Peking Garden at the Pacific Place Mall in Admarity was one of the worst dining experiences we had encountered operated by well known Hong Kong restaurant chain, the Maxim group. Our dinner appointment was booked by the company's PA and it was in the private dining room for 8 of us. We were told about the minimum spending of 5000 hkd for the private room when we booked. When I arrived to the restaurant, all of the guests and friends had already been seated cozily with a glass of wine, chatting and enjoying the gathering. My boyfriend suggested I order for all of us from the menu since Amongst us, I am most familiar with Chinese cuisines. The menu has many varieties of Beijing and Shanghai delicacies as well as Szechuan spicy dishes. Ben, the server in charge of taking our order informed me about the minimum spending charge and that it doesn't include any beverages and the service charge was also excluded. We were not told the minimum charge was only for food when we booked. The restricted requirements set by Peking Garden Restaurant surprised us all. Ben was very aggressive and pushy when introducing the menu choices to me with his stone cold statue facial expression. He consistently recommended choices on the menu with high prices which will make eyes and heart pop out. He also kept persuading me to order a crab meat special dish costing 260 per person. I had such a hard time choosing dishes due to the minimum spend requirement. Ben didn't seem to care about what we would enjoy, but instead he was literally pushing me to order food that I was not familiar with. Most of us at the table did not have big appetites and were mostly there to enjoy the company. We had reminded him to be conservative with the food order and we weren't there to feed a village. We suspected, Ben as being one of the biggest shareholder of Maxim group with how persistently he was reminding me our order was not up to the minimum of 5000 hkd yet. At the same time showing me his disapproval through his miserable facial expression whenever I chose to order some of my favorite Shanghai dishes. After getting his way and convincing (conning) me to order the crab dish for everyone, Mr "Maxim" finally left the private room with a condescending fake smile. He must've been fired as a used car salesman recently and took up serving as a new career path?
Once the food started to be served, it felt like it never stopped. He made me order so much food that our face started to resemble a Peking duck! ☹️ We were supposed to have an enjoyable evening with great company, nice food and wines but Mr. Ben had spoiled our night by selfishly pushing customers to over ordering food unwillingly. The worst part was that he didn't even stop after reaching the minimum spending requirement of 5000?! We ended up paying 7000 or more just on food items, and another 4000 or so on beverages, tea and nuts. This was highway robbery at its best! The most ironic part was we were charged 1100 dollars service charge for being slaughtered?! What madness! Service was so bad that we needed to instruct staffs what and when to collect away dirty dishes from the table. Rarely anyone attended to us in the private room when we needed services. I brought this up to the supervisor and Ben, but they didn't seem to feel sorry nor guilty on the recommendation over the minimum spending requirement which caused a huge wastage of food.
We sucked it up as a learning experience for choosing this restaurant. One more thing that topped our night was when we paid the full amount of the bill after our argument went no where, was that Maxim Group of restaurants usually gave discounts when paying with HSBC or American Express credit cards. When we asked why we didn't get that discount privilege of the promotion when we paid using the American Express credit card and their reply was that it did NOT apply to the private rooms! Only the people having dinner in the open restaurant can get the credit card discount. What kind of rules are set to punish the people who spends more at your restaurant?? Is it set by the same politicians who taxes the rich and rewards the not so rich? Robin Hood is in the House!
Please don't even consider dining here! Unless you don't mind to be scammed!
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