Moon Palace Restaurant

I experienced what could have been an average to good Chinese restaurant with nice atmosphere, moderately high prices on dinner items, and pretty good service.  However, I encountered THREE very BAD food QUALITY issues the day I went!

Moon Palace does NOT at ALL live up to the 2 Star Rating Chicago Magazine gave it.  If you're curious about checking it out because of that, and expecting that level or excellence, you may wish to save your self a trip that perhaps shall disappoint you.

I did not see many Chinese people in there, and I guess there may be a reason for that.

The service is not refined per se, but it is very friendly, shows great effort, and is just very diligent and timely.  Drinks are always refilled quickly and dirty empty plates disappear like lightening.

Most dishes were nice and soups and appetizers were at a reasonable price point.  Dinners were definitely higher priced than most Chinatown restaurants. They just were not better.

The clams in black bean sauce tasted very far from fresh, and they were a huge disappointment.  The clams were also overloaded with what appeared to be too much ground pork in the sauce.   The Hunan fish recipe was delicious but even under the mask of what was a nice recipe, the fish quality did not seem good enough, and I occasionally detected an older fishy taste when eating the dish... maybe there was also quite a bit of MSG / Sodium to hide the not so fresh fish taste I detected at times?

You also need to watch out for the Pot Stickers.  They were served a little too soft and thick, with too much grease, oil, or fat oozing out to the plate, and that is not what I hoped for.  If that is what I wanted, I would order xiao long bao or soup dumplings.  Also, the meat in the pot stickers were not prepared carefully enough, as I tasted hard strange objects while I chewed them (that scares me about the meat quality inside).  That was really gross...

If I lived close, I would perhaps go and try some other lunch specials, but it is hard to justify a special trip to the area just for that restaurant.    On the weekend, lunch for 2 can quickly set you back for $60 with tip, without any drinks.  It was Ok in some ways, but simply not that good to justify the trip.

They have some of the freshest chinese food I've ever had! I love everything I've tasted so far, but amongst some of my faves are the sesame chicken, sizziling rice soup and shrimp toast. A bit pricey, but worth it I think. I'll definitely be back and always recommend Moon Palace whenever I'm near Chinatown with friends.

Worse service, they put friends ahead of you in line to be seated. Yell at you. Provide poor service and rude.

Before I say anything, I have been coming to your restaurant for 10 years. I love your food and was never swayed to change restaurant inspite of my friends and their opinions.

We arrived around 7 pm. We were sitted for a table for four. We had 5 adults, one 2 year old and one 3 months. We told the host that we will need a bigger table. The host then said she will move us to a bigger table. We waited for 15 mins, no one came back to sit us. So , we went to the front desk again to find out what happened. They said that they gave away the other table to another party and promised us the next free table. She pointed at the table that was finishing up their meal. We said we will wait . While I was standing infront of her , she got a phone call for a reservation for 6 people at 8pm. At that point I did not realized that she had promised them the same table she promised me. We waited for our promised table for another 30 mins. By then both children have been restless and hungry. Once again i approached the front desk to inquiry about the table and this time they said its for a reservation. The host looked at my direction and proceeded to sit the incomplete party ( there were only 2 guest out of 6 that was in the restaurant) to the table she promised to my family. We waited for almost an hour with two kids for a table that the host never intended to give us. If she has told us we would have left earlier to find a different place so we could put our kids to bed on time. She was rude about it and did not offer any solution. My group was really unhappy and left.  Sad to say my long dedication to your restaurant had to come to an end after last night experience .