the wok asian restaurant

absolutely one of the most disappointing places to order from in saskatoon for asian food. ---------- if you want quality and flavour this is one place to avoid..... if flavorless and bland are words you like to describe your food, you may just like this place. the spring rolls are flavorless, the traditional sauce that comes with the spring rolls is just watered down fish sauce... no tang, no spice, no flavour. the hot and sour soup lacked everything in its name... no sour.. no hot.... the soup just had texture with no flavour. the sweet and sour lean pork is just deep fried pieces of dry pork with almost no sauce on them. it was as if they just spooned a few dribbles of sauce over the meat. one would expect the meat to actually be tossed in sauce.... not rationed out with a small spoon hardly hitting all the pieces. the steamed pork roll (summer roll) was dry and had a sliver of a pork slice with about 95% of the roll being ricenoodles(flavourless seems to be a theme here). one thing that did not lack flavour but was sadly overpowered by one flavour was the war wonton soup.... pretty much a chinese 5 spice overkill. the lemon chicken was good at least. overall very disappointing... very flavourless and lacking in quality. those who claim "best asian food saskatoon". must eat plain rice and water for every meal.

this place will never see me again. the absolute worst soup i have ever experienced. when i told the server, this broth is to salty, she offered to water it down. it was straight soy sauce as broth. mushy disgusting spaghetti noodles. 2 small shavings of beef, 3 slivers of pork. no veggies with mushynoodlesand so salty unable to eat. do not wast your money or time showing up here! better off making ichiban at home loaded with soy sauce then to eat here. i posted a picture to show you what you actually receive!!! after the server brought back my soup from the water down process. it was still soy sauce with mushy noodles. i told her and the owner that i could not eat the soup, they shrugged and gave me a bill. i paid the bill. but thought i have to tell you enter at your own risk! bathrooms were dirty water glasses well i should have taken a picture of how dirty they were. the server said, well we use cold water to wash the glasses and that is why they are dirty. seriously man...ohhh my i cant believe people actually eat here more than once!!!

spicy beef and pork noodle soup (#21). broth was nice, but they used spaghettinoodlesinstead of rice noodle. kinda weird

been eating here for the last 4 to 5 years. food is always good and very good value for what you get. beef noodle soup and satay beef on rice is all i eat. with high rents on 8th street and food cost raising so fast. the owner still manage to keep prices good for us. some times the service is slow because they were busy but understandable.


-----31 dec, 2012-----

to "horrible customer service"
if they charge you $10 for delivery charge you must live on the opposite side of the city. keep in mind that the driver gets the $10. not the restaurant. i am pretty sure there are more than 10 restaurants which sell similar food between where you live and this restaurant. a simple mistake and you got you money back for the dish. can't complain. if you insist the restaurant to spend $10 to delivery yournoodleswhich is worth $1. and not take any alternatives were offered to you. they only see you as a customer who wanted to cash in on their mistake. i am sure no managers will let that happen. they have a really thin profit margin aprox 5% to 10%. next time just take the alternative offers and everyone will be happy. or just order from your neighbourhood restaurant so you can pick it up or they can deliver for $5. and still make money.

horrible customer service. we ordered delivery and were charged a $10 delivery charge even though we ordered $80 worth of food. we decided to pay the delivery charge because we like the food, and could not drive across town. we were really disappointed with there customer service. we were shortednoodlesfor one of our dishes. the manager downplayed the importance of the noodles, would only offer to deliver in 90 minutes and refused to refund money for the dish. i had to go into the restaurant the next day and was then returned $9 for the dish. not happy!!!!

order take out to only having half my birds nest show up. call manager to find out now that it will take 2 hours for mynoodlesto show up. paid $10 for delivery to only get half of my meal. to beat that she ask me to return the birds nest if i don't want it but no refund. wtf poor service and management. if you ask someone to return their meal are you actually serving it to someone else?? never again with this crap.

better than last time. came again and this time the speed was much quicker and the food quality was still quite high. getting a seat is difficult especially considering how understaffed they are. service also takes a negative hit because of this.

but the food is still very well done.


-----24 jul, 2012-----

overall experience was very poor. it's been a while since my last review, but tonight's experience has woken a sleeping bear.

the wok is severely understaffed, with the same two servers working all the tables as well as the till. the line up to be seated was not a result of a full dining room, but because of a combination of many tables with dirty dishes yet to be cleared and a till busy with people trying to pay.

i timed the whole experience.

it took 6 minutes to get seated at one of the many empty tables. i ordered the vermicelli bowl that came with beef, two springs rolls, and "jumbo shrimp" (back on this later).

it took 29 complete minutes before i got my food. being alone, there was only so much conversation i could hold with the bottle of sriracha hot sauce before i started going 'non compos mentis'. when an older lady (owner?) asked if i'd ordered and i replied with "i ordered a half hour ago", hell did break loose in the kitchen. not once during this entire 29-minute-ordeal did someone come to fill my glass of water nor see how my conversation with the hot sauce was going.

the actual bowl ofnoodlestasted good, although i was disappointed that when the menu said "jumbo shrimp", they literally meant "a single shrimp laying alone on top of your noodles". the extra $2 for this seafood extravaganza was not worth it and i suggest ordering any one of the other, cheaper bowls that come without that extra solitary shrimp.

this experience may have been an anomaly, but it was bad enough that i had to write about it. full groups of 6 even came after me, ordered and received their full orders before i had a sniff of mine. compared to my past experiences at the wok, i've never had service so terrible and ignorant.

ps - did you know that a teaspoon of sriracha sauce has 5 calories and is all naturally coloured? believe me, i'd know.


-----28 nov, 2010-----

will come more often. a group of us (8) came here today (sunday) for lunch with the hopes of having some good vietnamese food. upon walking into the wok asian restaurant, my first impression was how small the dining area was. at most, the restaurant could probably hold around 50 people, so our one group took up a good portion of the dining space. the decor was clean, tasteful, and well put together.

our drink orders arrived first. most of us ordered the three bean drink, which is a cold, light-green concoction, with a mixture of some beans and a jelly-like substance at the bottom. at first, i thought this was some sort of witty joke by the chefs, as today is, after all, grey cup sunday. but alas, upon further investigation, my friend informed me that even though the green hue is normal, it's normally not that noticeable. it's a drink that is quite sweet, making me wish i ordered it as a dessert item. one peeve that i had was the excess ice, which made it difficult to spoon out the beans without getting chunks of ice in your mouth (i ended up transferring all of the ice into my water cup). secondly, the straw was too thin, making it difficult to sip the drink without having red beans clogging the straw. besides these things, the drink was pretty good.

actual food began arriving roughly 15 minutes after ordering. first thing down my ever-expanding gullet was the spicy beef and pork noodle soup (#21). being a spin-off of the traditional pho, i enjoyed this quite a bit. being a spicy fan, thenoodlesand perfect amount of meat complimented each other. the bbq pork chow mein (#61) was also quite good, albeit slightly oily. besides the fact that thenoodlesglistened in the sunshine and the bbq pork a tad dry, it tasted good enough for me to ignore these minor inconveniences.

round two: stomach is still wanting more. so next i tried the curried bean curd and vegetables (#39), which is simply stir-fried vegetables with cubes of bean curds. personally, i found all of the vegetables ever-so-slightly undercooked, but everybody else seemed to like it. the curry complimented the beef fried rice (#68) very nicely. eating the curry alone with a spoon would prove too powerful of a taste, but when mixed with the run-of-the-mill fried rice, it all balanced out.

almost everyone's favorite dish was the beef rice noodle soup (#16), which is pretty much what every other restaurant would call "pho" (pronounced "phuh", as i learned today). thenoodleswere cooked perfectly and not chopped up, the cooks didn't skimp out on the beef, and the portion was huge. we were happy with this choice. is it the best 'pho' in town? not quite, but it's pretty close!

my least favorite dish was the seafood hot pot (#49). it wasn't the 'taste' of the seafood that i didn't like, but simply the difficulty in 'finding the seafood' amidst all of the vegetables. if i'm paying for something with the name "seafood hot pot", i expect a hot pot with mostly seafood inside. if i hadn't double-checked, then i would have thought they gave us "vegetable hot pot with-a-dash-of-seafood." until this is fixed, avoid it.

i'm split on the service. the young woman who initially was serving us (late teens, early 20s) seemed disconnected from the customers and was maybe mentally "somewhere else." now, i'm not the kind of guy who demands all 32 teeth to be gleaming when i'm being served, but even a little smile wouldn't hurt. also, i don't recall her every coming back to refill our water glasses. ever. on the other hand, the older lady (possibly owner) who gave us our food was extremely nice and hospitable.

during our whole dining experience, every other table was always filled, and people were always at the front door waiting for seats. obviously people know that there is good food here, and i don't blame them. for around $8 for a very full stomach, why would someone pass an opportunity like this? overall: the wok serves pretty good (not great) asian food for a fantastic price. i will come back.

meh-. ordered 'spicy beef and pork noodle soup' and was not impressed. thenoodleswere too thick and too soft, there was too much broth. the location where we were seated was close to the door and was cold and drafty. every time patrons would come through the door we'd get blasted by cold air.

on a positive note: the spring-rolls were, however, delicious.

disappointing. i had high expectations due to the high ratings but i was extremely disappointed with all the items i ordered. the chow mein was made with udonnoodlesand was drenched in runny, bland sauce. chop suey vegetables were not cooked and were flavourless. the ginger beef was so overcooked it was difficult to chew. the spring rolls were also disgusting- tasted like an old sausage. i will never eat here again!

wow.... just came back from a quick lunch at the wok and the special beef noodle soup was amazing. a big surprize and maybe my expectations were low but the beef balls were not solid hunks of mystery meat and the tendon was tender ...noodleswere firm and the broth fresh and flavourful.

peeking at other tables, the other dishes looked vibrant and full of crisp veggies.

i am so happy to have found another great place for pho!

btw the service was good considering how busy the lone server was... she was polite and responsinsive to any request i had

needs more heat!. ate here tonight and completely agree with those who have said the "hot" is not hot! i'm not sure what is in their chili paste/oil either but i literally put a spoonfull onto my cold roll and it was not hot! strange...

anyway the "spicy" satay shimp pho was tastey nonetheless! huge soup portions and good price (on par between 7-8$).

the cold rolls left something to be desired (aka. could use some cilantro and basil). they were just shrimp and ricenoodles- not worth the 5$ for 4 (in my opinion).

definitely not on my top viet list in saskatoon but could have been worse.