Uncle Yu’s

good food if they remember to put it in your bag or to apologize for you driving all the way back to pick up said food

By far the best Chinese food this side of the tunnel. I have never had a bad dish here. I can even find dishes my kids will eat (garlic noodles… Addictive!). I honestly don’t understand the negative reviews.

They serve fewer scallops by far these days, and they only serve a very bad champagne. The sauce is no longer drizzled prettily across the top of the scallops, either. Presentation seems to have gone by the wayside.

Good food for Yangguizi, foreign devils — white folks!
Bland, frozen fish, yes their crab is frozen. It’s like asking for pizza anywhere in Italy but Naples. I asked for Kuaizi (chopsticks) in Mandarin. The server was Asian maybe didn’t speak Mandarin. I had to ask in English. Good service, kind and smiling servers,
and fortune cookies of course. There’s got to be a better deal in town then this?

Brrrrr… it was chilly in the restaurant tonight. More heat please, no one likes to be cold while they are eating dinner. The Beef and Broccoli was very very salty and oily with very few broccoli florets. The wonton soup tasted like doughy balls in chicken bullion, not a fan. We used to really love the food here, especially their vegetables. But the last few times we’ve eaten here it has been just ok, hence the rating.

I’ve been dining here for almost 20 years and it never disappoints. Delicious Chinese dishes with a good variety of your standard Americanized faire and some more authentic dishes mixed in. Always full of flavor and the service is wonderful. Happily return every time I’m back in the area visiting family.

My family always like to go Uncle Yu’s for our celebrate events. This is one of the few Chinese restaurants with high quality food and service. The food is very fresh

I absolutely LOVE this place! Best chinese food ever and i’ve never been disappointed! The food is amazing, environment clean, and the waiters very attentive! You’re getting the fine dining experience for a very fair price. I always look forward to eating here! Btw, their honey walnut prawns, spring rolls, crabmeat puffs, and sweet and sour chicken are to die for! Thank you Uncle Yu

My family and I have been eating at Uncle Yu’s for 20 years and we have never had a bad meal. Some of these Unilocal reviewers clearly belong in that South Park episode. I always bring out of town guests to Uncle yu’s and they never stop talking about how it changed their perception of Chinese food forever! If you want the same old greasy American Chinese food, go elsewhere. If you want an inventive gourmet dining experience with amazing wine and service, go to uncle yu’s! The appetizers are the best part, and the honey walnut prawns are a close second. Everywhere else I’ve tried them it’s like not even the same dish… Greasy etc. Uncle yu’s has it down.

Our first visit to Uncle Yu’s was great! They have a great wine list and the service was on point. We ordered a few appetizers; steamed dumplings and the sizzling rice soup. The dumplings weren’t our favorite but the soup was GREAT! For the main course we would highly recommend both the Kung Po Chicken & Szechuan Beef. Seemed like a popular local spot and we will definitely return in the future.

In Lamorinda today and I was famished and needed a really good lunch.
Uncle Yu’s presents a convincing image from the outside, a restaurant that takes itself seriously and serves good food. Don’t be fooled: Uncle Yu is a lousy cook.
I ordered kung pao chicken on the lunch special. That comes with hot and sour soup, choice of rice or chow mein and a side of vegetables.
The hot & sour soup was very nasty. Bitter and bland rather than hot and sour. It was a very tired concoction, one with a long career as a soup somewhere, maybe a can or a plastic pouch. The julienned pork, it was gray and when chewed turned into something like paper pulp in the mouth. Various other components of authentic hot and sour soup were completely missing, like the lotus blossoms and dark fungus slivers.
Very disappointing.
On the luncheon plate, the side of veggies seemed like they’d been prepared from fresh veggies, but it was like I was a patient in a convalescent hospital: they were steamed and had no flavoring at all. Utterly bland.
The chow mein was obviously pre-​portioned, nuked in a plastic bag and simply slid onto my plate. It had No Flavor At All. Utterly bland. It had never seen a wok, or oil of any kind, or salt, or even fucking soy sauce.
The kung pao. How hard is it to cook kung pao from scratch? It is Chinese 101, kung pao. This kung pao had the same bitter undertaste as the hot and sour soup. It had none of the tastes of kung pao, the savory chicken against the nice onions and peppers, the crunchy peanuts and their earthiness. This came from a plastic bag with tired, soggy peanuts having been saturated with the old, nasty brown sauce. They threw some fresh red peppers in to make it look like something.
And everything on the plate was permeated with the unnatural heat that comes from the silver box with the bell.
This is crappy, imitation Chinese made for slow, thick white people who don’t know any better.
Save your money.

Uncle Yu’s gets four stars for amazing service! Their servers were so intuitive that we never had to ask for anything. They were very friendly and unobtrusive.
Our food came out rather quickly. It was hot and mildly flavored.
The bbq rib appetizer was very tasty. The steamed broccoli was perfect. Not soggy at all. The fried rice and chow mein were decent. However, they could have used a little more flavor.
We ordered the black forest cake dessert. It was a small round premade cake with cherries inside. It did not taste like it was described on the menu. I forgot to take a photo of it. It was quite small and commercial tasting. The $ 8 price was not justified.
Another friend had the cheesecake. She only ate one bite. I would definitely recommend a dessert menu change.
The pricing for the dishes were rather high even though the portion sizes were decent.
Would I return again?
Yes.
Though their prices were higher and the desserts weren’t great, the atmosphere and service was great.
Thank you!

I can’t believe Uncle Yu’s only has 3.5 stars! This place is fantastic! I’ve searched high and low for the best Chinese food in the area and this is by far the best.
You’re totally missing out if you don’t order the rainbow chicken (lettuce wraps) and he broccoli beef. They’re both to die for!
Their desserts are extremely good as well! Especially the exotica bamba (I believe)

Disappointing and almost inedible Chicken Papaya Salad. Fatty chicken pieces from the dregs of the chicken. Terrible flavor.
Salad had very little dressing.
Couldn’t eat it and told them why. No offer to comp the meal and no offer to prepare something else. I won’t be returning for another meal there.

My girls & I love it! We’ve had almost everything on the menu (eat in & take out), & can’t say we have been disappointed.
Few of our favorites:
crab puffs
general t’so chicken
chicken salad
Mongolian lamb
mu shu
The Servers are all very attentive & polite at all times. Food comes out fast & yet, you will never feel rushed.
I only wished they delivered ;-)

By far the best chinese food in Lafayette and possibly the whole area. The crab meat puffs are awesome and my family really loves the honey walnut prawns. The orange beef is different and delicious. The service is always good and there really isn’t a bad item on the menu. The mai tai’s come in a fun glass and went down a little too easy :-) This place is great for large groups of people as well.

A Lafayette staple. My family has been coming here forever and we are and always will be loyal customers. Although a lot has changed over the years, the food remains at the heart of it all. Would recommend to anyone in the area.

Every year for the lunar new year’s eve we meet with my parents, sister’s family, and a ton of friends at Chinatown SF to celebrate and light off firecrackers. This year we had plans to do the same thing, but found ourselves in the hospital instead. Our family lost a very special person on the morning of the Lunar New Year and we were all exhausted from days of sadness — nobody had eaten a thing.
After hours of planning at a Oakmont Memorial Park, 9 of us met at Uncle Yu’s around dinner time, and found a full house! We asked for a tale for 9, and they asked if we had a reservation. Ohhhh yeah, the New Year! We luckily were sat at the only open table within minutes and began hungrily staring at their menu.
Before long, chow mein, chow fun, steamed rice, honey walnut prawns, Mongolian chicken, peking chicken, garlic prawns, orange chicken and a couple other dishes… found their way to our table. We finished almost every plate — all sharing and taking turns eating through our tears.
The food was outstanding. Service was great too — especially for how full they were that night. I wish we’d gathered there to celebrate the New Year, but regardless, it was a great meal.

My boyfriend’s parents brought us here for dinner when we were in town for Thanksgiving, saying it was super fresh, non-​greasy Chinese food. We got crab wontons and fried pork dumplings to start. I didn’t try the wontons but the dumplings were ok. We ordered orange chicken (which I skipped but others liked) and gluten free prawns with mixed vegetables which I really liked — very light but full of flavor & the prawns were cooked just right. I would definitely return.

Uncle Yu’s is ok but certainly not worth a detour. I was there yesterday with a large group. The menu had been pre-​ordered but the food was very slow coming out and we were HUNGRY!
The food tasted fresh but not particularly flavorful, so nothing stands out as worth reporting on. The highlight was probably the hot and sour soup, and so I guess we’ve got to give them some credit there as some restos can’t get that right.