Jeannie T.
Yelp
Based on other Yelp reviews, I was thinking to myself, am I in the same place? So I came here with lowered expectations given the lackluster reviews and photos. To my surprise, they may have changed things up a bit, especially in the management and kitchen dept. My family was hosting a banquet style meal for some relatives and we reserved a Private room for 17 people.
Upon walking through the place on Sat. night at 6PM, I saw that the wait staff was gearing up for the soon to be packed house dinner crowds. Note: There is a private parking lot just out front. About 6 or so private rooms that I counted. Could be more, wasn't sure given it got really crowded by 7pm and I couldn't see past the people. Each room does have it's own theme (decor and colors) and most are outfitted with a TV, Karaoke machine and speakers. The best part, they are outfitted with electronic lazy Susan servers...with a remote control, you can control when the server table should spin or not spin at all. You can even control the speed - that proved helpful when I was trying to take photos or to serve my guests. Super cool idea.
The food was a banquet style menu so many of the dishes we sampled were not your usual dinner fare, this menu was on the more pricier side of the spectrum. Between the Dungeoness Crab weighing in close to ten pounds and it's priced per pound...you can figure the math. The other dishes of seafood were also not cheap given we had to make them XL in portion to ensure we fed all. The best plate was the raw platter - talking about oysters with cocktail sauce, salmon sashimi and geoduck by the pound as well. Again, that platter was very pricey - but it's by weight so you really can't argue. The best dish we had besides the jumbo tiger prawns was the crab of course, was the lobster with sticky rice. The rice was a combination of crispy rice noodles, sticky rice, wild rice, and had your standard fried rice ingredients like egg and scallions. Super delicious and great texture.
Other notable dishes:
The half baked chicken - tender meat and moist. Served room temperature to cold.
The seabass - twin fishes...too much oil for me but the flavor was on point. Soy, scallions and ginger. Simple and not "fishy".
The soup - made with Morel mushrooms and chicken stock. Refreshing and also very homemade tasting. I enjoyed it a lot.
The sauteed pea shoots - fresh and cooked with lots of garlic.
The steak cubes and mushrooms - great sharing portion and the steak was marinated nicely - fork tender and palatable.
Because we had a banquet style meal, we were given a bunch of "free" appetizers to start. Think smoked fish, duck, pickled radish, seaweed salad, peanuts, etc. And our dinner followed with three kinds of dessert - fried dough (man tau with condensed milk - yum), a large fruit platter, and the house dessert, tong sui (red bean paste soup with green beans and tapioca). Everything was good ... not too sweet either so I enjoyed it more. Our room had one dedicated server and she as fantastic. Always communicated with us what was to be served and how to serve it. She even asked us to verify our dishes to ensure we still wanted all - she noticed we slowed down in eating so wanted to ensure we were ok with everything. Excellent service when serving the fried rice (ensure each person got lobster), the soup (a few ingredients per bowl), and did a one time pass per person with the seafood platter to ensure every person would get at least one serving. We had a little trouble operating the Karaoke machine so she hooked us up and got us going. Great evening overall. She was well rewarded as well - don't forget to tip when you get great service. BTW, I think the tips are pooled.
I would totally return...but the experience outside of the private room may fare differently as that looked more like the photos on Yelp. LOL