Xin Asian Bistro

This is the new Asian restaurant in town in the same strip mall as Hana Market and Gaza. They serve Korean-style Chinese food. I tried several dishes and all were very tasty. The Champon/Jampong is a spicy seafood noodle soup, the Jajang mein is noodles in a brown sauce, the tangsoo was Sweet and Sour Pork which was much better than the typical sweet and sour chicken you would get at most Chinese restaurants in town. I also had some vegetable fried rice that was very good. In general, I don't like fried rice because I think it is heavy and greasy, but this was very good and I would order it again.

The portions were huge and the service was friendly.

So I went to check this place, because it has the same name as mine "Xin". I like the food, especially the seafood pancake and jajang noodle, i'd try the kimchi soup next time. The service is not that terrible, but they did forget to bring us spoon, and stuff, and just gave us a big bottle of water so we could refill ourselves, but this is okay for me. The service lady was kinda funny and joking about how my American friends use chopsticks, but not the rude type, my friends seems okay with this. Okay service, if you ask whatever you need, they will bring to you. But they do pre-charge 18% of tips.
The food taste really like the kind of Korean food you would find in China, it really similar to one of the Korean restaurant near my alma mater in China, so it kinda remind me of my college life.
For those who are vegetarian, there is only one vegetarian dish, mixed vegetable stir-fry with rice. I think that dish is kind of boring, or plain, just they do not put much effort in designing the vegetarian menu, not too much to be surprised of. Their rice is good though, and they use a cute bamboo-like bowl to hold the rice.

I was told by a colleague at the office that 'word on the street is that they had hired a chef all the way from China to cook at this place', so as you can imagine, I was excited to try Xin Bistro out.  My excitement was met with disappointment almost as soon as I sat down.  The waitress while civil was not very friendly, for a place that supposedly offers 'full service' (gratuity is included, but we'll get to that later), you'd at least expect her to stop and speak with you instead of doing the 'walk and talk'.  The menu, the description of each entree to be specific, was very generic and did not generate much enthusiasm, listing the ingredients and telling me that they're stir-fried is far from enticing.  The waitstaff also was pretty clueless as to the flavor of each dish as they could not answer any of my questions without having to run into the kitchen to 'find out' or looking confused, much less making any sort of recommendations.  I had to repeatedly ask for refills of my water, and finally they just brought out a bottle of water so I could pour my own glass, which is a fine concept if they kept the ice coming, but on a fine hot day where the A/C was not running in full throttle, well, a clever idea became a lazy one.  When the food arrived, the flavor was not bad, the ingredients were fresh enough, but it had a bit more salt than I would prefer.  I was also distracted by the flies trying to compete with me for dinner (again, the room was warm and those ice was melting faster than they could be replaced), so I just hurried and asked for the check.  The check came and as I was handed the bill I was told that tip was included, 18% of the total bill, which is fine if the service was acceptable, sadly, it wasn't and I was not asked once by any of the waitstaff how my meal was until I got the bill.  By then it was a moot point.  Xin Bistro has a Korean owner and manager, and the entire waitstaff are also Korean, so for someone like myself who does not speak language, I find it discourteous, if not rude, to have the servers exchange words in Korean right in front of me.  Keep in mind that this is not a mom-and-pop hole in the wall place, by all setup, Xin Bistro is trying to be an upscale full service dining EXPERIENCE, the kids smoking right outside the front door (we're not in Paris people), the walk and talk waitress, the clueless waiter, the cooks who were clearly not from China or even Chinese (the chefs/cooks I have seen walking out of the kitchen were of Hispanic ethnicity), the warm (not in a good way) atmosphere, the flies swooping around, the so-so food and the lack of service in general really cannot justify the word 'bistro' nor can they think they had earned that 18%.  Would I go back?  Perhaps, if they can fix these issues (though this is the same place owned by the person who owns two other food businesses in town, so I'm not sure why this new place falls so low even if it's the first couple of weeks of business).  I'm going to wait a while before I go back and give them another try again.