Yumcha, Surbiton

first, the food. dee-lishus. we shared starters: seaweed, really good sized portion and very well cooked; tempura vegetables, perfect flavour and perfect batter; veggie dumplings; the sauce transported them into manna from heaven. my main was the fake duck ~ and frankly it was the best i've eaten. my friend chose chose the real duck, in plum sauce, and said it was the best she'd had since visiting china. after all that, no space for pudding!

the service was gently attentive (i'm not a fan of over-attentive) thoughtful, and individual ~ i felt the owner and his wife (or is that owner and her husband?) were ideally suited to running a restaurant, in that they seemed to know intuitively how much attention to pay to each customer.

frankly i'd eat there every week if i lived closer.

thanks yumcha ~ keep it up!

and to would-be customers? go! if you like chinese food you'll love this place.

Ordered a delivery from Yumcha on Friday we were told that it would be 40 minutes, an hour later still no delivery, telephoned them and was told it was just round the corner. another 20 minutes passed and still no chinese, 2 more phone calls eventually it arrived and we were told by the delivery driver that it had been in the car for 40 minutes, it was cold and soggy.

We spent over £50 and unfortunately paid over the phone with a card. The assistant manager, manager and owner are the most arrogant, ignorant people I have ever spoken to, refusing to refund anything and down right rude to me on the phone. Absolutely disgusting service, I urge you to use another Chinese restaurant. If you must use Yumcha whatever you do don't pay with card so you can choose to give them cash on delivery if they actually bother to deliver!

The most horrible Chinese food in UK.

I’ve been so many Chinese Restaurant in 30 years, Yumcha is the worst one so far I had found. ……the lamb disk too tough like a piece of plastic; the port rid not edible..............unfinished meal and really sick :((

Shockingly bad! Crispy noodle seafood dish tasted like salty water, with some rubbery seafood mixed in and some completely flavourless noodles separately.

Thai Green Curry - murky green salty spicy water, absolutely no coconut milk and no way was it chicken, it was probably turkey and tasted awful, in fact inedible

Very poor, very disappointed

This was our first visit to Yumcha. Food was ok but average. Service was poor. We had a long wait until drinks orders were taken, the waitress did not appear to know the menu and wanted to know the numbers rather than the names of the dishes, the wrong starter came out and although it was eventually replaced there was no apology and we were made to feel like we had made the mistake, the soy source and chilli dips came out some time after the starters did. Food was slammed down when served without saying what each dish was. When leaving we did not wish to leave a tip, two waitresses counted out the cash before they would let us leave and made a big issue of the fact we had not paid the tip. THe manager got involved and demanded to know why we did not pay the tip, we explained and we were finally allowed to walk out.

Ok food, awful service

nice place - quiet as it's a bit out of the main Surbiton town centre/high street (by about 100m).

Food timely - hot and tasty.

Good value - 3 service staff - barman (excellent), 2 floor/table staff 1 new starter and 1 experienced - like with it, foods great.

Very good presentation, service and food at Yumcha

very professional excellent venue if you wish to impress and great value

I've dined here many times and always been more than happy with both the food and service. Whether dining with a large group of friends, or just with my two small children, the food has been delicious and the waiting staff delightful. It feels like a family owned business with a range of generations involved in the greeting and waiting. The sizzling steak is to die for. The range of wines very good and very reasonable. Yumcha is on my list of regular restaurants because it doesn't disappoint. It may not be the cheapest meal around, but it certainly is one of the best.

So, this is the second time I've been to Yumcha Chinese Restaurant now and to be honest, the second bad experience.

The restaurant itself is beautifully decked out, great first impressions when you first walk in. Unfortunately that's where the good things pretty much end.

The food itself isn't bad, but it's nothing special. And it should be at the price, Yumcha occupies the upper end of out-of-London Chinese food prices.

So, to the review of today's visit. First off, false advertising, after the last time I would probably not have gone back to be honest, however when walking through Surbiton looking for a place to stop for lunch we saw a sign on the pavement outside advertising their "special lunch buffet". Nothing like a deal to make you give a place another chance. However after we sat down to order they informed us that it was only Sunday for this deal. Oh well, we were here now we thought, let's give it a go.

My next gripe is that there is a virtually non-existent vegetarian menu. One starter, vegetable spring rolls (we'll come back to these later!), and no listed mains. Having the lunchtime set menu we were then charged extra for them to make up an egg foo yong. I don't quite understand how making what is effectively an omelet would cost more than any of the offered meat dishes but there you go.

OK, so back to the spring rolls. Vegetable spring rolls. They had meat in them. As you've probably guessed, one of our party is a vegetarian and biting into a mouthful of shredded mystery meat is not a good appetiser. The staff were very apologetic and brought us another portion of vegetable spring rolls in double quick time. Meat again! So another waiter came over to apologise, the excuse was that "...the spring rolls are not made here, they are out of a packet and the supplier must have put the wrong labels on...". This was a major concern to me, I have a potentially fatal nut allergy, and so if the staff cannot assure me of what is actually in each dish that leaves me with an obvious problem.

After the second portion of "vegetable" spring rolls our vegetarian asked for a different option and they made up some tempura vegetables which was mediocre, if anything a little too oily.

The meat dishes were fine, but not exceptional. I've a real suspicion that the lemon chicken and possibly the beef in black bean sauce was also out of a packet, but they were acceptable.

The service was friendly enough, but inattentive and I'm afraid a little unhelpful at times. We were literally the only people in the restaurant at lunchtime but we had to get the attention of the waiter throughout, never the other way round.

Finally, value for money - poor, 2 courses with soft drinks for three people came to £60. If the food and the service was really good this would be fine, but Yumcha really needs to improve to operate at this level.

In conclusion, I really need to reaffirm the point that the staff need to be able to confidently tell patrons what is in the food, as there are a great many people these days with food allergies.