Koi Palace Dim Sum Chinese Restaurant Daly City Review

Koi Palace 365 Gellert Blvd Daly City, CA 94015 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 the Thunder Valley Casino. Koi Palace Dinner is reviewed separately.

Dim Sum Carts

Koi Palace has a printed menu that you can order on, and a number of carts, servers serving dim sum. We had to order only a couple items via the printed menu.

Packed to the rafters

Fresh Seafood

This place is a very busy and a super noisy Chinese restaurant with lots of families and friends eating together. Above average decor for a place like this. Lots of flat screen tvs, big tanks of seafood by the entrace.

Dim Sum Preparation

We arrived on Sunday at 10am, and had to wait 30 minutes to be seated. Parties of 2, seemed to get seats fast.

Award winning Koi Palace Moon Cakes

We came right before the Autumn Moon Festival, so they were selling lots of moon cakes. They were also hand making Dragon Beard Candy.

While we went for Dim Sum lunch, Koi Palace has an extensive, fancy, and expensive dinner menu with dinners for 10, at up to $678. You’ll get top notch ingredients in your meal, but won’t get service like Boulevard. Gather 10 people and have a great set dinner without having to worry about what to order.

Koi Palace Menu pics (Click to zoom in on ANY picture)

Dim Sum Menus

Koi Palace Website menu – Full Picture Menu Set

Not all items come on the carts, so you need to check off items you would like to order on the menus. This is especially true in the afternoon around 1pm.

Picks:

382 Fish Balls ($5.50) has lots of fish balls, daikon, pork skin, and other goodies. Pretty delicious.

437 Shredded Duck Burrito ($6.90) was a unique dish, essentially peking duck with cucumber put in a scallion tortia. Good quality ingredients, could have used more duck though.

328 Crispy Glutinous Puff (Ham Soi Gok) ($2.60) – What a translated name. Fresh and hot out of the fryer. Crunchy. Good meat filling. Best version we’ve had. Better than Zen Peninsula.

348 Shrimp Rice Roll Stuffings (Shrimp Chung Fun) ($4.50) – Chopped into many pieces, huge fresh shrimp, not too oily. Top notch. Lots of a weird sweet soy sauce. You might ask for it on the side.

364 Sticky Rice with meat ($5.50) – Came under one big glass bowl with decent tasting pork, dry shrimp, eggs, and other goodies.

421 Steamed Shanghai Dumplings or Xiao Long Bao ($4.50 for 4) were 4 tiny but excellent dumplings. These little balls were cooked in a silver foil wrapper, keeping the internal juice from leaking out.  The meat was also tasty. Not an authentic dish, but definitely worth ordering.

352 Wild Mushroom Stuffed filo threads ($4.50) was a weird looking dish.   The outside was full of super crispy filo threads, the inside had a mushroom spring roll.  The internal dough was also fried.  Could have been better but still worth ordering, especially if you are a vegetarian.

342 Lotus wrapped Sticky Rice ($4.50) had two good sized portions.  It was hot out of the steamer and perfect. One of the best around.  Rice, meat, mushrooms, egg were all fully cooked to our liking.

341 Shrimp Dumpling – Har Gow  ($4.50) were four big shrimp dumplings. Perfect wrapper and filling. Top notch, must order item.

385 Sharks Fin Dumplings ($6.50) is not PC these days, but this one was very good.  Large piece of real sharks fin, huge dumpling with shrimp, mushrooms, and more.  Excellent broth.

429 Fried Twisted Dough Bun (Man tauw) ($4.30) – Deep fried bun with sweet condensed milk for dipping. Awesome dish, very good when fresh and hot.

452 Fresh Mango Pudding ($3.60) – 4 little pieces. Another good dessert with condensed milk on the side. Not too sweet, good mango flavor.

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

Yau Tiu ($2.80) – Chinese deep fried doughnut is usually eaten with congee. This one was freshly fried, piping hot and really good.

345 Steamed Daikon ($4.50) – We ordered this by accident but found it pretty good. More of a hot daikon pudding than the traditional pan fried cake form.

OK:

154 Hand Roasted Duck ($5.50) was and ok dish. Quantity was ok but the meat did not taste special, pretty average.

333 Steamed Daikon Cake ($3.60) – A good dish, not a lot of meat mixed in with Daikon. Did not taste home made.

441 Sesame Balls ($2.60) – Warm, not straight out of the fryer. Filling was not too sweet. OK, but not awesome.

451 Pan Fried Pumpkin Cake ($3.60) had 4 very sweet and sticky cakes with pumkin flavor and very sweet insides.

Pans:

None

Tea Pot Warmer

Koi Palace’s service was a little better than average for a place like this. Servers were patrolling more often, so refills came often, although you still had to bark for a server to order. The breath of items was excellent, more extensive and more inventive than nearby places in Millbrae. Zen Peninsula is the other place that comes close.

Koi Palace has high quality dim sum and a superb choice for lunch. Go early, right when it opens or around 1:30pm, as this will reduce your wait time. You can also call ahead and get a number by phone.

If you do not know what to order, use our pictures as a guide.

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5. Asian Pearl Peninsula Lunch Dim Sum Restaurant Review, Millbrae