The #1 rule of chinese restaurants

I was surfing around on Yelp the other day, and I stopped by to read a couple reviews of one of my favorite Chinese restaurants: Queen’s House (my review here). It’s a pretty fantastic place where you can feed an NFL offensive line for around $30. No, the food’s not necessarily what you would call “healthy” or “gourmet”. But hey, can you really argue with a good $5 bowl of beef noodle soup that will last you two meals?

Anyway, I was reading along until I started seeing some absolutely ridiculous reviews, like this one [side note: Don't order Kung Pao Chicken at a Chinese restaurant and then assume it is representative of the food. It's like tasting the ketchup from In-n-Out and declaring the whole chain awful. Plus you look stupid.]. There were even several reviews complaining about the service. The service! At a cheap Chinese restaurant! Ha!

For those of you that don’t know, there is one undeniable rule of Chinese restaurants and it is this:

Do not EVER eat at a Chinese restaurant that has good service if it has cheap prices. Never. Do not pass Go. Don’t even think about it.

A cheap Chinese restaurant that has good food is cheap for a reason - they are skimping on decor and service. I think the understanding that Chinese restaurants aren’t dressed up like Quince is fairly well-understood, but people don’t seem to understand that good Chinese restaurants don’t give a shit about your “holistic dining experience.” If they have good food, they have lots of customers, so their entire goal is to get your ass in and out as soon as possible. Period. I mean, c’mon, they’re Chinese! Of course they’re trying to optimize revenue!

So in summary, if you sit down at a Chinese restaurant that has cheap food and the waiter treats you with general disdain, there’s a chance you’re in a good spot. It’s even better if, instead of placing your plates of food onto the table, they bring them an inch or two off the table and drop-clatter-slide them to the middle [note: they will slide because the server wiped your table with a wet rag right in front of you after seating you, which was seconds after the last guy stood up].

And my gosh, if you walk into a cheap Chinese restaurant and the server seems attentive and courteous? Get the HELL out of there before you end up with the Chinese version of Montezuma’s Revenge.

Seriously.