Chinese food is the best, and I mean it. I like to eat other food like burgers, pastas, sushi, and even the French fatten-goose-stomach, but nothing can beat Chinese food. The calm and soothing flavor, to the awesome explosion of taste bud bombs, it makes the process of eating a form of high class entertainment that can be enjoyed by peasants. Like some says, the best life is merely “Live in an American House, marry a Japanese woman, and eat Chinese food.”
Kin Tin, one of the few Chinese restaurant in Corvallis, has gained its reputation of providing a wide variety of dishes, prices are a little spendy (around $10 per dish for dinner). My cousin who was in Taiwan for a year has came back to the US to get ready for his graduate school at UC Davis, he came down here to visit us and some of his friends, so we decided to eat at Kin Tin. Food was pretty good, service was so-so, it was a pretty good experience eating there.
After dinner, we left $6 of tips on the table ($40 for the food), and paid for the food with a credit card. However, when Peter checked his bank statement online (he was very bored, and was checking his online statement for fun, and have discovered that Kin Tin has charged him $48 dollars. Now I didn’t know a restaurant can just add tips on to the bills themselves, I thought tips were “optional” to a certain extend. You have an obligation to pay tips, but you are not required to pay tips. If a restaurant can just add tips to bills, then doesn’t it defeat the purpose of you expressing how you like their services?
On a side note, Bento (located on Monroe and 14th) has the best, and i mean BEST Chinese food in Corvallis. Prices range from 4 to 6 dollars, with a huge portion that you can even eat it as two meals. They cook their food the way Chinese like it, not some over sauced Chinese-food-wannabe.
Lots of restaurants have mandatory gratuity (tips) for groups larger than a certain number of people. It usually says on the menu.
I’m certain King Tin has that kind of policy.
How would you like to be the waiter and busboy who serve/clean up after a big group of cheap people who don’t tip? I don’t think so!
If you want to show dissatisfaction, don’t come back. That’s what I’d have done to Aomatsu if my friends hadn’t always wanted to eat there!
But we did leave tips on the table! And our group was only five people, I thought most restaurant only charge mandatory gratuity for more than 6 people.
And yes, there are restaurants that I don’t even go back anymore, i.e. Young’s Kitchen.