Koi Palace Restaurant Dinner, Daly City

Koi Palace 365 Gellert Blvd Daly City, CA 94015 650-992-9000 Website

Koi Palace is a popular Cantonese Chinese restaurant in Daly City. The Peninsula is ground zero for some of the best Chinese food in the SF Bay area. It has been around since 1997 and specializes in wide selection of Dim Sum for lunch and special dishes for dinner. They also have locations in Dublin and at Thunder Valley Casino. We came for dinner and have previously reviewed their dim sum lunch. Our return trip was in late 2009.

Fresh Seafood Tanks

Decor, Vibe – This place is a busy and a noisy Chinese restaurant with lots of families and friends eating together. It is less noisy and crazy at dinner time. Avoid Holidays as they are even more crowded.  Always come early to prevent getting delayed, even if you have a reservation.   Above average decor and cleanliness for a place like this. Lots of flat screen TVs, big tanks of seafood by the entrance.

Menu Pictures

They have an extensive a la carte menu as well as Set menus that can range up to mega bucks. Special shark’s fin and abalone dishes can be super expensive. The set menus that are per table and not per person are the ones to check out.

Full Koi Palace Dinner Menu Picture Set

Website Koi Palace menu

Picks:
Peking Duck Dinner ($72 on weekends, $69 otherwise) is a fixed price package for 4 people. It was sold at a good price and has ample food for even more than four people. If you are a rookie at Chinese Cuisine, try this no brainer meal. This meal includes:

Shanghai Steamed dumplings – Eight hot dumplings fresh out of the steamer. Pretty tiny but had flavorful broth and meat inside. Nice metal baskets helped them keep their shape.

Peking Duck done 3 ways or “Duck 3 Taste”:

Steamed Buns

Roast Duck Skin with buns – Not a lot of meat to this preparation. It was cooked perfectly. The skin, bun, and plum sauce made for a great combination. Beijing has Peking duck that is far superior. Check out our Da Dong Review.

Duck Soup with Greens – Intense duck flavored broth, tender Chinese broccoli and tofu made this a very good soup.

Prime Mushroom with duck shreds and rice noodles – Surprisingly, this was excellent. Nice balanced flavor with all 3 items. Shitake mushrooms were delicious.

Steamed Crab in garlic sauce – Very messy but a well cooked version of crab. We like it better than traditional scallion crab. Great garlicky sauce and rice noodles.

Steamed Fresh Fish – Fresh catfish from the seafood tanks. Freshly steamed and cooked perfectly. Lots of bones though.

Soup of the day changes daily of course. Cantonese folks are famous for needing soup to complete meals..
Chicken Pork Soup ($10) was a tasty, long boiled soup with a strong meaty broth and tender chicken, herbs, abalone, and wai san herbs.

Shark fin Cabbage Soup ($10) was dominated with cabbage flavor, small dollup of sharks fin, and Virginia Ham.  A decent soup, but the other soup was better.

237 Hand Roasted Suckling Pig Slices ($18 small) was pretty expensive for what we got, but the skin was crispy and the meat tender. Most pieces were bone in for maximum effect.  You can order the Whole Suckling pig for $190.  It is quite a site to behold!

233 Mandolin Hand Roasted Squab ($15) was excellent. Nice crispy skin, juicy meat made for a classic dish. Slightly salty so no need for seasoning salt. Use your hands to eat this!  Yes it is messy but worth it.

Table Top Fall Classic Creation Menu – Chef’s Special Sesame Chicken ($14 for half) was recommended by our waiter. Lightly fried yellow feathered chicken with a sesame seed crust.  Juicy, tender, and full of sesame seed flavor.  A very nice combination. This dish took a while to arrive.

Table Top Traditional Appetizer Menu – Five Spicy Ginger Chicken Feet ($6) was a mound of simple looking chicken feet with lite ginger flavor on a bed of five spice flavored crunchy red beans.  Great dish for cartilage and tendon lovers.

504 Eight Treasures Egg Tofu ($14) comes in a super hot clay pot.  The dish is full of Egg Tofu, Shrimp, Chicken, BBQ Pork, Squid, Scallop, Baby Corn, Mushrooms, and a thick brownish gravy.  A treasure trove of items cooked just right.  This is a pretty good sized dish.

Pan Fried Pot Stickers ($5) were very good. More northern style ala gyoza than Cantonese style.

Crispy Salmon Skin ($8) was like shrimp chips, fried and crunchy. How could it not be good?

E-Fu Noodles ($14) were simple but freshly made and cooked perfectly. Very tender and plentiful.

571 White Fungus in Young Coconut Bowl was a rich and velvety coconut soup with chewy fungus served and cooked inside a young coconut. Order this early on as it takes time to cook. Be sure to scoop the soft coconut meat inside the shell. This is enough for 3 to 4 folks to sample.

551 Mango Pudding ($4) for 4 pieces, came with sweetened condensed milk and tasted good.  On another occasion we nicely asked if there was any free dessert soup like other restaurants.  The kind waiter brought us complimentary mango pudding and banana jello pudding.

557 Sesame Filled Glutinous Balls ($5) took a while but were hot and freshly made. Black filling was not too sweet. It was chewy but not too chewy.

555 Sugar Egg Puff ($4.30) – 4 pieces. A signature dessert here with powered sugar on top. Crunch and fresh out of fryer. A must.

OK:

Garlic Pea Shoots ($18) was extremely expensive and just average. Pea shoots were not very crunchy. On another visit the quality improved to excellent, so make sure pea shoots are in season before ordering.

207 Pan Fried Pork Buns ($5 for 6) were tried because we wanted to see how well a top notch Cantonese cook could make a Northern dish. These were pretty well made and had a nice crunchy bottom, but very thick skin and tiny amounts of meat inside.  All in all a good effort but not like ones at a Mandarin Chinese restaurant.

Pans:
None

Koi Palace had service that was a little better than average for a place like this. The head waiters know their stuff but cover many tables. The servers and bus boys are always running around and need to be hailed. We had to ask for more water, tea, the bill, etc. The best service we have had in a Chinese restaurant is at high end places outside the US, including 3 Michelin star Lung King Heen. Chinese restaurants in the US simply are not in the same high end fine dining realm and hence do not focus on service. The breath of items was excellent, more extensive and more inventive than nearby places in Millbrae.

Koi Palace is still the best Cantonese Chinese food in the San Francisco Bay Area. Food is top notch but not cheap. Having been to Hong Kong recently, we can declare that the best food in Hong Kong is another level above what we got here and so was the service. Runners up to Koi Palace include R&G Lounge in San Francisco, and Asian Pearl in Millbrae and Richmond.

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3. Jinjiang Palace Chinese Restaurant Review, Taiyuan, China
4. The Kitchen Dinner Restaurant Review, Millbrae
5. Joy Luck Place Dinner Restaurant