Royal Inn Oriental Cuisine

DO NOT ORDER DELIVERY! I am INFURIATED with the way they handled my situation! I ordered and waited for an hour to receive my food and when I called to inquire about it I got the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE! An Employee by the name of MAY even hung up on me! I told them that I would not pay $25 when I was quoted a 15-20 min wait and they told me that they would not deal with me to call their manager the next day. They told me that they were backed up on deliveries and when the poor driver finally did show up(he was oblivious to everything going on)i was told that there were hardly any deliveries! So not only are they RUDE they LIE! How's that for customer service?

Posted 11/25/08 | Report Abuse

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Royal Inn is tucked in the back corner of a nondescript strip center, where the only viable businesses seem to be the Chinese and Greek restaurants a few doors apart.

We've been enjoying lunch at Royal Inn for years. The food is consistently good, prices are reasonable, and the service is prompt. The decor is basic, but clean, and the dining room has sufficient capacity to usually eliminate waiting for a table.

At most Chinese restaurants, chicken is chicken is chicken. There might be two different preparations - stir fry or fried - with only the sauce to differentiate. Not so at Royal Inn. Lemon Chicken features an almost-plate-sized flattened breast, pan sauteed and presented cut into diagonal slices. General and Sesame entrees feature pounded chicken breast strips, very lightly breaded and flash fried, that arrive in large, tender curls, about four to an order. Sweet/Sour and Orange entrees are the standard inch-square chunks of white meat, covered with a thick batter, and fried.

The good news is that you can request the preparation of one chicken dish with the sauce of another. The Lemon Chicken preparation served with Orange sauce on the side is a personal favorite. (To date, we've not been charged extra for doing so; they simply charge the higher price of the two entrees. For example, the menu price Lemon Chicken is currently 50 cents less than the Orange variety, but if you request the Lemon preparation with Orange sauce, they charge the menu price of the Orange.)

At Royal Inn, we stay away from the non-fried chicken entrees, such as moo goo gai pan, chicken with vegetables, chicken with garlic sauce, and yes, even our typically beloved Triple Delight. Why? The texture of the chicken in these preparations can border on velvety but more often than not hints of being undercooked, and we detect a faint, but unpalatable odor of raw chicken. Maybe it's just an unusual sensitivity on our part, but we've left too many uneaten chicken entrees to give it another try.

The shrimp and beef dishes really shine. Shrimp with green beans, with 8 or 9 plump, tender shrimp and a mound of fresh, crisp/tender green beans and a mildly spicy brown sauce, is what we order most often. Kung Pao Shrimp, with lots of crunch from peanuts and celery, is flavorful, as is Mongolian Beef, with its caramelized scallions.

Most lunch entrees are priced between $6 and $7 and include choice of soup (forego the basic egg drop or hot and sour in favor of the unusual chicken corn), appetizer (crispy but basic egg roll or skimpily filled rangoons), and rice (fried or steamed). Beverages are NOT included.

Service is very efficient. Beverage orders are taken just as guests are being seated and arrive almost instantaneously. Food orders are taken when beverages are delivered; soup arrives promptly. Almost as quickly as the soup is finished, the steaming entrees arrive, leaving guests with the business of lunch and lunch conversation rather than the anxiety of wondering where the lunch is.

The only drawback to this consistently good experience is the checkout. Servers bring the tab to the table, but you must go to the register by the door to pay. This is a popular lunch spot, and the line backs up regularly, but not necessarily due to volume of business. The problems are very slow credit card processing speed and the annoying practice of having the cashier also in charge of taking phone orders ... sometimes interrupting the flow of checkout for several minutes at a time. (Our personal record is a frustrating 12 minutes for total checkout time.) This could be easily resolved, but in the eight years we've been otherwise enjoying lunch at Royal Inn, management hasn't figured out that some other configuration during the busy hour between noon and 1 pm would be an improvement.

In any case, we'll keep returning!

Posted 09/01/08 | Report Abuse

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