Koi Palace Restaurant

Good chinese food, but has it's drawbacks
	Reviewed By swang	May 28, 2007
Tags: chinese dim sum banquet seafood

They serve high quality Chinese food here. We always end up going here when my parents visit, because we just want to eat good food and aren't necessarily thinking about price. (It's expensive for Chinese food). Also the last time we were there it was quite chaotic and noisy, to the point that I thought we had made the wrong restaurant choice for dinner. You pretty much could only talk to the people sitting right next to you. But once the food started coming I softened. My favorites here are the smoked sea bass and honey walnut prawns. I've also been here for dim sum and it also is better than other restaurants. It's tasty and not as greasy, but it is more expensive. And it is prohibitively crowded too. We stood and waited in the middle of a mob of people for over an hour to get a table on a Saturday. Also the service is pretty bad and often rude. But is the food worth it? Maybe. I can't think of any other Chinese restaurants in San Francisco whose food I really like as much. I can't even think of many Chinese restaurants in this area that I like at all.

Great Cantonese food, pretty bad service
	Reviewed By howie	May 10, 2007
Tags: dim sum cantonese

Koi Palace is one of those rare restaurants whose food shines through despite the inconvenience and horrible service. The service is fast, but can be quite rude, especially when it's busy (which is just about all the time). I think my mom almost came to blows with the hostess about a year ago while trying to setup a reservation. Nevertheless, the food keeps us coming back. I got to enjoy a banquet for an early Mother's Day celebration last weekend.

We started with the Suckling Pig Combo which came with an assortment of roasted meats. The pig was very good, tender, smoky meat with a crispy, crunchy bit of skin. The other meats were good too. The surprising part of the dish were the soy beans cooked like Boston Baked Beans with a touch of 5 spice powder -- very tasty.

For our soup course, we requested a fish intestine soup with crab meat. It's not nearly as scary as it sounds. It's simple and light with a nice, subtle fish flavor. The intestines didn't seem to have a strong flavor by themselves and the texture was soft, and delicate like sea cucumber.

My favorite dish is always the smoked sea bass. It's hot smoked and colored red like char siu pork. The fish is very juicy, with a nice smoky finish. It's just perfect; I could have finished the entire dish by myself.

I also liked a sticky fried rice dish. I actually wasn't positive that it was sticky rice at first because the grains didn't clump together like I usually see.

Most of the other dishes were good, but not fantastic. The roast chicken was nice, but it was just a bit dry. I wish we had gotten one of the marinated, steamed chickens instead. The dried scallops sauteed with mushrooms and roast garlic also had a nice flavor, but the dried scallops are kind of tough. The deep-fried seaweed squid roll was tasty, but a bit greasy and heavy.

It ended up being about $40 per person for 10 courses. Not all the dishes were fantastic, so next time I think I'd rather pick and choose each dish rather than get a preset banquet.