Koi Palace

Never thought Koi Palace would be good for dinner! It surprises me a bit but the dishes are really good, though kind of pricy.

3.5 stars. But I rounded up, because obviously, there is no 3.5 star option. Unilocal,step up your game and provide half-​star options for reviewers, please!
Koi Palace has another location in Daly City, and ever since this place opened up in Milpitas, this place has been poppin’! The parking lots are ridiculously filled beyond capacity on the weekends, and expect to be treated as if you are a common patron waiting at the DMV. So, come early to be seated as soon as possible.
This place is pretty much higher end dim sum, so expect to spend more money here than the average dim sum place. With that being said, however, this place does have more variety than other places and unique dishes — which is what I come and explore different dim sum places for. I’m not the person who orders the ha gow (shrimp dumpling) and siu mai, as its so common place and standard in a restaurant.
I would have given this place four stars, but the bf loves his ha gow, and the dish was a party foul in itself, with the skin falling apart and not withholding its texture. Needless, it was «much disappoint.»
Anyways, the special and notable dishes here included the durian rolls (not for those who don’t have an acquired taste), sesame covered black sesame dessert (its like tong yuen, but in different form), almond coated leaky sand bun (lau sa bao), chicken buns that look like mushrooms, and the multi-​flavored/​colored XLB.
I’ve been here about 5 times, and I know, I’m late in the game reviewing this place. But! That being said, I will definitely be back and try the rest of the dishes, when I feel like spending more money, of course.

Dim Sun is a tough business. We (Chinese) want fresh ingredients, good cooking, hot and fast serving, and not expensive. Koi Palace (and its Daly City companion) is mostly there. The classic dishes were right on, the Cantonese cooking (not dim sums) are better. The place is so crowded that the wait can be 90 minutes for the wrong arrival time.
So, I will come for a big craving, but not if I am just in a mood for dim sum. Simply for not wanting to wait.

I came in around 9:55 AM, before the opening time 5 minutes, and there was already a long line waiting there.
In a Saturday morning like the day I came, the service was not too bad, actually quite good. The reason I give this restaurant 3 stars is that the food is not good, comparing to other dimsum places around the U.S.
That said, here is San Jose area, and all the restaurants here are equally bad. There are many of them I would have to give zero or minus (sub zero) a few stars. This one got 3 stars, so the food is eatable, not delicious.

Its go big or go home here.
Their seafood specialty dishes are the highlight but they cost $ 40/​entrée. Crab, fresh fish, smoked cod, etc.
If u try to save money and get a set menu (like we did) its just ok. Stuff like panfried pork chop, chicken lettuce cup, walnut shrimp are not that good and a little too salty.
Service is customarily bad, dont take it personally — this is normal for authentic style chinese restaurants.

My cousin mentioned this place and of course I had to Unilocal it. It looked pretty good so I decided to give it a try with some friends. It was alright, but definitely not worth the 45 min wait. We came here with the expectation of crap service, but sweet baby Jesus it was terrible. There’s no one coming around to clear your table or refill your water. I tried to flag down countless servers, bussers, and what seemed like managers. We would make eye contact and they openly chose to not help us out. Well, that’s cool. We had one of them take our order for the egg yolk lava buns and he just never came back. After a good 10 to 15 minutes we waved another one done. He got our order in, checked on us to find out if we got it yet (we didn’t), and started screaming in Chinese on his little headset. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever seen. Hey! At least he got the job done.
I don’t think I’ll come back though. I’ll stick to Jade Cathay.

This Koi Palace location’s prices are for higher end dim sum, but the quality of the dim sum is pretty average. Starting with just the basic har gao (around 6 bucks for 4!) — the dumpling skin was not tight and easily broke as we tried to separate them from each other. There was a decent amount of shrimp, but the shrimp filling lacked flavor. This was disappointing given how great the har gao at their affiliated Dragon Beaux is. The Mongolian beef rice rolls looked interesting and the flavors were decent (thanks to lots of oyster sauce), but the beef they used was minced and immediately fell out of the rice wrappers. The taro meat deep fried puff, while quite tasty, was simply too greasy, with oil dripping out of each bite. The highlights for me included the veg/​pork wrapped in bean curd (although some might find it too saucy), the pork spare ribs in black bean sauce (the right flavor and texture AND they included bits of taro to soak up the sauce) and the deep fried mango milk custard (have never had this before, but a nice thin deep fried batter on the outside gave way to a silky, smooth slightly mango flavored milk custard inside).
Food aside, the décor of the restaurant aspires to look like a higher end Chinese restaurant. Intricate wood work, replicas of famous silk screen prints, a bar with top shelf liquors. The service was decent. We actually got seated right away at the bar despite it being prime dim sum time on a Sunday and the server took our order relatively quickly. The main downside of sitting at the bar, of course though, is you miss out on the cart action. All in all, Koi Palace milpitas is not a bad dim sum option– hope they step up their food game a bit though.

My experience eating here was tolerable on the first half. But towards the end we were kept waiting for our food for half an hour. And then, the waiter just come up to us with our check asking us if we wanted to go boxes. And when we ask them about our remaining order our waiter just told us in a not so friendly tone «there is no more of your order» but they didn’t tell us about it beforehand and kept us waiting.
Also the mango pudding has grapefruit in it that makes it taste kinda bitter which is not on the description on the menu.

Came here during a Thursday lunch for Dim Sum. The dim sum was pretty high quality. The roasted duck wasn’t that good though. Other than that, everything was great!
The Daikon cake was good, and both the shrimp and pork dumplings were good. The running egg yolk buns could have been better.
I was pretty impressed with the rainbow xiao long bow. You don’t find it at a lot of dim sum places.
The restaurant was also spacious and clean. It was located on the second floor which was quite nice.

If I had to describe my experience here, it would be a few words: loud & rude. I wasn’t offended in anyway since I’ve encountered even more OP manners, but the fact that everyone at my table was not having a good time definitely kills the mood and questions why you should spend average $ 30/​person.
Me and a party of 8 came at 11 am on a Saturday morning. No doubt, we had to wait a good 30 minutes before our table was ready. Which I am pretty impressed, since there is a decent waitlist.
*If you have a big party, definitely designate only one or two people to order. It felt like a marketing scheme where we were all approached by different servers, asking us if we wanted the same thing multiple times.
**There are pushing carts AND a paper menu. Pushing carts take longer to come around, so I would definitely order from the menu (if you can read the super fine print). Menu link below!
We ordered:
Meat based dishes:
–2 orders of fried steamed chicken feet (fung zao) /​/​Not a bad start. Cooked, sauced and yummy.
–1 order of steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce (pai gwut) /​/​Not too oily, and not too salty.
–1 order of beef tripe /​/​Simple and yummy! Might need to be cut out more thinly though.
–1 order of meatballs (ngao yuk kau) /​/​PASS. tasted like a bunch of old meat mixed together.
Dumplings:
–3 orders of open-​topped steamed pork or shrimp dumplings (siu mai) /​/​Not bad! Each piece is small though. They roll around pork, while shrimp ones are on the paper menu.
–1 order of deep fried mince pork dumpling (haam sui gau) /​/​PASS. There is NOTHING inside! Even the worst places have more filling than this…
–2 orders of steamed shrimp dumplings (har gau) /​/​ (L) Huge piece of shrimp in each one, no wonder it’s pricey.
–1 order of steamed dumpling with pork, shrimp and peanuts (chiu chao fan guo) /​/​ (M) Reminds me of Teochow. I like it!
–1 order of taro dumplings, aka taro puff (wu gok) /​/​ (L) PASS. Super oily, and tastes only good hot. Hit or miss!
–1 order of sticky rice dumplings (lo mai gai) /​/​PASS. MEHHHHH. Comes with two rice dumplings, cut in half. 4 pieces total but not appetizing at all.
Buns:
–1 order of steamed BBQ pork buns (cha siu bao) /​/​3 buns. Oh wow! Actually impressed. Not the colorful stuff you see in cheaper places.
–1 order of almond lava buns /​/​3 buns. YUM! Delightful dessert. I would get it again.
Rolled Dishes:
–1 rolled rice noodles with shrimp (cheong fan) /​/​Yum! Plump pieces of shrimp.
–1 rolled rice noodles with mongolian beef (cheong fan) /​/​ (B) I guess it’s dinner leftovers wrapped inside? Regardless, a lot of beef and it was yummy.
–1 fried noodle-​wrapped crullers (zhaliang) /​/​ (X) Yum! This is different in that they stuff fried chicken (or was it pork?) in the center. It’s usually just the cruller.
–1 order of fried tofu skin roll (pei guen) /​/​ (L) A bit too… gooey for me. I love this dish in general though, so luckily this wasn’t screwed up.
–1 order of steamed tofu skin roll (pei guen) /​/​Dip it in the special sauce-it’s not soy sauce!
Others:
–1 order of beef egg congee /​/​Yum! They do crack 2 raw eggs, though. Might freak out the oldies if they don’t like their eggnog.
–1 order of Chinese broccoli /​/​ (B) B for basic? If you insist on getting vegetables, it’s not bad…
Pros:
–Speedy service. I swear, they are like flies that just steal your plates even when it’s not finished.
–Big portion size. It was good being able to sample everything, and everyone got to try a bit.
Cons:
–WHAT ARE THE PRICES. They write «XL, L, M, S, B»…and we were just left in the dust to assume how much everything would cost.
–Tea was mehhhhh. Leaves were old and too watered down. You have to pay for the tea too!
–Just really, really bad service. Slamming the teapots on our tables, giving us the wrong orders, not putting in our orders, no napkins, and not switching out our plates. (Really-​I have to ask you WHY my dish isn’t here? And you blame me for not telling you sooner?)
Tips/​Observations:
–Menu link:
(click on Dimsum, if you are here for that)
–Parking is terrible. You might have to resort to parking in the next plaza over, which has ample parking.
I definitely do think this place is a hit or miss. Might be better if it was with a party of 4 or less, but definitely not a family place. (Ironically, since dim sum is meant to spend time with family.) Not sure about this location in particular, or if it’s the chain… regardless, I’ll resort to finding another place before coming back.
PS: If you’re still a dimsum n00b, use this link to learn more:

If you are assigned a May Zhang to be your host, ask for another. She basically Debbie Downed our experience. She kept pushing a $ 30 cod noodle dish that we respectfully declined 3 times during 3 separate encounters. After The Denial, it was all downhill from there. Basically was condescending to us like we were cheap folks. Slammed down our orders, missed orders we marked on the ticket, and basically gave stink face each interaction. Hey, I’m not in the mood for your special dish, OK? I’m here for DIM SUM.
Dim Sum was very lackluster. Koi in Daly City has way better quality. They charge the same rates, it seems, but the dishes were pretty standard issue — some special order dim sum was cold. Cmon now. The way it seemed it worked here is that they have the staff walk out minimal stuff and force you to hand order. But when you hand order, you can’t get a preview and basically commit to bad food.
For the price and service, nah. Pass. If they were at least great one one of those, I would re-​consider. The spot itself, I like — new, modern, good feel. But I’m not really there for the glamour — I just want to eat.

This place is a hit and miss for me. One day, services would be great, next day, they’ll herd you like cattle through their establishment. This is the same for the food as well. I’ve noticed that on Sunday, the quality really decline as it gets later in the day. Best thing to do is order a-​la-​cart.
When it comes to pricing, I’d say Koi is reasonable within the Bay area.
Yes, I’ll come back during the weekdays, specifically lunch hours.

Overrated, expensive, and mediocre. I was not impressed by the dim sum here and would rather go somewhere cheaper that has better tasting dim sum.
Came on a Sunday morning and luckily we beat the rush. It was hard to get in contact with the servers since I can’t speak Chinese. After some waiting we were finally able to get food. We ordered the Shu Mai, Har Gow, Chicken Feet, Xiao Long Baos, Shrimp Crêpe, Portuguese Egg Tarrts & Pork Spare Ribs. Overall the food was decent but it wasn’t anything extraordinary, especially for the price. I would prefer going to Mayflower or Dynasty for cheaper and better tasting dim sum.
I was underwhelmed by my experience here even though I heard such great things about the Koi Palace in Daly City. I probably won’t be coming back anytime soon.

**4 stars for dim sum but had to minus 1 star for their customer service**
Koi Palace is a great replacement of the former ABC Restaurant location here. Besides interior improvements, they added an escalator going up to the restaurant, replacing the old staircase. You will have to take the stairs or elevator down though.
I’ve had dim sum and dinner at the Koi Palace in Daly City before and was expecting the same quality of food. While the dim sum was good, customer service could have been better.
The family arrived here at 10am when it opened to avoid the crazy wait. We were seated immediately. They got our tea order and gave us the dim sum menu to order from. When the pot of tea arrived, they did not light the candle underneath to keep the pot warm and it took awhile to get someone’s attention to do that later on.
You can order dim sum the old school way from the carts or order from their menu. There is definitely a wider variety of dim sum options to choose from and many items that you don’t see at most other places. However, dim sum portions were smaller and on the pricier side here.
You kind of get the feeling like you’re being rushed here. The restaurant gets busy fast and it seems like there’s not enough workers to pay attention to all the customers. It took awhile to get anyone’s attention. In addition, the AC is turned up pretty high here causing the food to get colder faster.
I told come back for dim sum and to try their dinner menu. Come at 10am to avoid the long wait when they first open. Otherwise, I don’t think it’s worth it to wait around.

3^rd visit. Once for dinner on Xmas and once today for dim sum and again for dinner.
Dinner: we ordered off the 8 course dinner menu for 6 people. Nothing was memorable. Should have ordered crab and other individual entrees instead. Service was efficient. This place is big and can easily accommodate strollers. The portions are small. The 5 adults easily finished off all the food which was meant for 6 people.
Dim sum: My in laws arrived at 9:45 and stood in line for ten minutes before they opened the door. There were about 30 people before them. Luckily they were able get a table right away even thought the whole party was not present. We checked off the usual suspects and they brought our food promptly. Shui Mai were small and just ok. Daikon patties were good. The beef stew was the only dish that was very tasty. The colorful soup dumplings were interesting. Not bad but wouldn’t order it again. Everything else was a ok. I was excited to try this place since I heard so many great things about their dim sum. Finally got to try it. Not in a rush to come back.
Dinner 2: nothing was memorable. Service was fine but the food was just average. We ordered:
Lobster noodles: this came out last and we were pretty much over this place already. This dish was a bit salty. Lobster was ok, noodle were good and chewy.
Duck with buns: everyone was ordering this so we did too. This was the best dish of the night.
Veggies: second best dish
Bitter melon: not worth it. My fil makes better bitter melon at home.
Fish: I think it was a big chunk of sea bass. It had this weird perfume taste to it.
Soup: average
Been to koi three times and each time I was less and less impressed. Apparently this is the place to take your babies and toddlers.

The worst thing about your dining experience is probably the wait. The worst thing about the wait is that your exist is being squished upon by a hundred, very hungry Asian people surrounding you. You can imagine that this atmosphere can potentially breed more hostility than a political rally.
I enjoyed the atmosphere and the dim sum. The lobster dumplings and abalone meat pie were my favorite items, and I think they’re unique to Koi Palace. They were delicious and absolutely out of my price range. Even a week later, I can recall how delightfully warm and gooey the pastry puffs were. However, everything else was decent but I may have had better at Golden Sun Palace. The carts seemed to stop coming out around 12, so that may have attributed to our restlessness in wanting more food but nothing for us to find (thank goodness 85 °F is an arm’s distance away).
I liked everything we had but we’ve tried at least 5 times to come eat here. With every visit and that wait time feeling like eternity for slightly above average food, it just seems more feasible to go to King Wah or Golden Sun for the same quality and less hassle.

Finally had a chance to check out this place.
Came on a Sunday morning and checked in about 15 mins after they opened. Total wait before we got a table was about 35 to 40 mins. Overall for a place like this I thought it was a pretty reasonable wait. I’d say if you want a chance to eat here and not wait 1hr plus come when they open. Parking is also an issue here since there’s a 85 degree so if you can’t find parking on the street you may have to park in the 99 ranch parking lot. I’ve seen a bunch of ppl park at cisco but that could be risky with cisco security there even on weekends.
As for the dim sum, I won’t go into details but I will say this: the food here are made more delicately compared to your traditional dim sum restaurants. Also, the food is prepared less oily compared to other places. To me, I think there focus is to prepare traditional dim sum plates but gear it a little towards somewhat healthier ways of preparing it.
Overall, it was a good experience. Try to Come early if you don’t want to wait more than 1 hr plus.

Happy New Year!!! To start off the New Year right, I decided to write this review since I just ate my Chinese New Year dinner here.
This Koi Palace is a bit smaller then the one in Daly City. I came here for Chinese New Year dinner. It was packed. Every table had huge groups of people. The food was different from other Chinese restaurants. It would be good to see how the restaurant functions on a normal day or the dim sum weekend. We had 8 dishes?
1. Seafood noodles-​lots of crab meat and enoki mushrooms
2. Chicken — cooked well and had great flavor with golgi berries
3. Clay pot– tastes like the usual
4. Sea cucumbers with bitter melon– had more bitter melon than sea cucumbers
5. Sea bass– it was really good… but $ 32? Price was a bit steep for what we got. I get it… it’s seafood. :)
6. Walnut shrimp– tastes like the usual
7. Crab soup with egg– lots of egg whites and crab
8. Wasabi beef — very little chunks of beef with enoki mushrooms.
Complimentary — Warm buns (mango flavored). Was expecting the usual red bean soup. We got this instead. It was so good!
Overall, I can’t say all the dishes were a hit for me. But most were pretty good.

As I sit here waiting for our Chinese New Years dinner which is priced at $ 628 per table. They managed to bring us different dishes from a different set dinner. One of managers came over to apologize, that they put in the wrong set dinner. He said «go ahead and eat the dishes and we’ll bring out the rest of your dinner.» (Update) As the night goes on we realize that some of our dishes never made it to our table. Instead they just substituted the wrong dishes and said those were equivalent value to our set dinner. I don’t see how you can bring us cheaper items and then charge us the full $ 628 dinner.
They also let our food sit out because they didn’t have enough bowls to serve us with. Yet I have a soup bowl in front of me that is empty and they aren’t clearing it off. When noodles and soup sit out it gets soggy and gross! Who wants to sip on cold soup?
Plus I witnessed a cook coming out of the pooper stall, almost walking out without washing his hand. Then he went to the faucet and rinsed his hand with just water. Horrible!!! I hope I don’t get sick. Oh and one of the servers kept putting her thumb in all the bowls and glassware!!! Just disgusting!!!
The service is crap here and I probably would never come back. I spoke to one of the managers after our 3+ hour dinner and made a complaint. As a manager, he gave me this blank look like what can I do?
1. You can properly train your staff to serve food correctly. And, not tell us that they are inexperienced servers. As a manager than you should be fired since you cannot properly staff and train them.
2. You should not have charged the tables a $ 200 service fee for the crappy service your restaurant provided us. Also, if we did not mention that you had to take off an extra $ 200 from the check for the deposit to reserve the tables, I’m sure you wouldn’t have mentioned it.
3. If your staff makes the error and food gets set on our table and you tell the customer to eat it and we’ll just bring out the rest of the food, then DO IT! Substituting less priced items for a more expensive dinner price is TOTAL BULLSHIT!
I’m sure my review wont do much, as this restaurant is already well established in Daly City and Dublin. But, I told the manager I would never come back and I would tell all my friends as well of the crappy service and food. I told the manager I posted my 1 star Unilocal review, and he asked me to take it off. Since they didn’t do anything on their end to fix this issue, I’m leaving this post as it is!

As the younger sibling of the other better known Koi Palaces in Dublin and Daly City, this one just seems to fall short in comparison.
While the parking lot is huge since it is located in the same plaza as 85 C Bakery, the stalls are small and the influx of cars coming in, especially during the lunch hour, is the absolute worst. You should either come by super early or just to try to find parking alongside the street.
I went here for dim sum with a group of coworkers and we were able to make reservations at around 11:30 am. Seated promptly upon arrival, I was momentarily stunned at how beautiful the place was. The ornate fish-​like structures upon the ceiling, the beautifully decorated wooden tables, colorful blue walls, and stencil-​like artwork along the windows made for a very classy looking restaurant, not what you would normally find in places like these.
Of course, the space is gigantic, filled with so many tables that it borderlines a true fire-​safety hazard. Due to the tight place, the familiar dim sum carts were pretty much missing throughout our lunch. Yes, there were a few rolling around, but if you were to wait for them to come by to your table, you won’t eat for a good thirty minutes. It was just impossible for the waiters to lug around those carts so your best option is to select your dishes from the paper menu provided and hand it to a waiter.
While that system normally works out alright, there are a few kinks. First off, ordering off a piece of paper means you will most likely order much more than you can eat and canceling items before they come out is super difficult since they make the food alarmingly fast. Secondly, a lot of the items are written in Chinese characters and while there are English descriptions underneath, you never really know exactly what it looks like so when a dish comes to your table, there is a high chance you might not even know if it is right. Finally, my last and personal complaint about this specific visit is that when my coworkers and I selected some «dessert-​like» items, they were the first things served. You would think it would be intuitive to know to give us those items last, but because the waiters were so busy and crunched for time, there was just no way for them to plan that out.
Most of the waiters here don’t speak English naturally, so communication can be difficult, especially when problems arise. Utensils and plating were certainly cleaner and fancier than some dim sum places and hot tea was quickly served/​refilled throughout our lunch.
The food, however, was nothing to be super impressed about. At the prices they charged, I was expecting something vastly different from the plethora of dim sum restaurants around the area, but it tasted pretty much as expected. It appears you pay more for the setting than for the actual food. Since there were so many dishes at our table, I don’t exactly remember everything, but the ones that stood out for me were the shumai, cheong fan (steamed rice noodles with shrimp), and taro pastries. Still, the taste wasn’t anything noteworthy. Just typical.
So why even stop by Koi Palace? Not necessarily for its dim sum because I’m certain you will find very similar quality food at a cheaper price elsewhere, but perhaps for the look of the restaurant. Service can be greatly improved, but by the looks of how busy they are, I doubt there will be any change.
The final verdict? I think I’ll just stick to the other dim sum restaurants I’ve frequented before.