Neighbor News
CAFE 101 needs more studying!!!
Review and opinion of a patron who will no longer be dining in this establishment.
If you are looking for a great Chinese restaurant in Alpharetta, keep looking. This one is so horrible it’s not to be believed. My husband and I went for a second time thinking the first time was poor because they had just opened. NOPE. It was worse this time.
The service, unless you are Asian, is terrible. I do not say this with any malicious intent to any ethnic group and have never mentioned this type of statement ever before, but you all need to know that the service is different for American clientele then it is for their Asia customers.
Here’s the difference:
If you are American you are seated then wait for a server. No drinks are presented, no menus and certainly nothing to munch on ( not the noodles). Some restaurants serve you pickled cucumbers or a small taste of local cuisine. Not Cafe 101. After flagging down a server, you are met with attitude and not a good one. Don’t even think of asking a question about what’s in the dish or the type of sauce its prepared in. You will also be met with a smug look.
Finally after ordering we are told that the dish we ordered- Chow Fun, a plain ordinary dish- was not available. How can they not have that at 7:00 on a Saturday night?
We chose another dish and then waited for our appetizers. We ordered Pork Buns ,which in New York’s Chinatown and purchased along Buford Highway, are amazing. I asked the server if the pork inside was BBQ roasted pork in sauce and was told yes. Well that’s not true either. The inside was stuffed with a bland pork similar to a wonton stuffing and completely tasteless. They do have a soup style bun that people do seem to like, but I will pass on that next time. It was also pretty tasteless.
After having our dish dumped in front of us- BURNT- we asked the server to remake the dish. He told us- Get Ready For It- “That’s how it’s made”. Are you kidding me? At this point we almost got up and left but since we were hungry insisted they remake the dish. The second time it came out , surprisingly, it was not burnt. Not good either but not charred. Noticing the table around us also having issues we began to also notice that the tables of Asian families had tea pots on their tables, as well as Chinese noodles, duck sauce and mustard. We noticed that all the tables of American people had none of these.
When they presented the checks to those tables they got a black coverlet with the check, orange slices and fortune cookies. Our table got a slip of paper, no fruit and certainly no cookies. I am thinking there is definitely something wrong with a restaurant that clearly serves people of different backgrounds with different service.
I, for one, love Chinese food, Italian, Thai, and Good old Kosher Deli,have traveled to over 150 cities around the globe and have never felt this out of place or more insignificant.
I think the owners of Cafe 101 not only need cooking lessons, but a lesson in humanity.
I will not be back or recommend this to friends and certainly hope their attitude improves to a less offensive and less obvious ignorance.