Kirin is well known for their top quality food and today, a busy Thanksgiving Monday, was no exception. However, my experience with the Coquitlam location was marred by really terrible service and there is no excuse when the restaurant is charging $5+ per dish.

Realizing that today would be a very busy day in the dim sum world, we called in advance to reserve a table so that we would not have to wait. Upon arriving, the hostess was overwhelmed with people peering down upon her but she and the other staff were doing nothing to manage the crowd. People were gathered close to her desk because she was calling names out in a pipsqueak mouse voice.

When our party of three was called in (wait time was perfectly acceptable as we arrived slightly early), we were taken to a table against the wall beside the door where servers emerged with food. Normally, I would accept this as being part of the experience of dining on a busy day. However, because we were a party of three, I was stuck facing the goddamn wall! When we got to our table, there were no place settings and I stood by the table due to the fact that there was NO CHAIR FOR ME for a full two minutes before they decided to bring a seat for me.

The waiter came and impatiently took our order and refused to leave one of the order sheets for us to look over. They only give you one normal dim sum menu so you have to pass it around to look at so it would have been handy to have the sheet for two minutes. Instead of allowing this, he took an order for three items and advised us that he would be back. When we beckoned him over a few minutes later for the remainder of our order, he had already forgotten what we'd ordered previously so I had to speak loudly as he argued with my mother and got the order moving.

Although the quality of the food was outstanding, the food came slowly and not that hot, despite having been custom-ordered.

In the end, we enjoyed ourselves and made the best of a bad situation. Groups of three should not be seated against that wall--fine for two but not three. No one should be subjected to sitting two feet away from a wall, facing it.

Get it together, Kirin! If you don't have enough room in your dining room at a particular time for a reservation, DON'T TAKE THE RESERVATION. I'd rather come at a different time and eat comfortably.