1. RobertinSeattle said,

   Finally went for the first time since they announced their grand opening last month. Arrived around 1:30 on Sat. Aug. 7th and it certainly looks like they’ve ironed out a lot of the earlier problems of poor service and lack of staff as reported in earlier reviews. The service was reasonably quick (although it did take a few minutes to get our final bill to check out). But everything we sampled from the dim sum steam trays was incredibly good, fresh and well-stocked. Tried seven different items and each was as good as what we got used to at the original House of Hong in Chinatown so we now have an official dim sum house in Wallingford! Congratulations to Po Lee and his family and partners!

   Sat, August 7 at 6:04 pm
2. Luna Bianca said,

   We made our first visit to Bamboo Village on Friday at noon. The most noteworthy part of the visit was that it was LOUD-and only half full. Don’t go here during “prime meal times” if you want conversation to be a primary part of your meal.

   My companion and I had to nearly yell to hear each other across the table and it was exhausting. Ironically, everyone was “yelling” but we couldn’t hear anyone’s words–it was a huge, ricocheting mess of voices. (We started out in the center of the room and moved to a booth at the edge of the room — which helped only slightly.)

   The next issue was ordering off the menu (instead of getting dim sum) which created intense confusion. In spite of having menus in our hands, the dim sum carts came by again & again – repeatedly interrupting our already labored conversation.

   After we made our selection, we waited a long time-finally asking four different people to take our order.When we finally got someone to take our order, he wrote it down and then read it back to us correctly: ‘cashew chicken’ and ‘prawns with vegetables.’ (Right off the lunch menu.)

   When the food arrived 25 minutes later, it was wrong. Then there were conversations with THREE different people about the order being wrong. They each politely, but resolutely, insisted that WE misunderstood what we ordered.

   (While writing this, I’m wondering why we didn’t leave at this point. Oh yeah, that would be low blood sugar from being hungry when we arrived and it now being an hour later. And, we really wanted to try this place.)

   Only when I picked up the paper the server wrote our order on and showed it to the third person did anyone agree we could have what we originally ordered! Then we waited another 20 minutes to get the correct food.

   Finally, some positive news: the food was good (slightly bland, but soy sauce helped) and reasonably priced. The hot & sour soup was delicious. The vegetables were crisp; prawns perfect; tender chicken. My friend loved the egg rolls (which I didn’t eat because, oddly, they contain chicken) and the dipping sauce was tangy-not sickeningly sweet as it is at many restaurants.

   Since they opened very recently, we’d give them one more chance-at a different time of day. If the sound level isn’t lower and the service isn’t much more organized – and accurate – we’ll never go there again. And that would be sad-given it’s within walking distance of my house, I like the food and I support individual, local businesses.

   Sun, August 8 at 1:42 pm

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