We bought a Groupon for Chingquing months ago, mistakenly thinking that it was part of the same restaurant group as the Chongqing in Burnaby. We realized our mistake when we read that it was only valid at the Broadway restaurant. We made reservations for a Saturday night for our family and our regular dining buddies.
The restaurant is in a complex that has its own parking lot accessible from the back lane so we parked there. There were plenty of spaces available. When we walked up the stairs to the restaurant, our visit didn't look very promising. The restaurant had its own patio overlooking Broadway, and of the five or so tables two of them were occupied. Not bad. When we walked into the restaurant, it was completely empty.
We were greeted by three different people, of which one I'm sure one was a manager. All three of them greeted us in English, which isn't normal for a Chinese restaurant. Regardless, we were designated a table and I asked for a high chair for H. As the rest of our party arrived and settled in, there was still no high chair. H was walking around having fun, but I was standing the entire time looking at the server I requested the high chair from. He looked at me a few times but never brought a high chair and then disappeared. I asked a second server and he walked out to the patio to check on the diners there and came back in to finish setting up a different table, completely forgetting about my request. Finally, I got his attention again and he ended up bringing a high chair.
High chair shenanigans aside, we all sat down and looked over the menu. I don't normally criticize badly designed and constructed menus, but the menus at this restaurant were very low-grade. I can make vastly better menus with some freeware and my camera phone in under 2 hours.
One other problem that came up was the air conditioning. When we arrived, they had the patio doors open and the restaurant was hot like a sauna. We asked them to turn on the AC so they did. However, they turned it up to the max and a couple of the vents were pointing right at our table. They fixed that a few minutes later which was good. What was not good was that there were swarms of flies in the dining area. Just looking towards the entrance of the restaurant I could see at least 5 of them flying in circles waiting for some food scraps. It wasn't a pleasant sight and no one seemed to care.
Anyway, we ordered several dishes including the lemon chicken and some stir fried dishes. I can't recall exactly what we ordered, but they weren't very memorable. In fact, the lemon chicken was pretty bad. There was too much batter and very little chicken. The chicken was also a little rubbery. The other dishes were mediocre to average at best, and every dish was quite small.
Service was pretty average throughout the meal. The Asian servers all spoke to us in English. Even when we spoke to them in Chinese, they replied in English (with very strong accents). Maybe they were trying to improve their English, or maybe they are instructed to only use English. Who knows? It was very bizarre.
I will not be returning to Szechuan Chongqing Seafood Restaurant again, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone... unless I don't like them.
Summery
Food: Poor. Some dishes were average and some were downright bad. Don't get the lemon chicken.
Service: Average. Dinner service was okay but they have an extremely short-term memory for things like my high chair.
Setting: Poor. I'm sure this could be Average on days when they don't let the flies in, but then again they didn't do anything about them either.
Value: Very Poor. Prices were moderate to high, but the servings were small. Even with a Groupon it wasn't worth it.
