The Kitchen Dinner Restaurant Review, Millbrae

This review updated with Menus and more exotic dishes we recently ate.

The Kitchen is part of a restaurant group that owns several Chinese Cantonese restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, Alhambra, and Sacramento area. Sister restaurant Asian Pearl is only a couple miles north of here. We’ve been to most of them and find them pretty good. This review concentrates on dinner only.  Another review covers dim sum lunch.

Decor-Vibe - The Kitchen is a typical busy and noisy Chinese restaurant with lots of families and friends eating together. Like many Chinese restaurants, the bathroom is not very clean.

Menu pics

Special Menu

Dinner Menu

Asian Pearl Chef won awards

Special Value Set Dinners

Banquet Menu

For those a little overwhelmed by Chinese menus, go for the items with pictures, they are all specialties.

Picks:

Sharks Fin with crab meat in pumpkin soup ($28) - A non politically correct soup but very tasty with high quality sharks fin and the pumpkin gold cream that makes it very smooth.  Lots of real crab.

Sauteed  Foie Gras with Wild mushrooms ($30) was a decadent dish.  As a lover of Foie Gras, the actual Foie Gras was pretty dense and compact, but the Foie Gras flavor melted all over the delicious mushrooms.  Lots of quantity too.

Sauteed Coral Giant Clam with XO sauce ($16.80) had exotic orange colored clams with mushrooms and snap peas.  Not gamey, perfectly cooked.

Roast Pork Belly ($12) was super freshly cooked roast pork.  The top skin was super crunchy beyond anything I have tried.

Ginger Onion Braised fish heads Clay pot ($13) is an exotic dish that was done perfectly.  Lots of ginger onions though. Tender, deep fried fish heads.

Good Soup of the day

Roast Squab ($13.80 whole) - Authentic version of a classic Cantonese dish.  Juicy and cooked just right. Crispy skin.

Steamed Chicken ($10, Half) - came with some nice ginger, scallion dipping sauce.  Tender and flavored as expected.

Honey Pepper Beef Short Ribs ($13)- Not big on quantity, more red and green bell peppers than meat, but good flavor.

Geoduck Clam and Snap peas (Market price) - Tender and plentiful Geoduck clam stir fried along with crispy peas.  Very good dish.  Geoduck looks ugly in their tank but taste wonderful.

Free Dessert Soup

OK:

Peking Duck ($28 whole) was a little mushy on the skin and not crispy. Flavor was fine and meat was plentiful.

Baked Stuff Eggplant ($13) was very good.  It had a lot of bonito fish shavings on top of tender and fresh eggplant.

Chinese Broccoli ($13)- Typical vegetable dish, nothing special.  Gotta eat your veggies though.

Pans:

Service was about average for a place like this. You have to hunt down the workers for most requests. The quality of the food is very high here especially factoring in the cost.  Some of their specialty dishes are pretty good.  This is a good place for quality Cantonese Chinese Dinner. Others in their top notch category include Koi Palace in Daly City, and R&G Lounge in San Francisco

Restaurant.com $25 Dining Certificate for $10
Entertainment Book 2 for 1 restaurant, food coupons, and much more