PF Chang’s is a Horrible Restaurant!
We dined at a PF Chang’s once before, about ten years ago. We vaguely recalled an average experience. But since ten long years had passed, we were willing to give the popular restaurant chain another try. A parking lot full of mini-vans can’t be that wrong, can it?
Well…
What is there to like about PF Chang’s?
I’ll try and solve this baffling mystery in today’s column.
PF Chang’s is a popular chain restaurant with multiple locations throughout North America, including here in Las Vegas. Proving once again that the general public’s taste in just about everything is appalling, here’s where bland Mc-Asian food gets dressed up in a casual dining atmosphere. This basically means the identical ingredients you’d get from a street vendor in Chinatown get hijacked for about double the price. That’s because the rice is served in a bowl rather than a white cardboard box. The cooking is pretty much the same.
Then again, it’s not the same. Most of the meals you’d eat in Chinatown — the vast majority costing under $12 — are damned tasty. At least they’re fulfilling. One doesn’t leave both hungry and angry. If there’s one thing that pisses me off, it’s leaving a restaurant both starving and furious. Not good. Such an end result is sure to trigger the wrath of hellfire.
Tonight, I dined at the PF Chang’s in Las Vegas located at the corner of Fort Apache and Charleston. Remarkably, this was only my second visit (ever) to a PF Chang’s.
SIDEBAR COMMENT: Marieta and I dined at a PF Chang’s once before, about ten years ago. We vaguely recalled a very average experience. But since ten long years had passed, we were willing to give the popular restaurant another try. A parking lot full of mini-vans can’t be that wrong, can it?
Big fucking mistake!
I ordered something called “Dan Dan Noodles.” How does a kitchen fuck up something so simple as “Dan Dan Noodles?” Here’s the menu description, which was cut and paste from PF Chang’s company website:
DAN DAN NOODLES
Scallions, garlic, and chili peppers stir-fried with ground chicken and served over hot egg noodles
Now, here’s what I was served (see photo below, if you can bear the horror).
Look at that plate. Look at it! I did not doctor the food or Photoshop anything (PROOF: Everyone knows I wouldn’t know how to use Photoshop).
Seriously, this is how my food was served.
Can you believe this?
Here. Take a much closer look:
Would you want to ingest this into your body? It looks like something after it’s been eaten.
For one thing, those are not “EGG NOODLES!”
That’s fucking spaghetti! In a Chinese restaurant!
Look at the noddles. Check out the seven-o’clock position of the photograph above. Do those look like EGG NOODLES to you?
Here. I’m not putting up with this. I did a Google search for “EGG NOODLES.” Here is what came up:
Do those noodles that I was served look like EGG NOODLES to you?
No, they do not!
For one thing, those noodles are supposed to be flat. Do the PF Chang’s Dan Dan noodles look flat to you?
No! It looks like fucking spaghetti. Maybe PF Chang’s scrimping on the ingredients. But they sure as shit aren’t fooling me. And, I’m not going to take it! I refuse to take it.
A second problem: The restaurant would have avoided this monumental embarrassment and public exposure had they simply treated me with respect. They did not. They disrespected me.
Here’s how the course of events went on Sunday evening:
SERVICE TIMELINE:
5:15 — We enter PF Chang’s from a side door. The glass door is absolutely filthy with what appears to be dirty infant handprints. That fucking window hasn’t been cleaned in weeks! The first sign something was not quite right with the restaurant.
5:16 — Place is filled with old people, and families. Another bad sign. Old people’s taste buds are shot to hell, and families don’t know food worth a shit. Should have been another waving red flag.
5:17 — We get seated at a table with chairs (two people). Right next to the table is an empty booth, with padded seats. I request the booth. The hostess gives a snooty attitude and says that since they are busy the booth has to go to a “larger party.” Hey Sister, when I demand a booth, sit me in a fucking booth!
5:18 — I clam up and take a seat in the hard prison chairs. Menus arrive. Everything is new to us, so we need extra time to go over the dinner choices.
5:25 — Russian waitress takes our food order. So far, everything is acceptable, despite a few minor bumps.
5:33 — Appetizer arrives. We order a large bowl of Wonton soup, which is more than enough to share. Very average. Very little meat. No shrimp. Maybe a flank of chicken to two. Weak limp-ass Wontons. The Wontons should not be soggy! Never!
5:41 — A man who appears to be the manager stop by and asks, “So how’s the soup?” Huh? How’s the soup? What is this — a game show? Marieta answers everything is fine as I’m fishing out a sprig of Chinese broccoli. Good thing my mouth was full of the soggy Wonton. I wanted to give the manager of a piece of my mind and tell him his Wonton soup needed some serious work.
5:50 — The large bowl is still filled with some soup. The waitress asks if she should wrap it up. We decline. If the Wonton noodles are soggy now, how fucking massacred are they going to be after they get home sitting in a 125-degree car while soaking in broth for another two hours!
5:52 — The two main courses arrive. Marieta ordered the Beef and Broccoli basted in a sweet ginger sauce. Very average. I ordered the Dan Dan Noodles. When I see the platter, I can’t possibly imagine this entree tastes even worse than it looks. But it is. ONE BITE and two minutes after my dinner has been served, I flag down the waitress. Unfailingly polite as I always am, I declare this entree is not what I expected. Technically, they are not obligated to make an exchange, since this was what I ordered. However, I make a strong suggestion that they should switch out the dish to make sure the customer is pleased. Waitress misses the hint and leaves me sitting with my dick in my hand, angrily mopping in front of the jail slop for the next twenty minutes. Too bad the manager didn’t stop by and ask how everything was. I guess he only gives a shit about the quality of the soup.
6:10 — Marieta and I hunt and peck at the Beef and Broccoli like two starving pigeons. We devour two bowls of plain rice. The Dan Dan Noodles remain on the table, virtually untouched. Marieta tries to sample my dish, the equivalent of falling on a live grenade to save the battalion, but can’t take it. She heaves for about three seconds before disposing a bite of the Chinese spaghetti into a napkin.
6:12 — Waitress returns and offers to wrap up the Dan Dan Noodles. We ask for the take-out container and perform this task ourselves (mindful not to waste food and the birds might eat it). We don’t like others wrapping up our food. There’s no telling what goes on behind the scenes. This is especially true if you’ve been a difficult customer, not that this applies, of course.
6:20 — Bill paid. She receives a 15 percent tip (instead of 20 percent) on a $40 bill because she shafted me on replacing the entree.
6:22 — We’re out the door.
6:26 — Unfulfilled and still hungry, we drive across the street and go to another restaurant, for what amounts to dinner number two.
Which now brings me to the question I initially asked in the second short paragraph of today’s column: What is there to like about PF Chang’s?
Answer: Being much wiser for the experience and ultimately satisfied that my instincts were (once again) right and that I will never go back.
Moral of Story: Do not order the Dan Dan Noodles at PF Chang’s!
TAG: Worst Asian restaurants
MY VIDEO RANT:
A friend and I have decided that PF Chang is Chinese for “House of Goopy Brown Sauce”.
We ate there once based on proximity to a theater, and since he’d never been in one. It’s been the butt of constant jokes ever since.
Very disapponting at PFC
in Ann Arbor, MI…Barely edible. So sad.
I’d take it one step further Nolan and say – never EAT at PF Changs! You weren’t kidding about needing good medical insurance to eat their entrees, they consistently rank at one of the worst restaurants in the “Eat this Not That” category with enough sodium in most dishes to choke a horse. http://eatthis.menshealth.com/restaurants/pf-changs
Smh. You all have been to bad P.F. Chang’s. I’ve ordered the same thing and it came out wayyy better looking as well as tasty. Haha sucks for all of you! Plus they serve you more food then other places do. Plates are extremely full and large enough to eat it 2 more times. It was a delicious restaurant.
Any buffet at half that price is way better. Some people pay for atmosphere; i would actually like the quality of the food.It’s soooo bland!! By the way Justin, how long have you been manager of a PF Chang’s?
I live very near to Chang’s and once walked into the restaurant and walked right out again. The smell alone made me ill but the environment also told me no way would I ever eat there. Have you ever eaten at the Steak House at the top of the Suncoast? Great place good food price not bad or across the street from Chang is Claim Jumper another chain but pretty good comfort food good service too average price.
This is totally unrelated, but I walked by a Panda Express last month and there were three Asians eating in it! Two of them were an Indian couple (she, dressed in a sari), the other appeared to be a nicely-dressed Korean lady (or of Korean descent) who was sitting alone at a table, weeping. I whipped out my cell phone to document this, but thought I might be intruding upon the privacy of the weeping diner, and put it away.
I had never seen an Asian in Panda Express before.
Old people taste buds? what is old to you? I think my palate is more discerning than yours. but PF changs is NOT good place to go.
Being discerning is not liking food of less quality than Chef Boy-Ar-Dee
Quoting from someone’s blog post from 2004:
Link for that quote: http://tleaves.com/weblog/archives/000091.html
Do not forget to mention that there are two scoops of sugar in EVERYTHING! I think that is what people find attractive, but YUCK!
You sound like a bitter asshole. Don’t like it? Don’t eat it. The fact that you pointed out that there were handprints on a GLASS door tells me that you went in there with the intent to bash it. Your opinion is biased and you should probably find something better to do with your time than record every second that something goes wrong. By the sound of it, your list would never end.
Me and my hubby ate once in PF Changs here in Bahrain. We love trying different cuisine and restaurants. It was our anniversary that time and we decided to celebrate and try the PF Changs Resto. It was a biggest mistake to dine there. The service is slow, food were oily and salty. They are also expensive.. it’s okay to pay that much if the food is worth it but it is totally not. I tried Dan Dan noodles too but mine it was too salty and i called to manager to fix it but she just said that it is really like that. the saltiness it was not something tolerable. She argued with me and then i just told her to taste it and she did. i can see from her face i was very right.
My girlfriend and I tried PF Changs last night for the first time ever. We both have been told that PF Changs is more expensive then typical Chinese restaurants but for good reason. The food quality is supposed to be much better and the taste is supposed to be amazing.
Not the case at all, just the opposite. Our appetizers, tuna tartar and vegetarian lettuce wraps, had absolutely no taste what so ever. Completely bland and very salty. We were very disappointed that we even wasted the money on those items.
So we decided to split an entree and ordered the Kung Pao Shrimp. For starters, the shrimp is fried using corn starch… tasted gross. The sauce was not tangy, sweet or spicy, but rather watery and tasted like salty teriyaki sauce. It was very disappointing and my girlfriend couldn’t eat it. I was starving so I ended up eating the dish, what a huge mistake.
After paying $36 plus 20% tip (our server was awesome), the pains in my stomach started. This PF Changs was located in a mall and our car was parked in the garage, about a 5 minute walk away. I barely got to the car, quenching and sweating. Once I got behind the wheel, the pains subsided, like remission. I raced home as fast as I could and upon arriving, sprinted to the door. I almost didn’t make it, came a millisecond away from having an accident in my foyer.
It took two days for the diarrhea to run its course and get the Kung Pao Shrimp out of my system. We will NEVER GO BACK!!! Take it for what it’s worth, PF Changs is disgusting and overpriced.
Jesus Christ. Shut the fuck up. All of you. It is americanized Chinese food. What do Americans like? Salt and sugar. They made it that way. You won’t change that. The main dishes haven’t been changed since the day p.f. changs started. You want real Chinese food? Go to China town. Instead of hopping your fatass in a minivan and digesting the most disgusting thing ever. Atleast its fresh made to order. Go to chili’s where everything is frozen and shut the fuck up
Your vulgar language makes you seem more pathetic than the restaurant. I agree its become a bad restaurant, but grow up.
Why would you eat fake ass Chinese food anyway. you are kind of a bitter asshole, if you actually knew anything about food you wouldn’t eat there. I know you probably lack a cultural education but you do not need create a bitch post on your blog about it.
Trust me the guy is not just bitter & foul-mouthed. You are better off eating cat food than the PF Chang Dan Dan noodles.
This chain is one of the reasons a majority of Americans are overweight and have high blood pressures because of the excess of sugar and sodium. Avoid chain restaurants and give your money to independent operators that care about food quality and store cleanliness.
I wouldn’t call the guy a bitter asshole. I just ate some P.F. Chang’s for the first time today and it’s absolute shite. He does, however, come off as hugely pretentions, which is just as much of a turnoff in my opinion.
Still, I can’t find fault in his opinions about the joint’s food if what I just ate is any indication of its overall quality.
The sad thing is that Philip Chang’s mother, Cecilia Chang, ran one of the first American ‘Chinese’ restaurants to serve actual Chinese food, The Mandarin, in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. It was written up in the recent book, “Ten Restaurants That Changed America” by Paul Freedman. I ate there twice in the 1970’s, and can still describe what I had to eat. It was that good. There’s a P.F. Chang’s near where I work, and I often go there to eat their Salt and Pepper Prawns. They’re not exactly authentic. They would be cooked with shells on in China, but P.F.’s version is delicious if they don’t overcook the shrimp. Everything else is mediocre at best.
I stopped reading the article after the egg noodle rant. Based on the comments it was the right call. Are you seriously that stupid? Egg noodles can come in all shapes and sizes. If you were actually expecting wide, flat noodles like in a grocery store then you’re too uncultured to have a valid opinion about anything remotely similar to Asian food, even something as remote as this restaurant. So ignorant and childish, but I guess anyone can have a voice on the internet.
It actually depends on location. I have had nothing but good experiences at PF Changs. ????♂️
This is so funny. I found this review while also searching for other haters of P.F.Chang’s. I don’t think the review is very good — calling thin noodles “spaghetti” just sounds dumb — but I agree with the conclusion. Last time I got P.F Chang’s I ordered Mala beef and they gave me not only a small portion for a dinner, but a significant amount of the meat was all fat. I don’t know why I expected more from a chain restaurant though. As an aside, people who have “favorite” chain restaurants need to eat better.