Jayd Bun, a popular Chinese food takeout spot in Wakefield, recently received what owners said is their best review yet.
Having opened their doors just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Parisi and his wife Annie took a gamble.
“We opened up October of 2019 right before the COVID outbreak," said Parisi. “It was pretty scary. It was slow, we weren’t even sure if we were going to survive the winter with COVID, but then things slowly started getting busier and busier."
Fast forward three years, and Parisi said his business is booming.
The couple prides themselves on their authentic Chinese food menu which is inspired by where Annie hails from: Tianjin, China.
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The Parisi's said everything is house-made.
“We always ask people to spread the word, leave reviews, social media, and just little by little we’ve improved," said Parisi, “We care what people think. All we want to do is please everyone and make everyone happy. We want people to love our food. Whenever we get bad feedback or someone complains, we try to learn from it. We learn and get better from it.”
The reviews have been working.
Inside of the establishment, the Parisi's have hung their accolades all over, including articles from The Providence Journal, The Boston Globe, Yelp, and Best of Rhode Island, and other awards up for their customers to see and read.
“That way people can read it and see that it's just love," said Parisi.
The Sabins' of Glastonbury, Connecticut, can't get enough of their food.
They first tried it while on a family trip.
They had read reviews from nearby restaurants.
"We were like, 'This is the best food we’ve ever eaten,', We are big foodies, and hard to please, but this is by far the best Chinese food we’ve ever had,'" said Whitney Sabins. “We live in south Glastonbury, Connecticut, and yes, we do travel an hour and a half from time to time to get our Jayd Bun fix. This is a very welcoming place. You can tell there is joy everywhere, including in their food.”
On a most recent trip, after leaving, the Sabins' two kids, 12-year-old Keegan and 9-year-old Macaire, had an idea to show appreciation for their favorite restaurant.
“Keegan gets a lot of Lego sets for his birthday, Christmas, any type of thing with gifts. Then he builds them, we play with them, then we get tired of them destroy them," said Macaire. "We had a big bucket of Legos and we make anything out of the pieces, extra pieces that we have. We just looked at each other and we were like, 'Let’s make Jayd Bun.'"
The siblings took some time carefully constructing a replica of Jayd Bun using their Legos.
They even made a dumpling roof.
There was no detail too small.
“Keegan comes up, he's like, 'Mom, we created Jayd Bun.' I was like, 'What do you mean?' and I looked at it and I was like, 'Bud, this is like, one of your best creations,'" Sabins said. "It was so creative, and I loved it so much and I was like, 'I have to reach out.' I was super proud of them. They whipped it up it was so creative and it looks like Jayd Bun.'"
Sabins took a picture of the display and posted it on social media, hoping it would reach the Parisi's, and it did.
“I was like, 'Oh my God, that’s awesome,'" said Parisi. “I showed my wife, she actually cried a little bit, she was like, 'That is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,' she showed her parents in China, all her family in China, she was showing it off. I was like, 'I want to buy it.' She was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, see if we can buy it.'"
After some thought, the kids negotiated a price and didn't mind giving up their Legos.
“I was like, 'We should probably do that because they need to be more recognized as such a great restaurant,'" said Keegan. "And so we thought we would do that.”
Currently, the Lego display is front and center at the business.
Parisi also printed out the original social media posts from the Sabins' so customers could understand where it came from and what it meant.
“As a mom, I was thankful they appreciated the work that my children put into that," said Sabins.
“It just shows customer satisfaction. It shows they went home and thought about us. They built it. It meant everything to us. It shows you what we’re doing is working, and that just meant a lot," said Parisi.