Critic's Review
So you're all set to open a restaurant that you've been working on for months and you "discover" that someone else has trademarked the name; uh oh. Time to call the menu people and Quick Signs. No matter; Temple Street Eatery is a better name for a restaurant than Fat Buddha anyway. They did keep the logo.
I walked in and there's 1 table taken and I see a counter. A girl hands me a menu. "Can I sit anywhere", I ask. It was here that she should have told me that I was supposed to order at the counter, because it wasn't clear. The rest of the adventure was out of whack because of this simple mis-step.
I sat down as if it was a full service restaurant, which it's not; it's one of those deals where you order at the counter and they bring your food. I call it semi-serve which is more accurate than "Fast Casual". She was trying to be nice which caused me to continue to not quite "get" it. She asked what I wanted to drink. I asked if they had iced tea and she pointed at the beverage station. "Oh, I have to get it myself?". "I'll get it for you", she said. More confusion. She brought me a cup, so I still had to go over and get it. They didn't have any lemons out; I had to ask for those; Lemons should be out at the beverage station if you're going to charge $2.75 for Iced tea. Even Chipotle has lemons out.
At this point I realized my mistake, but it would have been awkward to tell her I'd just order at the counter. She offered to take my order, so who am I to argue? I ordered 4 pork dumplings and a Korean Cheesesteak; they call it a BulGolGi Cheesesteak (I think it should be spelled Bulgogi). She brought out a number, which was odd since at this point I was the only one in the restaurant.
I kind of expected the dumplings to be brought out first since they're usually an appetizer, but the sandwich came out first.
My first thought was "Where's the Beef?" Kind of skinny for a cheesesteak. I took a bite; the beef was fantastic. I had my doubts about the carrots, but this was terrific. Unfortunately, it was too much bread for the portion, so each bite was giving me a lot of bread and just a little bit of beef.
The owner came over and asked how everything was; "I'm waiting for my dumplings"...she made a face and looked at the kitchen; they were just coming out. They came out with the "traditional" dipping sauce, which looked (and smelled) like plain red wine vinegar. That wasn't going to work. I mentioned that I wasn't going to like that, and they brought me another that was more like a ponzu.
The dumplings were deftly prepared with a delicate skin, but I thought the pork filling was boring. It really had little flavor; no crunch, nothing that told me that they were Asian. They have potential if they work on the recipe.
I went up to the counter to pay. They have one of those Clover POS systems where they swivel the screen and you sign with your finger. Tipping is "optional", which means that you have the choice of tipping or feeling like a cheapskate. They have buttons where you can choose the amount to tip; but my feeling is that the numbers are too high. 15%, 18%, 20%. Am I really supposed to tip the same at a "Fast Casual" restaurant as I would at a full service restaurant? 10% is plenty for 1/2 service I think. I got extra service so I gave them 18%.
They didn't charge me the $2.75 for the iced tea; a benefit of the confusion. It would have been $20 if they had.
Conclusion
As I was driving home I thought about the "cheesesteak". If you got a regular cheesesteak with that amount of meat and cheese for $10 you'd think it was a pretty bad deal. Why should this be different?
The big issue here is that it's fast casual without any of the benefits of fast casual; it's not cheap, the portions are small and there's tipping. The food is better than Pei Wei, but the value isn't close to comparable. There's no lunch menu; At the full service restaurant they own, Christina Wan's, I can get twice as much food for $10. For $10 they need to give me a much bigger sandwich than I got. Normally I wouldn't have ordered the dumplings; I just wanted to try more than 1 thing. If I had just gotten the sandwich it would have been $15 and I would have had to get a salad at Fresh Market.
The danger here is that people will accept the reduction in service in the same way we've accepted that we don't get a salad or 2 sides with our $25 entree anymore. What we have here is "entrepreneurs" who are trying to push a fast casual concept without passing on the savings to the customers.
It's probably a decent option for take out, although I'd rather do Chinese and have 3 days of leftovers for the same money.
Note: Their system also tacks the tip to the amount after tax, so the 18% tip they calculate is actually over 19%.
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