Last night, my family and I tried it out at Luk Yuen Glorietta 5. I came across this Chinese restaurant in the ‘90s when it was still in Glorietta 2. It’s amazing that Luk Yuen is located right beside North Park to think that both establishments offer virtually the same dishes. I wondered what would be Luk Yuen’s advantage over North Park other than the fact that it was first to enter the Philippine market. It’s just that North Park has been more aggressive to spread out such that people must have been more familiar with North Park than Luk Yuen.

Taste aside, Luk Yuen has price advantage over North Park. However, it lags behind North Park when it comes t0 service. Luk Yuen’s business plan consultant should better focus on how to improve its quality of service.

For instance, we initially ordered fried rice chicken with salted fish and the waiter said it’s out of stock. We asked if it has garlic fried rice instead because we couldn’t order a yang chow fried rice due to the pork that goes into it. We explained that we do not eat pork for religious reasons. Despite our explanation, however, the waiter insisted that we should take the yang chow fried rice because they don’t serve garlic fried rice. “Do you serve plain rice?” I asked, to which he said yes. “Then why don’t you get plain rice and fry it with garlic then serve it t0 us?” We had to call the manager for the waiter to understand why we couldn’t have the yang chow fried rice. Finally, our garlic fried rice was prepared and served at the same price as that of yang chow.

The staff there should be sensitive to the needs of the customers and be flexible enough to adjust the cooking ingredients if need be. We also don’t think that it’s appropriate for the waiter to be sweeping the floors while customers are still eating. Waiters are the face of Luk Yuen so the establishment should invest in their training.