Neptune Chinese Kitchen: Great disappointment to the chain

We heard there was a new restaurant from the Neptune group near our turf, so I brought my parents out to try it! It's located off United Boulevard at the Hard Rock Casino. Lots of free parking near the outside entrance of the restaurant.

Restaurant: Neptune Chinese Kitchen (visit their website here)

Location: 2080 United Boulevard, Coquitlam
Cuisine: Chinese, Seafood, Dim Sum
Price range: $15+/person



Date of visit: April 26, 2017
Atmosphere: 4/5
Staff/service: 4/5
Food variety: 5/5
Food quality: 1/5
Buck worthy? 1/5

Looking at the menu, they're on the expensive side for a Chinese dim sum/ cafe style restaurant. They offer lots of menu options, such as dim sum and set menus for 4 to 10 people. Interior is brightly lit and looked clean, with some tint to the windows so that the sun doesn't blind us from outside. Rather quiet when we were there, only about 2-3 other tables around lunch time.

We couldn't find some items on the menu we wanted in mind, but the waitress was wonderfully friendly, explained where items were, and it felt homey because of her. We got their Two Kinds of BBQ Meat ($19.95) and chose BBQ Duck and Honey BBQ Pork. This is typically one of their signature items. I'm surprised they could serve us this dish for that price. The duck was lukewarm and barely any good pieces. Otherwise the seasoning and meat met average standards. Super fatty and only a quarter duck. The BBQ Pork-- I don't even know if it was meat. It was so over-tenderized and seasoned that the texture was no longer meat. It was super salty, dry, and hard.

Another staple is congee, so we ordered an Assorted Meat Congee ($8.95) which had pork stomach, liver, kidney, and meatball. It was not very salty, which is good for our health, but nothing was marinated either. Liver, kidney, and stomach should have been marinated lightly for the congee but they were bland. The meatball didn't have any bounce to it either, so soft and mushy. The congee base was disappointing too, perhaps Hon's does a better job than them.

Our final dish was the Pork Hock with Tossed Noodle ($10.95). This was a generous portion of noodles and it comes with a side soup to go with the noodles. There's some lettuce on the side and a good couple pieces of pork hock. Pork hock was done well, flavors soaked into the pieces of soft, tender hock. Noodles were too sticky and didn't have the proper bite to them. Soup was intensely salty, which if mixed with the noodles (traditionally meant to be drank while having these noodles, not mixed), was decent and helped cut the sticky feel to the noodles.

This totally killed our mood for the day, but the sunshine and beautiful cherry blossoms helped lift it back up! For the price we paid, we could've fed six people at dim sum. Service was good, but food missed the mark. By a lot. I hope they fix themselves as the restaurant continues into full swing, since it IS pretty new (a month old now?)