Sino – Santana Row

Came here for a little Sunday fun day with a friend. We were served by J-​Me (pronounced Jamie). She was really awesome. We sat outside by the fireplace for a little while then decided we wanted to move indoors. She helped move all our stuff inside and was very sweet about. Was still waitressing us inside as well. Her personality is awesome and sweet. We’ve had couple bad experiences here and decided to give it a last try. I can say we will be coming back again we had a great time & experience with J-​Me! :)

Three star is perfect for this place. Décor is modern, more toward the trendy/​hip side of things, doesn’t appear to be geared toward families. I thought the menu was pretty diverse and interesting. We got the garlic noodle dish and some shrimp with walnuts and both were perfectly good. Service was friendly and fun. It’s not fancy, kind of reminds me of a hip PF Chang’s with a menu more geared for Asian food lovers as opposed to mainstream America. That’s meant to be a compliment. Not a destination place but a good meal if you’re in the area.

This review is strictly for vegetarians!
Went with team for lunch, its a cute up-​scale restaurant. Was a little hesitant being a vegetarian for a Chinese restaurant but surprised they had pretty good choices for vegetarian, especially if you don’t mind eating egg!
Ambience is really good for team outings or bigger parties.
one of my co-​workers ordered dim sum for the table, good selection for veg too– we got 2 mushroom dishes (dont know their menu names but one of them was something like steam mushroom bun/​dumpling and other one was more like ravioli stuffed with mushrooms), fried egg roll which were ok. Custard egg, sesame ball and mango pudding were too good!
Apart from the dim-​sum, we ordered veg hot and sour soup– way too spicy (hell lot of black pepper) and salty none of us (party of 4 vegetarians) could enjoy it.
Spicy Eggplant was a bomb, ma-​po tofu was mediocre.
Overall, we loved the food, ambience and service. Dim-​sum is definitely a good choice for big parties to try multiple varieties! and having at-​least one person from Chinese ethnicity (and of-​course food lover) in the party is a huge plus! ;-)

Awful food. Tough meat, soy sauce overload, greasy, bland, just gross. Worse drinks…4 vodka sodas and no buzz whatsoever. Whiskey sodas tasted terrible due to flat soda. Ridiculously overpriced.

Good food, great late-​night ambiance.

I like coming here specifically for the chicken feet, it’s the most tender, soft, fall off the bone chicken feet I’ve had. I also like their ecstasy drink, good and strong for a quick buzz before strolling the row

Took my dad here for Father’s day and was already skeptical because of the reviews I read on Unilocal,and unfortunately the reviews speak the effin’ truth.
The service here is pretty horrible or lets say very unprofessional. Starting off with the snobby host. We had 12:30pm reservations and arrived at 12noon. They couldn’t sit us earlier which I was fine with but the fact that the host wasn’t even apologetic about not being able to accommodate our early arrival sucked. I believe she needs a little lesson on better customer service, mind you she answered a phone call in front of waiting guests, only to talk shit about that caller to another host. Really? In front of customers?
We got seated at about 12:40pm. Great! No problem. After losing track of time trying to figure out what to order on the menu, I soon realized that our waiter was no where to be found after 20 effin’ minutes and I had to flag down a host to get the waiter. I actually felt sorry for the waiters because it definitely showed that they were stressed and under-​staffed, but the restaurant as a whole seemed very disorganized.
Food took awhile to come out, at this point. No surprise right? Food was pretty good actually, not too bad. We got our first batch of dimsum but was still waiting on the water! There goes where my one star went to, add on the location.
Long (er) story short, I called a manager not to single out our waiter for the extremely slow service because I actually did not blame him, but for the experience overall. I felt that management had to KNOW this, but after speaking to him, he was unprofessional himself! His excuses were that he couldn’t help that people call out sick after partying and being hungover the night before? Really? IDGAF about that. Take the effin’ constructive criticism. (i didn’t even ask for a discount, ha!)
I don’t recommend this place to anyone. The restaurant needs an entire facelift on management and employees. It sucks that this place is located in Santana Row as well, def not up to par with neighboring restaurants. I will NOT be coming back EVER AGAIN!

I wouldn’t really go to this fancy place for dim sum. I am used to the people pushing the dim sum carts :0
My coworkers wanted dim sum and we decided to go here. The dim sum was good aside from all of them being very salty. My. blood pressure…
I would assumed they used more salt because of the lack of MSG. I don’t think I tasted any of if it had some, it was over powered by the saltiness.
Service was good, since it was slow. This place is more for a night scene so I can understand.

Beautiful space and ambiance with cool cocktail drinks and spacious area however the food is significantly overpriced for mediocre Chinese good. Ordered the ribs and it took us 2 people to pull apart the dry ribs. The poke is very small for the price and lacked seasoning. Sangria carafe is a great deal for $ 29 for Santana row but definitely a little watered down. Spicy eggplant was my favorite dish but very standard for a Chinese restaurant. Nothing really to rave about. I would definitely recommend this place for a date night with cool drinks and people watching.

Stopped by here for a quick drink after dinner tonight. We had four people with us and there was no seating but we were able to find a spot at the bar.
This review is based on the female bartender we had tonight who was absolutely rude! When we sat down, the male bartender took mine and the hubby’s drink and he was very polite and attentive. The female in a white tank took our friends drinks. She turns to my husband and asked what did he have. I honestly thought that she was asking him what he wanted. So I told him, I already ordered your drink. She turns to me and tells, «I’m not asking you, I’m asking him what he had.» She then was rude to our friend who ordered the drink and he was taken by it as well.
Honestly she could have said what did you have because your friend wants the same drink. Unbelievably rude and all the times I’ve been here, never did I encounter such rudeness. Practically ruined the night that we just started!
It’s unfortunate because our male bartender was so nice but because of her rudeness, we were not happy with the service.

This place is delicious. I do not understand why anyone wouldn’t give it 5 stars. Went during the week and we had excellent service. My daughter is a vegetarian so our server suggested the mushroom dumplings and they were awesome. We ordered honey walnut shrimp and green onion shrimp cakes. We also had the sangria which was very good.

I love the Sangria here. But my favorite part of the place is the outdoor seating. There are tables outside, couches right on the door that are still inside but you can still people watch and there are more couches on the side patio thats a little more secluded. It can be an expensive night out but very casual, relaxing and good for happy hour. Lollipop chicken is good on happy hour.

Came for business lunch. Had the shrimp and lobster dumplings. Nice portion size. Crispy which I liked. Full of shrimp.
Had the firecracker chicken lunch special. That was quite good.
Don’t order the XLB. Huge disappointment. Comes in mini aluminum tins. Hardly any soup. I had to ask for the black vinegar. Also had to ask for chopsticks. I can’t believe you have to ask for chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant.
Outside seating was very nice.
Service okay given they didn’t bring vinegar or chopsticks.
Won’t be back unless someone else pay

I have to agree with the majority on this one. The food was delicious, but not worth the price. And the service was a little slow. On the bright side, I was happy to have been seated right away, especially without a reservation on a Friday night during dinner time.
Food: chicken lollipops, eggplant with mushrooms, seafood fried rice, spicy chicken dish and spare ribs; my favorite of them all had to be the seafood fried rice and the lollipops. The spare ribs were really sticky and hard to eat without getting your hands to stick to the utensils. The other things we ordered would taste just about the same at other Chinese places but cost half the price. The thing about this place is it’s encouraged to eat family style. I would be careful how many people you bring though because I’ve read other reviews that say they don’t split checks in large groups (probably 10+).
Atmosphere: Vegas-​club-​like– yes, it was a Friday, but if they wanted it to be a club with all the blaring loud music, they shouldn’t be serving dinner. The bathroom is also really weird. It’s basically like one giant co-​ed bathroom with stalls. The mirrors are spaced out so that you can practically look into the men’s bathroom. Luckily, there are no urinals– all private stalls. It’s also dark in the dining area because the lighting is pretty dim.
Service: meh– it took a good while to receive our to-​go orders that we ordered during our meal. Though, he memorized our order which was impressive because he got it all right.
Bottom line: I wouldn’t pay this much for Chinese food ($ 160 for 4 people) because it’s nothing special. Next time, I think I might just go with take-​out. Besides, they come in the cute takeout boxes.

I was there on Monday for HH and to be honest, there isn’t anything special about this place that would make me want to come back. There isn’t that much to chose from in the HH menu. And the price range isn’t any cheaper than the normal price.
Food taste ³⁄₅
Service ²⁄₅ (the food was taking so long)
HH price ¹⁄₅

FOOD: is what brings my review up because the food is actually really good even though kinda pricey. Pricey is expected when at Santana Row though. Chicken lollipops were yummy. I’ve been here for dim sum and sat outside. Dim sum here is where you order what you want instead of carts coming by like most dim sum restaurants.
INSIDE: has a very dark ambiance like it’s hard to see. Red and black color theme. Bar and standing area in front of it.
Bathrooms are different in that when you go to the sink to wash your hands you can see the guys washing their hands behind the mirrors. Like they made one plumbing wall and put sinks on both sides. So don’t pick your nose in front of the mirror because there could be a guy on the other side looking through the cracks at you.
OVERALL I’d probably say 3.5 stars. It’s A Ok and I’d say I’m a decent fan of this place. Parking will be Santana Row style either in a parking garage or in the back where you fight others for an outside parking spot. Century theaters across the street has parking too then you have to walk.

My friend and I came here when I was HANGRY. We went on a Monday right before happy hours ended, around 6:30PM. It’s open seating in the lounge/​bar area.
We ordered an entrée:
*spicy braised eggplant bamboo ($ 10 happy hour price)
It came in a smaller bowl. Definitely more expensive than what you would get from a traditional Chinese Restaurant for the amount you pay. The flavors were on point. Very delicious and goes excellent with rice ($ 3/​bowl) I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS!
And the rest were ordered from the Happy Hour Menu:
* kung pao calamari ($ 6 happy hour prices for quite a decent amount)
One of the best calamari I’ve had at an Asian Fusion place. It didn’t have a lot of breading and it wasn’t rubbery. Nice mild spice and perfectly seasoned. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS!
— l.a. kalbi steak taco ($ 2 happy hour price each)
I personally don’t care for soft tacos so it was OK.
— bahn mi sliders ($ 7 happy hour prices for 3)
It’s pretty much a beef pattie on some slider buns with the pickled veggies underneath and call it a bahn mi. There was way too much butter not he buns so it ruined any bahn mi flavors. I was also really full from all the rest of the food above that I could barely finish the tiny slider!
We also ordered the ahi poke stack and the Xiao.Long.Baos but they both took forever (and I mean like FOREVER) to come so we just cancelled the order. Honestly between 2 people, the eggplant entrée with rice and the kung pay calamari with an extra side dish is pretty filling.
The service was alright since we ate from the bar and honestly the girls behind the bars aren’t really there for ordering food. She got our order messed up 2x; missed an entrée and placed the wrong order in; all of which we just ended up cancelling. I would recommend trying to sit inside further inside the restaurant if you can still order from the happy hour menu.
The ambiance is really nice inside. The restrooms are funny as hell. No doors between men and women’s restrooms. Only doors for the toilet stalls.
Overall, I would actually come back here. Someone who is Chinese and eats out at Chinese Restaurants monthly, I am pretty impressed. I must admit, I expected this place to be overly priced and shitty food. It’s just kinda overly priced and pretty good food (Happy Hour time ONLY). I’m definitely coming back in the future! Happy Hour only though SHITTTT… It’s definitely cheaper to eat out from a traditional Chinese Restaurant but hey you’re at Santa Row; at least the place has some more class LOL.
Oh yeah, $ 4.50 for a sprite. I got a refill. My god I forget how expensive soda is… esp when you order from the bar :[

Service sucks!!! It seems they don’t even give a crap how horrible their service is.
I’m never going there again.

Walked in and i was annoyed it was a little hard to find a worker to get us seated at a dinner table. One of hostesses at the stand even looked at us and looked away even seeing us walking to the stand to obviously have them seat us. Walked up the stand and they just look at us. Like no «how can I help you» .nothing. So zero stars for the hostesses. Our waiter was really nice tho. The food was okay, nothing spectacular. Had their garlic noodles and chowmein, oily and almost couldn’t tell the difference between the two but they were okay. Their calamary were really good. Ordered a bowl of wonton for $ 13. They were nice enough to serve us the wonton but split between 4 ppl, each person got ONE wonton each. I think that for 13 bucks there would be more than 4 wonton in the soup, so next time I’d just skip out on the wonton soup

Lobster potstickers & char siu chilean sea bass are a must! For drinks, the Cadillac Margaritas and Lychee Martini are my favorite!

Delicious food, quick service and polite and courteous of food allergies. It’s not too loud in here either. Serving sizes perfect for family style or individual.
We had the sczeshuan chicken and firecracker chicken, and both were tasty; the firecracker chicken was the perfect amount of heat.

Three stars is about right for this place, which is essentially an upscale PF Chang’s. I’m Chinese so I generally stay away from «Asian» places but when the bf suggested Sino for my birthday, I didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
The food was 2 star quality and very expensive for what it was. The décor was nice and the drinks were good and it turns more clubby as it gets later in the evening. That might be the right time to go but for dinner, try somewhere else.

Came here with a friend for lunch today around 12:30. It was a beautiful day so we chose to sit outside, and we got sat immediately.
Our server this afternoon was Chris. He was very pleasant; he gave us suggestions about their popular dishes on the menu and some of his favorites. We ended up ordering the American Kobe Sliders ($ 12.95), Pork Belly Asada Fries ($ 7.95), pork potstickers, shumai, and some drinks.
My favorite was the American Kobe Sliders, they were so flavorful and I liked the buns they used, a little sweet. The Pork Belly Asada Fries were also delicious! The potstickers and shumai were just average, but that was expected. Their sangria is very good too!
I had a good experience here and told my friends about the sliders, I’ll definitely come back to try some other stuff off the menu. Thanks again for the great service Chris!

Great food and amazing service! I always leave fat and happy for here! :)
I will highly recommend it such a great location and the décor is amazing inside such a cool vibe if it’s at the bar or at a table.

Here we go again with, in my opinion, a very inaccurate Unilocal star rating for this resturant, it’s actually pretty hillarious to me reading some of these bad reviews of this place, loud music? are you serious people? I say thank god for a well rounded place in this area that has a lively vibe with music where you can have great food and feel like youre at a lounge too:)
Ever since I moved here, my husband and I have been here quite a few times, and everytime, the food has been fantastic, service on point and friendly. We don’t go to clubs or anthing anymore, so this place is definitely a great alternative.
Great job Sino!

Tasty food, not so good drinks. Peking duck was not sliced properly but fried rice is good. Nice selection of appetizers. Service is slow and parking on santana row can be difficult. 3 stars and that’s it.

This place is ridiculously bad and I’m not sure why it’s even on Santana Row. The food and service are equivalent to BJ’s. Seriously? I’ve never had such a horrible Basil Gimlet in my life, I mean how hard is it to make? The dessert was forgettable and Ive had better Molten lava cakes at Chili’s. I’ll probably never be back here. Also, why are the hostesses dressed like they are on a beach in Thailand in February? The Bartenders have no clue about what they’re doing.
Do not go.

This place is ridiculously bad and I’m not sure why it’s even on Santana Row. The food and service are equivalent to BJ’s. Seriously? I’ve never had such a horrible Basil Gimlet in my life, I mean how hard is it to make? The desert was forgettable and Ive had better Molten lava cakes at Chili’s. I’ll probably never be back here. Also, why are the hostesses dressed like they are on a beach in Thailand in February? The Bartenders have no clue about what they’re doing.
Do not go.

Very nice place with a club atmosphere. Great ambiance and place to hang out. The food is okay though. Better food I would have given 5 stars.

So Sino is a bit confused. Is a night club, is a Pf Chang wanna be, is it a crazy mix of both, hope they figure it out soon. For starters, the music is insanely loud, without a dj or decent playlist. There are actual skips in between songs from the early 2000’s. One second you’re rocking to Britney, and then the music stops for a few seconds before going to Red Hot Chili Peppers. It makes it impossible to have a decent conversation, not ideal for a date. It’s like they are a tourist trap for people trying to be upscale in Santana Row, but don’t care about the food.
The service is sub par for the price of the food. The waiters often ignored us, and brought the wrong dish. We eventualy had to flag the manager to get the right meal. There was no consistent way of serving and we got our courses all mixed up.
The food was okay but highly over priced. The hot and sour soup was great however.

More hype and less substance. Its a mix of both bar and a fine dine restaurant and I would say that the bar option is pretty good there. The place has loud music so don’t go there if you want to have a quiet dinner. But, thumbs up to hang out and enjoy some music and drinks.
Food is ok-​ish. I think the ‘bar food’ was good but not the other stuff. I was disappointed with most of the dishes on the table.

Great Asian fusion restaurant. Had fabulous dinner with out of town friends. Peking duck was fabulous and sweet and sour soup as well as the sangrias. Loved the food and service was great

Great Job. We had a private event for our client team and client. Great service from the hostess to the waiters. They catered to all of our needs in a timely manner. Serina and her staff were phenominal. the Chicken «Lollipops» were meaty and spicy. The garlic noodles and the salmon were moist and fresh. Blueberry Mule cocktail was on point.
The music was a bit loud. I feel that needs to change.

I’m in a business trip and i was lookingfor a good Asian
Food and I found this place in the heart of santana row. the food is good, but it’s noisy, if lookin for a place to chat and relax this may not be the place, but if you don’t care the noise it is good place and they also have a bar so you can stay after dinner

I just had an awful experience at Sino, which was unexpected.
I stopped in for a late dim sum lunch, ordered xio long bao and waited, completely unattended, for more than 20 minutes.
I finally had to reach through a beaded curtain to get the attention of a staff person to say that my order hadn’t arrived. While the restaurant was practically empty, there were a number of staff, none of whom was paying me the slightest attention.
After another 15 minutes the food finally arrived. I wasn’t provided with a spoon for the dumplings or accompanying sauce. I asked and eventually got one.
But the dumplings presented another problem: each had been steamed in a Mylar-​type cupcake liner. Anyone who has eaten these soup dumplings knows the trick is to get it to your mouth without puncturing the dough wrapper so the soup will explode in your mouth.
How the heck to get the steaming dumpling out of the container to which it was adhered? Chopsticks would puncture, a spoon couldn’t dig it out. I realized I’d have to turn each over by hand and shake it out.
The piéce de résistance came when the check arrived. I was charged more than the menu price for my chrysanthemum tea. When I asked the server, he disappeared for several long minutes to return to tell me the menu price was wrong, the price had increased, but they were adjusting the charge.
After all this, I was astonished they didn’t comp me the tea.
I expected better from a Chris Yeo restaurant. P. S. the dumplings were flavorful but without broth in them.

I am confused by this place, not sure what they want to accomplish here, be a high end bar or a semi fine dinning restaurant or a night club. its seems to me that they have just combined all of them but it just doesn’t work. I have seen numerous reviews here that have brought up the Insanely loud music, but looks like they haven’t taken into consideration. Well add one more to the list the Music is Insanely loud and the mix they play is not good either, there is no fade in or out in the songs either so there is a 5 sec awkward silence every time the song changes. So you are shouting through a loud song and then it ends and you still shouting… Awkward.
The dim light works… almost too well, the table next to us needed to put on flashlights to see the menu… almost blinded me.
Can’t comment on the bar but it looked very chic and modern.
Service is alright, not that great but the manager was out and about making sure everything was okay, which is a nice touch, but sometime he would take our order and then our waitress would come and ask if we want to order, got to communicate that. they always fill up our water glass when it was almost empty without asking, good job on that. The table was not cleaned in between courses and most of the courses are family style so mess is not avoidable. maybe i am being too critical but if you are going to charge a lot for the food i should be able to get good service out of it.
the Food was nothing exciting. we order the appetizer sampler, seafood hot and sour soup, Chicken dish, scallops, brown rice and for deserts got a molten chocolate cake and crème brûlée.
in the appetizer sampler the only thing i liked was the calamari, but the mushroom tacos, tuna tartar and chicken lollops were just ehh.
***The hot and sour soup was awesome, i have to say they have do this right and the quantity is enormous. Good job on this one.
Chicken was decent, scallops were good at all, for the price it was really not worth it, scallops were not seared right on all of 3 we got.
the deserts were good as well, the molten chocolate cake was perfectly done but crème brûlée with toffee on top was just a weird combo, the crunchy chocolate on top took away from the sweetness of the custard and made the custard flavorless.
I feel like Sino has the ingredients to be good, but they are still stuck in 2006-​07 when they were recognized by Michelin guide. They need to lower the music volume and work on the mix they have to have a more of lounge music, with the food it would help them to simplify the menu a bit. they do have one thing really going for them that is the location. they need to get better thou for me to go here again.

I’ve been to Sino many times before. Most times I would give a four star but Friday ¹²⁄₄ they get a five star review! We came here unplanned after having a horrible experience at Roots & Rye. It was my birthday dinner and my friends and I were determined to have a great time. It’s not easy getting all of us together. Our group of right was seated in five minutes. Server Robert was awesome and very friendly. Food came quickly and of course was yummy. We inquired about getting a bottle for our table and we were accommodated. A bad night turned into a great night. Thank you Sino and Robert for starting off my birthday weekend on a high note!

I’ve been here several times, but I’ve only been at the bar. I never wanted to deal with bad service (which I see happening all the time)!
Their chicken lollipops really ARE good and worth a try! Fried calamari is a good finger food option too. As for drinks, I wouldn’t recommend getting their cocktails, especially their fruity ones, unless you like your drinks to be really sweet. I usually just get wine here.
It’s dark and the music is pretty loud, especially when it gets later at night. From the last couple times I’ve been here, I noticed that the crowd that hangs out at Sino tend to be on the louder side, compared to other places on the Row.
Overall, this place honestly isn’t really my scene, and I don’t normally come here unless my friend (s) specifically wants to hang out here.

I came here for HH. Overall, it’s not the place to be for good food and drinks.
We ordered several things from the HH menu. The noodles were soggy and salty. It was so salty that I couldn’t get over that to taste if I even liked the flavors. We tried so many items on the HH menu, but they all turned out just meh.
Even the drinks were just meh. All sugary and fake flavors. It may just be to mask the fact that there’s not a lot of alcohol in the cocktails as well.
The only thing that’s good about this place is the hip contemporary décor. It makes you feel like you’re in a club lounge. Clean, modern, and fun. The décor makes it look impressive, but the overpriced terrible food doesn’t.

Sino is nice, very Santana Row.
They have a blah beer selection, but the food and service is always very good. I just don’t like Santana Row in the slightest.
But for tasty food Sino can hit the spot.

One of my favorite restaurants at the Row
Great selection of dim sum for lunch
Tonight had a light meal with my buddy of hot and sour soup, beef chow fun, braised tofu and half a Peking duck.
One gripe: the Peking duck should be sliced thin not served like a quarter chicken dinner
Otherwise taste great
Top off with my Fav Strawberry shortcake
Thanks to my great waitress Irene!

First off, so many dim sum places have a LONG wait and here no wait! We got here at 11 am, opening, and there was only one other couple waiting. The restaurant slowly began to fill, but definitely had plenty tables still… For dim sum, we will definitely return especially for that reason! The food was good! My favorites were the regular Har Gow and Shumai. The only down side was that since they just opened we had to wait for the soy sauce while our food got cold (normally should already be on tables)…

I’ve been here several times and most of my experiences here have been positive. Whenever friends are visiting Santana Row from other cities, I take them to Sino because it offers a variety of food at reasonable prices, and the latter is hard to find in SR. I also really enjoy this place because of the ambience. There are quiet tables inside, louder areas for more of a party feel, and couches for a loungey experience. It’s very dimly lit and classy.
My go-​to here is the garlic noodles. I recommended it to my friends and they loved it as well. It’s flavorful and filling, since the portions are generous. I’ve also had the dim sum platter, which is good for sharing among several people since it has different types of dumplings. I felt that the quality and flavor of the dim sum was just average though.
The only reason I took off a star is because the only drink I ever ordered here tasted really bad. I don’t recall the name of the drink but it supposedly had orange and tropical flavors in it. All I could taste was alcohol and it wasn’t smooth either. Other than that, the service is great, and staff is friendly and attentive, despite having so many customers.

We arrived at 11:45 am and seated in the patio area. The hostess said Patrick was our waiter and will be with us in a few moments. Well… 10 – 15 minutes later Patrick comes over hands us the menu and asked for our drinks order. I advised him, we will give the drinks order and also our lunch order since we already knew what we wanted. Giving him our drinks order was a cinch, but the lunch order was another story. To my surprise, the menu was totally different. Patrick said the menu was recently changed earlier in the week. The food is still the same, but just some things changed.
Here’s our attempted order to Patrick:
2 Orders Steam Pork Bun
2 Orders Soft Shell Crab
1 Order Emperor’s fried rice w/​o shrimp and egg
1 Order of Mongolian Beef
2 Orders of fried chicken wings tossed with jalapenos and garlic
1 Shu Mai
Here’s what Patrick said we could order*:
2 Orders Steam Pork Bun
1 Order Emperor’s fried rice w/​o shrimp but egg was a must for any fried rice dish
1 Order of Mongolian Beef comes with soup and salad but it’s the same size as a la carte dish
2 Orders of fried chicken wings tossed with jalapenos and garlic
Apparently, they no longer carry soft shell crab nor can they make fried rice w/​o eggs. Ummmm, ok.
And then… a new waiter named Colin comes by and says he is our new waiter now because Patrick is waiting on another side. Colin brings out our drinks but no water. We asked him about the fried rice w/​o egg and he says of course we could order it and so we did.
A few minutes later here’s what was delivered to us in the order that it was received…
1 Emperor’s fried rice w/​o shrimp w/​egg
—– 15 mins later ——
2 Pork Spare Ribs
—– 15 mins later ——
1 Emperor’s w/​o shrimp & egg
1 Shu Mai
We waited and waited and then we finally asked Colin when our Mongolian Beef and fried chicken will be out… Colin disappeared and quickly returned and said the order was not put in. We asked him to put it in and also add another order of Pork Spare ribs.
It’s now almost 1 pm and our fried chicken and beef finally arrived. The Mongolian beef had nor more than 8 pieces of meat. Seriously, for $ 19 dollars you will get 8 pieces of meat. We asked to speak to a manager. The so called «manager» named Jerry came out, we explained how long we have been waiting and that our orders was never put in, Jerry apologized to us and said he will make sure to take care of us. While Jerry was there apologizing to us about our lunch, our pork spare ribs arrived in a to go box. I am not sure if anyone at Sino can explain why this happen. Jerry sends the order back.
After finally getting all our food, we asked for the check. Jerry took care of us by comping us a mere $ 7.60. Oh Sino, you need a new manager. We felt so insulted by your your so called «manager» Jerry. As we were taking care of the check, a waiter tried delivery 3 dishes to our table that should have gone to another table. We should have told him to put it in the to go box. LOL
Oh Sino, I am not sure what happen to you but you just lost several loyal customers today. We know that most of your good waiters have long gone but we were still loyal and dine frequently. But after today’s horrified experience, even your barely clothe hostess couldn’t bring our male friends back.
Jerry, if you are reading this… you really need to take some hospitality courses. Colin, thank you for trying to make up for Patrick’s mistake.

I’ve been a regular to Sino because of the delish lychee martinis and firecracker chicken. My partner and I decided to go there for our anniversary dinner (which fell on a weekday). One of the worst dinners we’ve had, which was even more awful because it was a celebratory dinner. First our lychee martini and moscow mule was ridiculously watered down, which was annoying given that we paid $ 10-​$ 12 for each one. Deciding not to be pains, we didn’t complain and ordered the firecracker chicken, spicy prawns, and rice. We waited for more than 45min for our dinner.
Even though our waiter updated us a few times that he was sorry for the wait, everyone who came to Sino after us were getting their dishes. Annoyed now, we were told that our food ticket was stuck behind someone else’s ticket and our food should be coming out shortly… this was ridiculous. I was totally hangry. When our food did finally come out I noticed a couple of times that I had to pull HAIR out of my mouth… gross. I figured each time it was my own because we waited so long I figured my hair shed on my plate (it was so dark in the restaurant I couldn’t see anything), though when the food came, my hair was already up.
After the couple of times, I moved my plate aside and ate rice out of the dish plate since there was no way there would be hair in it, and then low and behold… another hair… which was definitely not my hair length. I lost my cool. My partner ended up talking to the manager, and he comped up our food… but of course our $ 6 rice (for two ppl) wasn’t included nor our drinks. I sort of get the drinks, but our rice?! First of all $ 6 is really expensive for rice, we didn’t even get to finish it because of the hair. It was dumb that we had to pay as much as we did for such a bad experience and on our anniversary. What a lousy night, I don’t think I can forgive them for this and wont be returning.

Jung, laut, trendy!
Toller Barbereich, der an einem Donnerstag Abend gut gefüllt war und zum Verweilen aufhält.
Sehr großes Restaurant, recht dunkel aber gut besucht! Die Vorspeise, the appetizer sampler, ist mit dem Tuna Tartar, den calamari rings, mariniertem chicken und den wraps, wirklich zu empfehlen (gut zu zweit)
Als «Main» hatten wir Ginger chicken (etwas eintönig) und Tangerine beef (eher mein Fall)
Beides wurde ohne Beilagen serviert, Portionen waren aber völlig ausreichend!
Mein Eindruck: cooler Laden, nicht nur zum Essen (gut), sondern auch für chiques Nightlife in san José!!!

Trying not to laugh at Sino where the crowds don’t mix and food disappoints.
I’m not sure what Sino is going for. Is it a cheesy nightclub or a bad Asian inspired eatery? Barbies young and hip sided with douchebags of all ages fill the bar while the restaurant is an older, mostly tourists crowd. Not my kind of place at all. Dudes in slim fitted, ripped, distressed jeans with embellished back pockets and girls in little black dresses with no backs and plunging fronts yell over each other and the music.
Made reservations but asked to wait 20 minutes so the bar it is. After what seemed to be 10 minutes, a busy bartendress looked up and took our order. She was very polite and helped me with tasting a couple of wines before I decided on one. Thank you. The bar and lounge was packed with standing room only.
I almost forgot about the food. No, I almost forgot about the boring, bland, dry and not interesting food. I’ll start with the Kung Pao Chicken Lollypops $ 12 which is a fancy word from drumstick. It’s sweet, fried and sticky, the best of what we had. Next up was the dry pork bun. You can skip this. I think it was steamed in the oven.
The Shanghai Dumplings $ 10 on the other hand were so wet, they emptied themselves on first bite. Nothing like I’ve experienced in Chinese dumpling houses.
Hey, how about the Seafood Fried Rice $ 15? Hard to mess that up. Right? Wrong. Undercooked rice is fun to pick out of your molars. The three of us also shared a beef dish that was not worth mentioning. You can see where this is going.
So you have the tourists who come here to shop and play. Then you have the locals looking for a fancy night out, some dressed to impress and others, well, not so much. I’m not sure if the residents actually play where they live or if they’re tired of it all. I know I was.

I wasn’t expecting very much from this place after reading the reviews, but the food and service was waaay below my low expectations. First off, right around 6:30 they dim the lights. It was super dark in there! Maybe it’s because they don’t want you to see all the food you’ll be having.
For double date night appetizers we ordered the chicken lollipops (5, salty), steamed dumplings (6, not great), walnut shrimp (7, probably the best of the bunch but only if you like horseradish). My biggest complaint about the appetizers was the salt and pepper soft shell crab, the plating was unappetizing, the pieces were all weird sizes, you couldn’t tell what part of the crab some of the pieces were from, I don’t think I’ve ever had soft shell crab as fishy as it was here. It was also difficult to split the appetizers because each of them came with a different and frequently odd number of items to split.
For entrees we shared the Peking duck which was just okay, it came with a cranberry sauce which I did not use. And seafood fried rice, which was also just okay.
Do the servers here have tables that are all spread out? Our server was never to be found and we ended up waiting about 30 minutes after we were done eating to get the bill and to pay. Our server was very nice when you could find her.
Also, the bathrooms here are nasty. It’s really dark in the stalls and the toilet is black, it looks really dirty.
TL;DR: extremely salty, overpriced food. Very slow service and avoid the bathrooms if you can.

Love the prix fixe and the dimsums and also the lovely thai lemonade.
Yummy.