koi palace

waiting in the lobby at koi palace for our table, it is obvious what to order. the two thousand galloon seafood tanks, filled with delicacies from abalone, king crab, lobster, and geoduck entice customers. the exciting part is choosing the right sauces an

koi palace is well known for above-average dim sum and expensive varieties of seafood dishes during dinner. i've been a fan of koi's dim sum for many years. the quality is there with huge shrimps and unique dishes like durian puffs and abalone sui mai. th

wow! really tasty food and unusual flavores. stopped by on the way back from the airport and will definitely be back! defenetly recommend the sea urchin sashini if you have a salt tooth.

while i do a fair amount of airport dining, i don't usually dine at the san francisco airport, particularly landside (not sure i've ever done this actually), as it is my home base, and i usually just head home for food once i arrive.  but on a recent flight i was delayed taking off in boston, and by the time i arrived in san francisco, it was dinner time, and i didn't have anything waiting at home.  it seemed easier to just get a bite at the airport.

mouth-watering dim sum as what you'd expect from a typical place like this. the dishes we ordered were not extraordinary except for the deep fried sesame balls (buchi) which were piping hot when it arrived and just melted in your mouth like butter.

it was a little hard to order since only one waiter knew how to speak english.

we ordered shrimp with scallops, grilled porkchop, shrimp and broccoli.. i didnt like the food here. and this restaurant is expensive. i preferred the dimsums but the waiter said they dont serve dimsum during dinner time. sad.

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. this restaurant also has locations in dublin and at thunder valley casino. we came for dinner and have previously reviewed koi palace dim sum lunch. our return trips included the latest in the summer of 2015. yelp reviews emphasize lunch and do not factor in where this place falls in the chinese restaurant pecking order.

while koi palace offers up the typical daikon cake and shrimp dumplings, they also offer up dishes not commonly found at other bay area dim sum spots, including things like durian puff pastry ($6.90) and macau-style egg tarts ($4.90).

short story: sometimes gluttony is a man's friend. and when the siren of overindulgence whispers in the monster's ear he heads to koi palace, dim sum par excellence outside san francisco in daly city.

best in the bay area!. we were told this was the best dim sum in the bay area and we agree hole heatedly! the shanghai dumplings were great, definitely the highlight of the meal. everything else was great too, we had 15 dishes between 4 people and had very little left over.

the service could be a little warmer, but the food was superb and the prices were quite reasonable. we had roasted duck, sweet & sour pork, and a combo plate with bbq pork and what i think was pickled jellyfish.

although the prices are slightly higher than usual at koi palace, the quality and taste of the food provides a good return on investment.

one of the best deep fried taro balls i have had. there was an impressive amount of flaky crisps (which is important especially for this particular dish). the taro was nice and soft in the centre (not at all greasy) but the meat filling was just ok.

undecided. after seeing the comments from blissful glutton, i put this on my list as a must try. admittedly, i am not very experienced with dim sum so this might be the most valuable for folks such as myself.
i arrived as they opened on a friday at 11am for an early lunch after hearing dire warnings about the crowd. as they opened there was a constant stream... when i left at noon the entrance was packed with people waiting!
on to the food. this is not what i know as "cart" dim sum where the bulk of it is snagged off roaming carts. sure there are some pot stickers and dumplings to be had off of carts, but most is ordered off a little sushi-like score card and delivered helter-skelter to your table. the little menus did have english translations (or at least the one they gave me did) which is good given a slight language issue with some of the servers when i ask questions. with all that said, i did enjoy the huge pile of food i ended up ordering (really tough going into a place like this as a single and wanting to try a lot). in reality, these small plates were much larger than the dim sum that i'm used to and 2 plates per person would be more than enough as part of a group... though even my pile of food only came to 45 bucks!
i say give this place a try, but go with a group and try to take someone who's been here before.

while the food is still generally good, quality is spotty compared with past dining. what is particularly disappointing is the terrible service and generally rude maitre'd / supervising service staff. added to the hour-long wait for our table, our recent visit was one i'd like to forget. there are much better dim sum dining options in the city, east and south bay.