Xin Asian Bistro

Visiting out of town — my brother took my boyfriend and I to Xin Asian Bistro for a hearty lunch. We ordered the limited hotpot with Sichuan and Kimchi soup base and beef and lamb as our meats. It was delicious and authentic! Quality meat and vegetable offerings (bok choy, enoki and standard mushrooms, glass noodles, cabbage, and tofu, bean curd), as well as superb fixings to customize your own dipping sauce (sesame oil, green onions, garlic, chili sauce, peanut sauce, chinese barbecue sauce). I was not expecting such a nice set up and really enjoyed our meal! The sichuan was spicy as expected while the kimchi was a more neutral complement.
We also ordered the «Snow Ice» which is their delicious take on shaved ice. The pictures on the menu are inaccurate and totally undersell what this dessert ends up being. They advertised flavors that they didn’t offer, but we ordered the mango ice with strawberry milk which came out to be strawberry flavored ice with mango bits, mochi and two pocky sticks (see picture) — super fun and actually one of the better shaved ices I’ve ever had! The consistency of the ice was a lot fluffier than you’d normally find with asian shaved ice.
While there are reviews and perhaps previous experiences of poor service, we actually had a great attentive waitress who appealed to all our extra requests such as additional bowls, spoons, more soup and whatnot. As such, I had no issue with the automatic 18% gratuity and thought Xin Asian Bistro was a gem of a restaurant in Lafayette.

unfriendly waiters compulsory 18%tips really not recommended at all. th i s kind of location if you do not offer nice food at least should provide friendly price or nice waiters. if you do not have even one of three， you are one step away from closed

Hot pot is good，but the service is the most terrible in West Lafayette. Waiting one hour for a beef and rice. Never back here again.

Terrible service, the waiter doesn’t gives a damn about guest cause there is a 18% gratitude added automatically. The food here is not bad but not worth the wait and price.

First, the food here is generally pretty good. Good portion size, tasty… Not bad. The service is absolutely awful… Rude, dismissive. Your bill will automatically include a 18% gratuity on it for take out or parties of 2 or more. They will still ask for a tip however. They are not very fast at serving your food. It also seems dirty… First glance, it’s cool, hip and chic. Look closer it’s sort of gross. I eat here, but only because of a lack of good Asian food close to my home.

A pretty good example of what happens when 18% gratuity is automatically added to every order (not just large parties like at other places). Result = utterly pathetic awful (lack of) service. We’re talking worse-than-McDonald’s service here. Our party of 7 decided to eat here because there was a long line at Gaza, and Xin was mostly empty. To start, they give us 5 menus for 7 people. Then, the waiters weren’t familiar with their own menu. I mean, when someone points to one of the pictures and says «this one» shouldn’t they know what to write down? One person in our group ordered a coke, which was never refilled until he had to ask. Another guy had hot water, and when he asked for «another water» the waiter brought ice water. Two of the girls ordered the exact same plate of noodles from the menu, but received different things. One of them was so late (over an hour) that the rest of us (6 people!) had all finished eating.
One or two of these little problems can be excused. So many happening in tandem is a big problem. But the really big problem came when we got the check. As a result of the previously mentioned late noodles, they told us that it was on the house, and gave us a bill totaling $ 92 (after tax and the automatic gratuity). But when we went to the counter to split the check, they rang us up for $ 108, charging us for the noodles that they said they wouldn’t. When I pointed out the discrepancy, the guy’s reply was «well you didn’t say anything earlier [meaning 10 seconds ago] and now I can’t undo the splitting of the checks». He then proceeded to give me a lecture on being honest about how many plates we ordered. After some more arguing, it turned out that he COULD remove the charge for the noodles and split the check again, he just didn’t want to. Maybe the customer isn’t always right, but when the bill says $ 92 with the explanation that one order was on the house due to slow service, and you’re trying to charge $ 108 anyways… well, let’s just say that Xin won’t be missed if it goes out of business.
To top it all off, the food kind of sucked. Mediocre food + bad service + dishonesty = a recipe for failure, especially in a college town where competition among restaurants is fierce.

They should hire servers who actually know what they’re doing Ordered a japchae got a jajang mein instead. Either they don’t listen or the obviously don’t their own menu. The food is good and all but that doesn’t mean anything when the servers suck.

Really good food and the waiter was nice and funny! I def recommend it. It’s a little pricey but its worth it!

This place will not last long, which is a good thing. They are charging 18% gratuity for a party of 1 – 100, which is a nice way to ensure that servers get a living wage. Unfortunately, the servers aren’t really willing to provide service. They were rude. It was practically a self-​service restaurant. The food was ok. The décor was lovely… maybe if they change the ways of their rude staff they could make it.

Im a healthy eater so I don’t like to eat out often because it’s always too salty. This place is one exception. Seafood noodle soup is great as long as you don’t expect the Udon as listed in the menu. The noodle is good and tasty but its not udon. Large portion and its not salty. The milk tea is bit icy but has a lot of green tea flavor, which I enjoy very much.
The place is clean and nice, like a café. Be aware that 18% tips will be already added to your check.

This place is great! The staff are always very friendly and the food is always delicious. Jeremy was very nice and helpful. The dumplings are the best dumplings I’ve ever had and the kampoonki is amazing. All of their chicken and shrimp dishes are very flavorful and portion sizes are generous. I tried their new «hot pot» which was a great experience. You get 2 types of broth, an enormous plate of meat and and even bigger plate of vegetables to cook in the broth. They recently combined the restaurant with the former Korean bakery and now serve coffee and smoothies on that side of the restaurant. On my way out, I noticed that they serve Boba, so I will definitely be back!

This restaurant is so horrible. They are so MEAN. I came for my dinner there ALONE today and ordered just only fish roe soup; however, they charged me 18% tip automatically, which is acceptable for me if their service is good. Unfortunately, it was completely not. Their service is same as simple Asian restaurant in town. The server told me that it is the policy of their restaurant. They are just simple restaurant, not fine-​dining one. What the heck I have to pay for 18% service charge!!! This gonna be my last time this stupid restaurant. SUCKXin!!!

Storefront restaurant with pretensions. Stopped for lunch, but found ourselves about twenty minutes too late to order from the lunch menu. Food is just ok. After being presented with the bill which included the mandatory 20% gratuity, for what, I’m not sure, service certainly did not justify that amount, we decided to cross this place off of our list. Further regarding the included tip. I feel that 20% can be justified in some cases, but that would be if one received «excellent service». We did not, and resented the forced amount.

This is the new Asian restaurant in town in the same strip mall as Hana Market and Gaza. They serve Korean-​style Chinese food. I tried several dishes and all were very tasty. The Champon/​Jampong is a spicy seafood noodle soup, the Jajang mein is noodles in a brown sauce, the tangsoo was Sweet and Sour Pork which was much better than the typical sweet and sour chicken you would get at most Chinese restaurants in town. I also had some vegetable fried rice that was very good. In general, I don’t like fried rice because I think it is heavy and greasy, but this was very good and I would order it again.
The portions were huge and the service was friendly.

So I went to check this place, because it has the same name as mine «Xin». I like the food, especially the seafood pancake and jajang noodle, i’d try the kimchi soup next time. The service is not that terrible, but they did forget to bring us spoon, and stuff, and just gave us a big bottle of water so we could refill ourselves, but this is okay for me. The service lady was kinda funny and joking about how my American friends use chopsticks, but not the rude type, my friends seems okay with this. Okay service, if you ask whatever you need, they will bring to you. But they do pre-​charge 18% of tips.
The food taste really like the kind of Korean food you would find in China, it really similar to one of the Korean restaurant near my alma mater in China, so it kinda remind me of my college life.
For those who are vegetarian, there is only one vegetarian dish, mixed vegetable stir-​fry with rice. I think that dish is kind of boring, or plain, just they do not put much effort in designing the vegetarian menu, not too much to be surprised of. Their rice is good though, and they use a cute bamboo-​like bowl to hold the rice.

I was told by a colleague at the office that ‘word on the street is that they had hired a chef all the way from China to cook at this place’, so as you can imagine, I was excited to try Xin Bistro out. My excitement was met with disappointment almost as soon as I sat down. The waitress while civil was not very friendly, for a place that supposedly offers ‘full service’ (gratuity is included, but we’ll get to that later), you’d at least expect her to stop and speak with you instead of doing the ‘walk and talk’. The menu, the description of each entrée to be specific, was very generic and did not generate much enthusiasm, listing the ingredients and telling me that they’re stir-​fried is far from enticing. The waitstaff also was pretty clueless as to the flavor of each dish as they could not answer any of my questions without having to run into the kitchen to ‘find out’ or looking confused, much less making any sort of recommendations. I had to repeatedly ask for refills of my water, and finally they just brought out a bottle of water so I could pour my own glass, which is a fine concept if they kept the ice coming, but on a fine hot day where the A/​C was not running in full throttle, well, a clever idea became a lazy one. When the food arrived, the flavor was not bad, the ingredients were fresh enough, but it had a bit more salt than I would prefer. I was also distracted by the flies trying to compete with me for dinner (again, the room was warm and those ice was melting faster than they could be replaced), so I just hurried and asked for the check. The check came and as I was handed the bill I was told that tip was included, 18% of the total bill, which is fine if the service was acceptable, sadly, it wasn’t and I was not asked once by any of the waitstaff how my meal was until I got the bill. By then it was a moot point. Xin Bistro has a Korean owner and manager, and the entire waitstaff are also Korean, so for someone like myself who does not speak language, I find it discourteous, if not rude, to have the servers exchange words in Korean right in front of me. Keep in mind that this is not a mom-​and-​pop hole in the wall place, by all setup, Xin Bistro is trying to be an upscale full service dining EXPERIENCE, the kids smoking right outside the front door (we’re not in Paris people), the walk and talk waitress, the clueless waiter, the cooks who were clearly not from China or even Chinese (the chefs/​cooks I have seen walking out of the kitchen were of Hispanic ethnicity), the warm (not in a good way) atmosphere, the flies swooping around, the so-​so food and the lack of service in general really cannot justify the word ‘bistro’ nor can they think they had earned that 18%. Would I go back? Perhaps, if they can fix these issues (though this is the same place owned by the person who owns two other food businesses in town, so I’m not sure why this new place falls so low even if it’s the first couple of weeks of business). I’m going to wait a while before I go back and give them another try again.