don mee

food ranged from poor to boring and the service wasn't much better. clearly had been a goodrestauranta3 one time, now just coasting

had christmas day brunch there this year. hey, it was just my partner and i for the holidays and we figured we would do something different.
a really good experience and based on previous visits i have to relate this is a consistantly run dim sumrestaurantyou can count on. big room, not crowded, clean, good staff, and lots of choices on the food tables being brough@t around regularily.
im always happy with the experience of trying new and different foods when i eat dim sum.
and also always reminded that it is consistantly rather pricey when i go to pay.
no different here.
so, 1 point off for that,...but thats it.
this place is really good.
xo to youz.

a retro chinese dim sumrestaurantin victoria chinatown. the style of their dimsum is really old fashion, but acceptable quality. of course, you cannot compare to what we can get from metro vancouver.

i was initially quite skeptical about don mee because it didn’t have the highest ratings on popular sites such as yelp and zomato. my husband had tried therestaurantbefore with a few of his friends a few years back and he said he quite enjoyed it – enough to go back at least. as therestauranthad been in business for over 80 years, i was pretty curious to see how their dim sum was.
as we finally got seated, the table was clean and we were ready to order. because dim sum here is fully on carts, there is no menu. you just ask the servers for a plate of whatever you like that they have and they mark it down on the paper which later becomes your bill.

we tried a few things, but we ended up ordering a few plates more than we anticipated (that’s what happens when you’re hungry) so we had to take some home.

we waited 30 minutes for a table for two. reasonable i suppose for they had only about six tabled for two. but when we were finally seated it took ten minutes for them to bring us a lunch menu as we didn't want dim sum. we waited another 20 minutes and no one came. i've never been ignored at arestaurantbefore. we finally just left empty handed. i guess there is a first time for everything.

terrible service. i went in thisrestaurantfor lunch. therestaurantwas very busy and the waitress were very rude. i asked for a coffee and i needed to harass the waitresses to obtain one. the dim sum was good. we never received glasses of water on our table while the other tables did. i don't recommend thisrestaurantif you don't know this kind ofrestaurantbecause the waitresses won't explain how to order or what is dim sum.

average. maybe it's the place to go for dim sum but the dinner isn't very impressive. the food is rather bland and lacking of flavour. the 5 spiced squid had no spice whatsoever and the wonton soup tasted like warm water rather than broth. the only reasonably tasting dish was the scallops and eggplant which had a bit of kick. i was also puzzled by the seating arrangement. all diners of asian decent were seated on one side of therestaurantwhilst everyone else was on the other side. it was very obvious the seating was segregated. very odd. the staff were nice enough and i had the bonus of receiving 5 fortunes in my fortune cookie but apart from that it was pretty average and i've heard of better places in downtown.

rude. i would have to say we had quite an unfortunate experience with the service at don mee. first of all, we started with a nice waiter who was very engaging and friendly, he answered every question we had about the menu, and even talked with us personally. near the end of the meal, it seemed like our waiter had gone home or was on a break, because an older waitress came to check on our table and finish service. there was no explanation as to where he had gone, and she appeared quite unfriendly. finally, upon paying for the meal using a credit card and a portable machine, she hovered over watching as the buttons on the machine were pushed and when it came to a point to make a decision for a tip...after a few seconds of contemplating what to put, she said "here, let me help" and entered her own tip at $10.00! i couldn't believe that this lady, who we had only been dealing with for maybe 5 or 10 minutes had entered a $10.00 tip, on a $50 bill without even any instruction or consultation to do so! i will never go back to thisrestaurantagain, which is unfortunate, because the nice young waiter left a good overall impression. the thing is i probably would have tipped with boy $10.00 if he had stayed as our waiter, because he deserved it. but there is no way i think that this was appropriate for this lady to do after only being around to refill our water only once before the end of the meal.

if you've never been to victoria's old chinatown, i highly recommend you go at least once. it may not seem very big, but there are lots of places to eat, shop, and explore in what is north america's second oldest chinatown. once you have had a chance to walk down the narrow "fan tan alley", and maybe buy a few artsy souvenirs, hopefully you will have built up an appetite for a good authentic chinese meal. if you happen to be in chinatown around the lunch hour, a good spot to go for lunch is don mee chinese seafoodrestaurant. gates of victoria's old chinatown it's located right in the heart of chinatown and has been there for over eighty years. the big sign out in front makes it hard to miss. one big reason you will want to go for lunch at don mee is to try their traditional "dim sum" which in my opinion, should be tried at least once in your lifetime. dim sum, in case you've never had it, is quite a filling lunch made up of various types of cantonese style

gross!. i think gross pretty much sums up our recent lunch experience here. food rolled throughrestauranton filthy carts, condiments on bottom of such carts. there was some sort of 'film' on the scallops on one of their seafood dumplings. rinsed the greasiness off my fingers with the hot tea since i think i would have thrown up if i ended up in their washroom...
what happened to this place? i remembered it was half decent about 3 years ago.