I’ve been eating at the Full Kee restaurant off West Broad Street here in Richmond now for almost 8.5 years. I’d say I’ve been a loyal customer. I’ve reviewed it plenty, but I feel I have to share details of my last experience there.

See, the Full Kee holds you captive. The relationship has been a little love-hate over the years. You can ween yourself off of their dim sum specialties for so long, then you travel to a far more cosmopolitan city, and eat dim sum there. Whatever good or bad you have, the treats at Full Kee welcome you back. It’s “down home” dim sum, like you have come to appreciate it.

This time around the service took an all-time low. You see, if you go for dinner, service can be lackluster. You just don’t feel like people want you to come back. They probably recognize us, and know we’ll come back. They don’t have to win us over.

So, during a weekday lunch, service was painfully slow. We ordered dim sum items, as there was no cart service. While other tables got served, we kept drinking water and tea. We finally asked. “You ordered so many fried items, it takes longer.”

No, only two, and you can bring out that which gets steamed right away. Okay, I didn’t say that, but I was thinking it strongly.

Finally, the first items come out. Fried shrimp roll (egg roll). Yuck. It was stone cold. I waited for fried items, and it comes out cold? It’s chewy and nasty. Sorry, wouldn’t eat that.

As other items finally came out, the waitress became confused. She was offering our items to other tables. Then she pleaded with us to take a stuffed eggplant plate. “No thanks. Really. Just bring us what we ordered.”

“What was that, again?”

When we left, they did refund us two items that never came out. What a disappointment.

I hate to see places that have the potential to make good food go south with either bad management or bad service. I can’t say that I won’t go back, mind you, but too many more episodes like this, and I won’t have any choice.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 12:51 am and is filed under Asian, Restaurant Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.