembers every single moment after entering a restaurant?

Later, I suddenly remembered that due to writing Fooday reviews, I took the habit of snapping photos around the restaurant, and one of them was of the detailed order! The time written on that was 12:25.

I quickly presented the evidence to the staff, showing them we hadn’t gone over the time.

After glancing at it, the staff member said, "Let me check," and walked away, not long after returning to inform us, "We start counting from the seating time," and insisted again that we leave, stating that the seating time had been recorded.

My friends and I were very angry; if the staff had told us from the beginning that dining time is calculated from seating, and even the delay in serving our food is counted into the dining time, we wouldn't have needed to spend nearly half of our main course price on extra tea and snacks.
(Main course prices range from $380 to $550, and the original meal only included a bowl of tea, any tea swap could only offset $60, while tea displayed on the menu that could be refilled only came with snacks, costing $240-$400.)

Not to mention, they recorded the seating time incorrectly! Not only was there no prior notification about the time limits, but we were also prematurely asked to leave!

Later, I communicated to the staff, "Although we were notified that the food would take longer to prepare, we did end up waiting a long time. Initially, it wasn’t mentioned that the clock starts from the time we were seated. Now that the tea and snacks have been served and it’s clear we haven’t finished, could you at least let us finish our meal before leaving?" Only then did the staff show impatience and go ask around, eventually agreeing to let us finish our meal.

Later, I verified the times:
Not to mention seating, we entered the restaurant at 12:14;
The order was placed at 12:25;
The first dish was served at 12:46;
The last dish came out at 12:54;
And the first round of tea was served at 13:08.
Yet, they wanted to rush us out at 13:25!

This meant that we only took 11 minutes to sit down, look at the menu, and complete our order (and that was the time the staff took to input the order into the system). We waited for our dishes for 20 to 30 minutes, and each one of us finished our main meals in about 20 minutes, having barely taken a sip of tea before being told that time was up and we had to leave!

My friends felt that if this was the way they were timing us, why would they specifically recommend tea snacks when ordering, only for us not to be able to enjoy them? There was truly no point in ordering tea and snacks from the start!
(They hadn’t encountered being asked to leave the last time they dined here.)

Personally, I feel that the rules weren't clearly stated from the beginning, and the restaurant recorded the time incorrectly. We felt wronged and misunderstood, making it seem like we were begging the restaurant for leniency, which left a very bad impression.

Note:

1. When we were asked to leave, I observed that there were still empty tables, and I didn't see anyone waiting at the door.
2. We indeed left after finishing our meal; we had to hurriedly drink the tea and waited a moment for the restroom (which only had one for men and one for women) and left around 13:45.