He Lin Restaurant

Never expect anything besides food in a Fuzhou style restaurant like this or you will definitelybe disappointed. The customers here are extremely loud, and the waitress speaks neither English nor Mandarin. The food is not bad though.

This place is ehhh. I’m not entirely sure why my family still comes here, probably because of it’s convenient location. The dim sum is nothing special. The seating is terrible. Do not try to plop down into your seat because your butt will definitely hurt. There is ZERO cushion on their chairs. The air condition isn’t strong or even noticeable.
My favorite dish here is this fried vermicelli noodle with meat and veggie sauce. The dish has changed since I last got it but it still tastes fairly good. The original was better but you can’t expect to get everything you want.

He Lin is the coolest place in our neighborhood and the food is amazing. Always something interesting happening, food is always yummy, and the staff are warm, friendly, and loud in a fun way!
The place is always full of Fujianese families or groups of friends toasting w Heinekin or slurping up snails in broth. If you wanna play it safe, there are lots of noodles and veggies etc but don’t be shy. Smile and ask questions and learn. You’ll be family in no time!

HORRIBLE SERVICE!!! Sad to say the food was really good but the bad service overwhelms the food. Food is overpriced. You can barely get any decent dishes for under $ 15. All the waitresses there have a horrible attitude, instead of treating their customers with respect they have a nasty attitude when you ask them for something. One waitress I asked for hot sauce and she walked right past me as if she didn’t see or hear me yelling at her since she Ignored me the first 4 times. Then the second waitress I asked for a spoon for f**ks sake and she was looking real hard at our dishes to see if we had any spoons hidden. When she finally got us a spoon she didn’t even nicely hand it to us, she had one of those attitudes like as if the spoon was too heavy to hold up she just tossed it and slipped it on the table for us to pick up. All they (waitresses) do is sit there and chat nonstop amongst themselves and me and my family literally waved in their faces several times to ask for service and they treated us as if we were invisible. I’m very unhappy with the service. How can someone be this rude. Also when we called them over to order this waitress with the glasses just takes a seat next to us while taking our order… I was just baffled. Who taught you this kind of behavior? How you got hired is beyond me. She acts like she works at hooters. She only provides good service to those people who come here only to drink. By far the worst place ever. I will never come back here even if the food was free. I literally wanted to just curse her out. I would never recommend it to anyone.

Another FJ restaurant on the block! Seafood is fresh, prices are reasonable. No tipping in this restaurant! that’s right, no tipping at all in order to compete with the 2 other FJ restaurants on the block. I can’t complain about dining except that it’s incredibly LOUD whenever I come. The waitress with the glasses is rude. She stands over my mom while my mom is digging through her wallet to pay the bill -.-
I ordered lunch here yesterday and it was a total disappointment. My noodles were bland, my hubby’s rice dish was also bland, my dad’s noodle was too salty, and they charged me for 2 sodas which I did not get. I called the restaurant to have them deliver it and they said, «We’ll give you 2 sodas on your next order…*hangs up* «wth? It’s no big deal since it’s only 2 cans of soda, but this just shows you how little they appreciate their customers. What do they expect me to do? Ask for 2 free sodas on my order because they forgot last time?
For breakfast and lunch, I highly recommend Hua Rong (2 doors away). I dont recommend their private rooms downstairs. It’s disgusting and bugs everywhere!

First thing i want to mention that was strange was there menus. They have two separate menus, one that is literally all in Chinese and one crappy paper menu with english. The english menu did not have everything that was offered on the all Chinese menu. The english menu had your generic chinese take out dishes, That sucked because i would of like to have the full options. They did have some pictures for certain ones so that helped us.
The noise level was horrible, at some point it got so loud that i could not hear myself think. Even the waitresses were really loud when interacting with customers, which leads me to the bad customer service i experienced. There was a man who looked like he was the manager and he was helpful since he saw that we did not speak or read Chinese so he tried his best to describe things to us. However when we went to pay the bill there was a old fuzhounese waitress that was incredibly rude. The place started to get busy right around the time we got our check and the waitress just came up to our table and kept telling us the amount to pay meanwhile, she’s screaming at the other customers that she has a table. She did not even ask us if we were done, maybe i was not ready to leave yet? After i told her to hold on the first time she remained there and began to bang on the table with her hand to tell us to hurry up. I still needed time to count my money so I told her a second time and she just gave me a nasty look and walked away and said okay with a attitude.
The food is decent, i ordered the spare ribs in house special sauce which i liked over the lychee pork we also order. I would come back here again cause the food is good for the price. They serve good portions for the price. Maybe if i had known how to read chinese i could of got something i liked more. But besides the terrible old fouzhounese waitress and the noise level, it was decent.

After we consistently ate here for two weeks, their service start to getting better. However, don’t forget «no tips», we weren’t expect too much. Now we become to their regular costumers, they really treat us good now. Great food, big portion, make us always come back especially someone really like «Fu Zhou «style food. Over all, very Chinese style restaurant, cooks really good food, that is why I forgave their bad service in the beginning.

Absolutely terrible service and food. I arrived on a Thursday night with my family to have dinner. We placed our order: noodles, and 3 plates of fried rice. The noodles came within 10 minutes, but we waited 45 minutes for the rice… From 7:30 to 8:20. The family who was running the restaurant was so disorganized and did not pay any attention to us, as we weren’t pay much for our food. It was extremely dissatisfying, and they even forgot about my father’s order. In the end after waiting for more than an hour, and eating some horribly salty fried rice, we left for the Phở Bang across. Would not recommend at all.

Bad services! Bad foods! The worst is, They never charge you the price on the menu, they will charge what they want… Sucks!!!

Terrible staff and atmosphere. The staff are horribly loud and the food is beyond bland. This establishment does not require you to tip, therefore leaving the staff open to blatantly ignore you. I wouldn’t come back even if they promised me a unicorn.

This is my new favorite place in Elmhurst. It’s a uniquely satisfying dining experience.
Here’s what to expect, maybe not for everyone, but…
This is a family place. Big families. But families that will temporarily adopt your single or childless couple butts in 5 seconds if you so much as smile.
Bright lighting. The better to see your neighbors and food and the fact that it’s one of the cleanest places on the block. Maybe not romantic but truly bright.
Mostly big tables. Chances are you may be seated with strangers if going alone or with small group. Only make eye contact if you want to make friends.
The families are getting festive. They are not speaking in whispers (is any Chinese dialect ever whispered?). Some of the men are getting mildly intoxicated on beer. It looks like they work hard. Keep in mind a minority of the restaurants on this strip have a liquor license. Some aren’t too thrilled when you bring in alcohol. Here, you can drink beer or wine out of oversize shot glasses which really makes you feel like the libations are flowing. Sadly, there are not currently selling any of the traditional Chinese moonshine beverages. I would take off .05 star if I could.
The menu includes both «family style» and single plate options. Down home Fuzhou cooking, which means it is hard to find a red pepper in the house but you have the opportunity to eat almost any part of several land and sea animals and a generous variety of vegetables, simply but very competently prepared in ways that highlight the stuff you are eating. You can get a chicken on rice thats really nice, or pig ear or lamb testicles if you’re into it. The fresh fish tanks are clean and the critters lively. Some of the menu has not been translated. But the entire staff is competent in Fuzhounese, Mandarin and English (and probably a few more). Don’t be intimidated, they learned all those languages to sell you good stuff for a fair price. And to make sure no customer unwittingly orders the testicles.
I come here at least weekly and order a few dishes so I can try more stuff and have leftovers. I am a big fan of a not –translated-​to-​English item in the «Country Style Section» 滷味拼瀊 Lu Wei Pin Pan or Cold Taste Platter roast beef, pig ear, duck feet, and something. If you are not Fuzhou make sure they don’t load it up with boring roast beef. The boring sounding «house special stir fry» is actually rocking’! Congealed pig blood and tender leeks is a comforting strength builder. The bitter melon soup is good to have on the table.
I love looking at other peoples dishes here. The lobster looks so awesome, I eat pretty much everything but have never been able to get into snails. But it is extremely popular with the regulars and does look quite fine.
Honestly, this is one place that doesn’t have to give a damn if Unilocal likes it. The place is humming with appreciative Fuzhou customers every time I walk by. Wherever you are from, you owe it to yourself to stop in and find out if it’s your thang.

I definitely don’t recommend you to come here unless 1) you don’t mind loud noise while enjoying your dinner 2) if you’re not fuzhounese. The majority of the ppl in here eating are mostly fuzhounese and they are seriously really loud that it can get you headache. They probably be drinking and chatting so if you don’t like loud noise then this is not the place for you. The staff are inattentive maybe because of the loud noise customers. The food are alright I don’t really enjoyed since the taste is kinda bland. I recommended the ru yi something restaurant more thoe. Overall I wouldn’t come back here again.

Staff are friendly and attentive to your needs!
I had four dishes: sliced beef with green peppers, tofu with mixed seafood (a lot of shrimp!), sauteed watercress with garlic and sizzling beef with onions!
I thought the seafood dish was good value at $ 11.95! Sizzling beef was $ 12.95! Watercress with garlic $ 11.95 and the sliced beef with green peppers $ 11.95! Two bowls of steamed rice $ 2.00 Total:$ 51.00
Management posted a remark on the entrance «no tipping necessary”(probably part of the promotion of a new business opening).
Anyway, food quality seemed adequate for the price. Servings were
also adequate in size.
I will come back and try the other dishes! Which they have clearly displayed on the façade of the restaurant-​this is to heighten your expectations of what’s to be experienced!
This particular part of Broadway in Elmhurst has shown rapid growth in eateries with most of the cuisine being Asian in origin. Plenty of choices!
Enjoy!

Had a late dinner around 12am, this was one of those restaurants that open late at night after 2am.
Their service was terrible, I even had to wait an hour for a single dish (
). The foods wasn’t too bad, but the snow crab looks disgusting (
).
Tip: They do serve wine and beer.

grand opening.
crowded.
got the house special stir fry.
got the fried fish head with bean curd.
got the Fuzhou fried rice.