Ho Chow Restaurant(He Qiao Cun )

The beef chow fun (flat rice noodles) was decent and nothing special, and needed some extra soy sauce for flavor. The seafood pan fried noodles had too much sauce (that didn't have much flavor either) and was extremely soggy and not crispy at all. The restaurant's ambiance during lunch time was a bit dark, as if the owner was saving electricity by not turning on a few interior lights.

I've always been going to Ho Chow for last 15 years. First time I went with family after they opened for dine-in since pandemic. Was totally empty and didn't see usual staff. Food was as good as it always is. Except the Kung Pao was not the way I remember. Hence one star less. Service was good. Would have lived if they had some music playing. Only one table was occupied besides us. I know they do a lot on takeout since the counter is always filled by take out bags.

My two co-workers and I went there for lunch on Wednesday, 8-9-23. The service was slow but we finally provided our order for qty 1 Chicken Chow Fun, and qty 2 Lunch combination Special (Wednesday is Beef Teriyaki). On the menu, the Chicken Chow Fun was listed as $11.50 and the Lunch Combination Special was listed as $11.75 and the waitress told us we must have minimum of 2 to order this special so we did. We thought for the price, the amount of food we got was great. The food tasted OK but a bit too salty and too much soy sauce. We were in a hurry of getting back to work so we asked for to go box and gave her the credit card to pay. The credit card bill came but no itemized bill. In a hurry of putting the left over into the box and going back to work, I signed the receipt and tips. But when I was in the car on the way back, I saw the total bill was $61.45 and I gave $9.00 tips. But there is no way our bill should come up to $61.45! I thought maybe they up the price without updating the menu but when I went to their website and on yelp the prices are still $11.50 for the Chicken Chow Fun but no where listed the combination special. No way the combination can go from $11.75 to over $20 each. I am upset that I should have looked closer to the bill and asked for itemized bill. I plan to head back tonight to confirm. So to others, don't be in a hurry to pay and always ask for itemized receipt. I went back after work and asked to see the itemized receipt and to understand why the bill is so high! What Ifound was that we were charge for 3 lunch specials. One is 2 for $24 and the other is as the menu stated 1 for $11.75. And there was a whopping automatic 18% service charge which was never informed to us. I immediately informed her that we were charged wrong and I would not have tipped $9 if I knew 18% was already charged. She told me this is all what the computer did due to COVID. Not making sense but all well at least she was relatively pleasant to deal with and did void the original and recharged me. I changed the one star rating to two. I ended paying $46.20 which I still think I was over charged: 1. I was charged the 2 for $24 lunch special instead of 1 for $11.75 as listed in the menu. So that's 50 cents extra. 2. I was still charged 18% service when I don't think this bad experience is worth this level of service charge. 3. They charged the service charge 18% on top of the expensive 10.25% tax in Fremont. By that time I was too tired to argue for the couple of dollars. Will I go back. Absolutely NOT! And I cannot recommend.

The hot tea is kinda off putting because there is so many leaves in it, but tastes good. The food was okay, the noodles were good but the peppercorn beef had a really overpowering lemon grass flavor and you couldn’t taste much else. The general chicken had good flavor, but not crispy at all like it says in the menu. They also automatically add on an 18% service charge