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Mon-Fri. 11:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Mon-Fri. 5:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Sat-Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Sat-Sun. 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
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I thought this place was just okay for dim sum. My cousins from out of town wanted to get lunch here since it's their favorite dim sum spot. At first when they mentioned it, I got excited since I'm always looking for new dining spots, and I love dim sum! When we got there, I realized I had been there before, but it had just been awhile.
The restaurant is definitely nice... and big! It's also cool that they have valet parking. This helps when you're frantically trying to get inside and grab a number since there's only about 1,000 people waiting to get their dim sum fix.
Anyhow, the food here was just okay. We ordered (that I remember- and i apologize beforehand for my not knowing ping ying) har gow, siu mai, shrimp rice noodle rolls, pork ribs, chive dumplings, etc.
Overall, I thought the food was pretty good. However, some of the items weren't as tasty as they should be and sort of on the bland side. Also, our dishes weren't all hot.
I still like Koi Palace in Daly City - very delicious dim sum made to order!
After a few weekends of attempting to come to this restaurant and try them out for dinner due to the large number of weddings that are being held here, my family and I came here for dinner this past weekend and the service was definitely not pleasant.
To start off, we entered the restaurant and found no hostess at the greeting table. We stood at the greeting table for about 10 minutes and still no one came out to greet us. My wife later walked towards the dining area to see if the hostess is available, but all she saw was a few floor managers that ignored her. A few minutes past, the hostess finally came out and took down our name and told us to wait for 45 minutes. We decided to wait since we wanted to see what all the fuss was about at this restaurant.
When we were seated, we ordered a soup and 4 entrees. The flavor of the food was not bad, but they are definitely lacking in waiters/waitresses and bus boys and most of all the service was also lacking in all angles.
Overall, I'd give the food a passing score, but they failed on service, so they need to definitely get trained on how to serve people.
I have been wanting to try this place for a while now, so I was pleased when my guest and I were walking in.
The door was wide open but there was no host. The place was full of people and many tables were full, so we were excited to think that this was a good place to have dinner.
When we tried to track down someone to seat us, the first man just walked right past us as if he were deaf (I don't know maybe) but then the second guy didn't even look us in the face just kept walking right by (maybe he didn't speak much english or was too busy? I don't know).
Finally a woman came and told us the kitchen will be closing in 40 minutes (9:30) and that we had to hurry and order our food. We accepted and scored a window seat over looking El Camino Real and some of SFO. Nice except that the window was EXTREMELY dirty like it had not been washed in a really long time. The window seal was so dirty the black gunk was visible and I didn't even want to put my purse down.
Purse in my lap, I proceeded to look at the menu to order. We ordered chicken and mushroom soup to start, saute beef steak, rice noodle with seafood and duck. I was thinking about ordering a veggie dish, but our waitress advised us that we had ordered enough.
As our waitress serves us our soup, she was sucking her teeth as if she were just chowing down on some dinner herself.
The soup was delicious, served with ginger, mushrooms and pink chicken. I passed on eating the chicken, but the broth was tasty.
- When the waitress brought us our other 2 dishes she was now chewing on food as if she just took a bite of something (uhhhh??)
The beef steak was very chewy, so we asked for knives to cut the 4 pieces of steak, instead she brought us forks, we asked for a knife again, she did something I can now laugh at but at the time I was like (did she just do that??) she went to the table behind us that had not been cleared yet and took the knife from the dirty plates and went to the back to wash them. Yes I am serious!!
To make matters worse, I found out what she was chewing on as she was walking around on the floor with a granola bar in her hand and taking a bite and putting it back into her pocket. Speaking of her pocket, her pink too small blazer was dirty with brown spots on it (yuck). Laundry service please??
We asked for the extra food to be put into togo boxes, and while she was talking to us, some of the content that was in her mouth landed somewhere on the plate of noodles. Had enough??
The bathrooms needed much attention. Why all the Mayflower restaurants (Milpitas and greatmall and SJ) and many of the dim sum places I go to have to ignore the neatness of their bathrooms, I am not sure. but one thing is for sure, never go there expecting to use their bathroom.
I can't help to think that a place this dirty will produce food clean enough to eat.
A waste of 50 bucks!!!
This place possibly have the worst service I have ever received for a higher end dim sum restaurant. We had to get our own water, discard our own plates, request for food, and the staff knew my friends. I can only imagine if they didn't know us. Maybe it was that they knew my friends and they thought they can get away with it. Either way.............this place is not that good. The food is average. They took a while to get our food out. We waited patiently and no food came out. The place if the service was better is probably a 2 1/2 to 3 stars.
I would go to fook yuen or the kitchen rather than this place. This is definitely a skip for me.
Service is extremely bad!!! Be warned.
If you ask ppl about Dim Sum on the peninsula, HK Flower Lounge has to be one of the first names to come up. With its extravagant facade off of El Camino, it's hard to miss. The place is always jam-packed on the weekends which goes to speak for its reputation. Though a little on the pricier end, every time I have come here, the food has been consistently good.
I think the food was a 3 stars but the service was definitely a 1 star. So average to a 2 star.
we waited forever for service or food. We got stuck in the rear corner so we will literally not see a food cart push by for 10 mins. Couldn't even get the manager/wait staff to give us water. I had to self-service water for my entire table of 7. The food was definitely pretty decent. Not the best but if you're waiting for food forever... dirt will taste pretty good.
Yelp, please give us an option to give ZERO stars! This place does not deserve my time nor effort to even log on and review it but I feel its my obligation as a fellow yelper to let other yelpers know to stay far far away from this dump! My bf and I were craving dim sum today; I went here with my cousins about 6 yrs ago and my have things changed! The hostess/waitress was soo rude; she seated us, we were one of the first 3 tables that got seated since it had just opened for the day and we didn't see any carts come by so we asked her what time they start serving dim sum (the guy at the table next to us asked the same) and she barked at us something none of us could understand. So she 'throws' us, yes throws us a menu and tells us "you order",
ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of dim sum is for you to see what you're gonna get when the carts come by??! The guy at the table next to us asked her a question about something on the menu and again she barked at him and he politely told her I'm not sure what that its on the menu and she was halfway walking away from him and talking to him at the same time; rude! They all seem sooo miserable working there. They must have had something stuck up their a**es I swear! I asked her for some chrysenthemum (sp) tea and she didn't care what kind of tea we wanted, just slammed the tea pot onto the table. My next move...I got up and walked away. She turns to my bf as he's getting up and has the audacity to ask him 'what ta matta?' he told her you need to check your attitude lady and learn how to treat customers. Thanx babe =) I couldn't stay there any longer, I felt like i was a boiling tea pot about to explode in her face! I've only walked out of a restaurant a few times in my life but this one tops the charts! HK Flowering Lounge, I hope you guys WILT!!!
one more thing, I would think twice about coming there, when we walked in I swear I heard a cat back there. My bf said I was imagining it but I own a cat myself, and trust me I know what I heard; As if things couldn't get any worse, well...it did!
I came here with my parents and grandma to yumcha. I am not impressed AT ALL, I want to give them two stars because they gave us free dessert (my dad knows the manager/owner/I don't know), but I can't bring myself to do it
There is this on server who MUST be deaf because we called her over many time but she couldn't hear us. Then my dad goes to get the food himself, but she said something like, "No, I'll do it." Yeah right, she can't even work. How is she going to do anything?! After she ignored us the first time, I watched her and she's damn stupid. She pushed her cart to a part of the restaurant where there was no customers and started to chill there. She was just chatting away while her cart of food gets cold. Then after a while, she walks by us again. We try to call her again, no answer. Then she goes back to chill some more.
Then later, some other lady walks by with something we want. She DROPS one of the rice noodles, and guess what she does? SHE PUTS IT BACK... THEN SHE PUTS IT ON OUR TABLE. Seriously, wtf.
The food overall wasn't the worst I've ever had, and the place is nicely decorated. But the employees are braindead, and for that I can't give them a higher rating.
Advice to the restaurant, change your cart-pushers, it'll boost your rating.. a LOT.
This resto is home away from home for my boyfriend's family. His family has been coming here for over a decade and very well acquainted w the staff. Everything I've tried have been delicious. The egg-white and dungeness crab dish is definitely one of my favorites. The dim sum on weekends gets really noisy and crowded but its very good. The resto has 2 floors and very spacious but you should still be prepared to wait especially on friday nights and weekends.
So according to my father, who is in the Chinese chef circle around the bay, the chefs here have changed, they apparently came from another good Chinese restaurant, so the food is way better now!!! We ordered a load of seafood and it was all good, and to impress my critic parents is not an easy task. We ordered the steamed shrimp, lobster with those thin rice noodles on the bottom that soak up all the lobster juice, salt n pepper crab, and giant clam. The giant clam was so good, it was sweet like candy. I highly recommend it!!
Pros: perfectly cooked and very tasty seafood.
Cons: bit into a little bit of sand in the giant clam (any bit of sand just turns me off completely)
I'm not the most knowledgeable about fine Chinese cuisine (After all, my yelp ID is "http://sushinazi.yelp.com", not "http://dimsum.yelp.com".. I wonder if that user ID is already taken?)... but I know what I like, and this place was absolutely DELICIOUS! I heard from the gf's mother that this place used to be very horrid... but they have a new chef now and every dish was supurb. The crab was lightly fried but very juicy, their sweet & sour pork / spicy mustard pork was way better than any other one I've ever had, and my favorite of all was the egg noodles with some ginger-based sauce over it.
I've heard that they have some king crab that's amazing.. although it wasn't in season this time (and I hear it costs around $200).. I'll have to give that a shot next time.
EDIT: Note that I came here for dinner. I've heard from some friends that their dim sum is not that great, unfortunately.
This is your typical, large banquet style Chinese restaurant. It's great for those special events and fancy eating. Expensive and tasty but the service was quite rude when they go busy.
Come here for those wedding banquets. Otherwise, there are better eateries in the area, I think.
We arrived and had to wait a good 30 minutes before being seated. In my opinion, this is a good indicator of a dim sum place. I was starving, and In-n-out was down the block. bah! But was the wait worth it?
Kinda sorta. We were seated and the carts came rolling by soon thereafter. First cart was the shrimp dumplings, which were good, but for some reason the dumpling skin totally fell apart...maybe because it was too hot or it's been in the steamer for too long. I'm not so sure. My dad ordered a bowl of the shark fin soup, which was like $40 or something, but it was probably the best shark fin soup I ever tried. The piece was large, and the soup contained many other goodies so the bowl could have served as a meal itself. All of the other dim sum dishes were pretty good, but nothing particularly outstanding .
Then came the interesting part. So my family and I were observing the lady at the stir-fry station, and she was chillin out, and blew her nose on a tissue. She then proceeded to WIPE THE PAN DOWN WITH THE TISSUE. That was pretty damn gross. We definitely didn't order anything from her, but if she's doing stuff like that (and her station is out in the open), who knows what's going on inside the kitchen! I kinda shrugged it off because I've seen much worse in India, but this is the states, so there should be higher expectations.
4 stars for the food - 4 stars for the cleanliness + 1 star for throwing in the boogers ABSOLUTELY FREE!
There were some high expectations for this place, and I have to say I wasn't entirely disappointed....but I feel like there's much better dim sum out there.
We ordered the pork and shrimp shu-mai (which was excellent), fried pork buns [they didn't have the steamed ones =( ], sticky rice, garlic green beans, taro, and some other things...
I can definitely say I've had better taro and sticky rice elsewhere, and to top it off...they were OUT of yellow custard cups. Oh hell no. That's the main thing I look forward to when going out for dim sum!!!
And because we arrived around 2pm, and they were closing at 3pm, we unfortunately got all the hustle and bustle of the staff preparing for dinner. They were all so preoccupied with closing out lunch, that the service was a bit sporadic and at times rude. Some of the staff didn't even know what they were serving half the time.
And you're Chinese. Working at a Chinese restaurant.
Get it together.
I would want to go back for dinner, but some coworkers and fellow yelpers here don't make it sound too appetizing to try it out.
Bummer.
I discovered Hong Kong Flower lounge almost by accident when I stayed at the Quality Suites across the road on a vacation trip and the hotel staff recommended it. I've been a fan ever since.
The best advertisement for this place are the long lines that develop at lunchtime everyday for their dim sum. Arrive even half to an hour after they open and you'll face a wait.
The lunchtime dim sum is served from traditional carts with servers coming round with trays of specials to try and entice you. All the old favourites are tasty - generously filled siu mai and har gau, thinly wrapped cheong fun, crispy woo kok and char siu sow. Service is sometimes not the fastest but it gets seriously busy.
The evening food is also good. The large tanks of seafood reflect their specialising in some nice seafood dishes. I also have a weakness for their e-fu noodles.
There is valet parking across the street.
Perhaps another great endorsement for this place was gaining the approval of my parents when I brought them here on vacation recently.
They should get negative marks for the discrimination they are perpetrating. They straight out tell white people to wait, while they take in asians. Discrimination is discrimination. Put this place out of business and go somewhere that treats everyone equal.
I've been here in the past and honestly, I think that it's a little run-down in various manners. The place needs to be renovated and the service needs to be better.... I'll even go and say that the food isn't nearly as good as some of its competitors in Millbrae alone.
All in all, I do not think that I would recommend visiting until something major changes. There are enough other eateries, such as The Kitchen, Fook Yuen and Asian Pearl to visit if I am dining dim-sum.
Sorry for a bad review, but that's how I currently think about this place.
Bad service, even when you're paying the big bucks for their seafood. Yeah, they treat everyone equally bad. Parking is a pain if there's a wedding. But if you don't mind the walk, there's a Lucky's near by with a big lot.
Seafood is really fresh and tasty. They had fresh Alaskan king crab in, and they were soooo good. They were steamed with garlic and some oil, every leg cracked open for you, oh heaven. Geoduck clams two ways is the standard, head for soup with gai-choy and tofu, and the body is sliced and blanched with bean sprout. Yummy but same eslewhere. The little steamed shrimps are also very yummy. But who can really go wrong with steaming shrimps? Their steamed fish ("red clothe"?) was a bit overcook, as were their steamed oysters.
The dim sum there are very good though, even though a bit on the pricey side. Flaky pastries for the flaky stuff, and buns are done nicely, not too sweet for the dessert.
I've only been here once, but what the heck--I like it. A big plus for me is that the wait didn't seem horrifically long, thanks to their spatial capacity to accommodate the large crowds. And just look at the grandoise exterior. How can you not get a kick out of its sheer pretentiousness?
The dimsum experience for me was pretty good. There was this very agreeable and attentive manager that helped us out a lot and kept the teapot filled, so I'm super happy about that. The food is done well, but sticks to more traditional items.
Um... people are complaining about service in a Chinese restaurant?? I'm confused. "Service" at a Chinese place is considered... you get your food? Good. You get your check? Good. But yeah, I do agree with people that the servers are rude and can be slow at times as well so set your expectations low.
My family tends to come here for special occasions (both dinner and dim sum) because it's more upscale than your typical Chinese joint. Also, their dim sum is good too. So in terms of food, this place is really good. Think Cantonese seafood dishes... steamed fish, lobster, shrimps. I say shrimps instead of shrimp because I love how Chinese people always say that word plural.
I tend to defer to either 1) my dad (who lives for Chinese food) and 2) yelp for Chinese restaurants. And in this case, I think I'll side with my dad. The food is good and it's not too expensive (for 6 people and 6 dishes, our total ended up around $120 before tip). It's what you'd expect for a slightly upscale Chinese restaurant.
Just be sure to come here for the food and beware of the poor service.
Tom Wolfe was right, you can't go home again. Born in San Francisco, I grew up on great Chinese food, and although my very bigoted adoptive mom thought I'd be better off going to school in a less ethnic environment than Visitacion Valley, the Millbrae/Burlingame border wasn't my idea of paradise. That changed, slightly, when Hong Kong Flower Lounge and the equally excellent Fook Yuen opened up within months and a block of each other. Dim sum was a fantastic new option, and Hong Kong style service appealed to my parents, so even after I moved away, and mom did, too, albeit in a more permanent way, dad and I came regularly to this restaurant for some of the best Chinese food in the Bay Area.
Fast forward to the present. My son was arriving at SFO, having spent a couple of weeks out of the country. Despite loving the food in France, what he really wanted to come home to was Asian cuisine. Given that his plane landed at 5pm, and commute traffice was daunting, I decided to re-visit Hong Kong Flower Lounge.
The service was much more surly than I remembered it - it took us at least 15 minutes to get water and tea. The menu, or rather the 3 menus are extensive. Little Big Man loves Peking duck, and we indulged ourselves thoroughly. The soft little baby butt buns and duck are perfectly prepared: crispy skin, juicy meat.
We had my father's favorite dish in memoriam, the corn & crab soup, and although it was quite good, there was less crab these days, and as it sat, it congealed in a way that spoke of an excessive amount of rice, tapioca or potato flour thickener.
And to exercise our ever-adventurous food spirit, we tried the sea cucumber with green onions. Not for everyone, although we enjoyed the firmly gelatinous texture, but not so much the heaping piles of soggy yet fibrous green onion that seemed to overpower the delicately flavored sea cucumber.
It wasn't bad, it just wasn't up to my expectations, and for the price, as several reviewers have pointed out, it should have been at least as good as it was 20 years ago. It's too bad I didn't have my laptop handy to check out my beloved Yelp for the other great Chinese restaurants in the area that have arrived more recently
Went here with my relatives. Terrible experience. The portions were very small. I want to let you know that I'm not being picky. It's just that at a high end restaurant if you charge high end prices then you better make the portions at least ample. I can't remember the service being bad or not but wouldn't have helped this place even if a goddess served me. This place was very empty with its back room roped off making it look very miserable. Haven't been back in 4 years because of this. I mean I've been to the one on Geary and the portions were bigger so why is it so tiny here?
I'm not a fan of Peking duck so it might be unfair of me to review this one. But judging by the full house this place gets, I don't think it will hurt to offer my 2 cents.
The duck's supposed to be fatty with super crispy skin. It was just that ~ fatty and crispy. The steamed bread is the size of your hand and looks like a pancake. I filled mine and ate it like a taco. It was good but I was done after one. Others in my group seemed to enjoy it just fine.
We also had the Mongolian beef which was very fragrant and mixed with green onion and dried red chile. The meat was soft but again, I found this dish WAY too greasy. Our 3rd plate was braised tofu with bokchoy and shitake mushrooms. It was light but seemed a little bland.
The menu was pretty vast so maybe we just chose wrong. I hear this place is famous for their duck, so don't listen to me (like i have that effect: HA!) & give it a try!
Once a upon a time HK Flower Lounge actually had good food. Recently, we came back here for dim sum on a weekday.. mistake. Unless you are elderly and have burned your taste buds, you'll find the items rather tasteless and the variety of dishes to rival your bad memories of college dining halls. (funny thing was that most of the patrons WERE elderly and had plenty of time to kill to wait for the next round of dishes). The parking lot is the size of my garage so come early to look for local neighborhood parking. I need to go back to Koi Palace or come back on a weekend!
P.S. Service? Yeahh.. I know better to expect great service at a Chinese restaurant, but the food's gotta be good to ignore the questionable service and not to mention the bathroom, right?
Went there for a Sunday Dim Sum Lunch.
The Dim Sum is average. Parking is a pain the A.
It was way too busy. Service was ok, the head captain of the room tried his best. They do have a table for 14-16 people.
I had better Dim Sum at Grand Place in S.S.F.
Not much to hype about HKFL considering they seem to change hands pretty frequently even though the restaurant name remains the same. I don't understand why they are always so crowded when the service isn't that great. It's typical HK style service where you have to "holla" to get the waiter to even look at you.
I can't believe you have to pay for parking in Millbrae at this location. For the $3 you can get 2 orders of dim sum down the street at Fook Yuen!
I think for the most part this restaurant is full of tourists waiting to catch their flight at SFO. Food is pretty decent if you are in the area and craving dim sum.
A singularly BAD experience - the height of rudeness.
I went here with my family for dinner. When we arrived, we were seated promptly and were served water and tea. We examined the menu, ordered several dishes, and then proceeded to wait for our food to be brought out.
And we waited for a total of one hour and fifteen minutes before it finally became apparent that the server had no intention of bringing out food to our table.
When I finally realized what was going on, we politely informed the nearest employee that we were leaving. Imagine - in a pretty high priced restaurant, surrounded by other diners, in a fairly crowded room, that the staff would completely forget about a table of people waiting for their food and not even check up on us. We just sat there - mistakenly thinking that they really were busy and it was taking a particularly long time for our food to arrive.
They were not busy - they were incompetent, and rude. Drive down El Camino half a mile North to Mandarin and you will get equally good food and much better service.
Feh!
This is one restaurant that will not see me returning.
I've been to HK Flower Lounge several times over the last 10 years or so. My verdict is that this is a great place for fresh Cantonese seafood, possibly 5 stars at times. For dim sum, it's really good, but can be a bit greasy and it's not too innovative. The Dim Sum is not as good as Zen Peninsula.
The service is a bit better than most Cantonese restaurants as they charge a bit more here than your standard Cantonese. The decor is dated but a bit nicer than other Chinese restaurants.
If you come here, skip everything else and stick with their live seafood selection. Surf Clam appetizer is great, which is around $7 or $ 8 per clam (you just need one or two per person as they're huge). Fresh Rock-Cod is always good with ginger and scallion. Lobster and crabs are also good. Scallion and ginger is always safe, but the deep fried Dungeness is also good. Black bean sauce is always nice as well for lobster or fish.
If you order live fish/seafood, expect to pay around $35-50 per person.
This restaurant is a place that treats everyone (any ethnic) equally. Their service is the same for everyone. If you feel you have been treated poorly if you are white, black, or brown, don't feel bad. They treat Asians the same way.
Having said that, they can treat you well if you are a regular and start to know people. Some folks on the review have said they will not go back after their first time. But for those who stick it out, the food here is decent. It's a bit on the pricey side, but like I said, the food is good.
Their valet parking is ridiculous. It's not needed. Remove the valet attendant and open up the parking for all. It's so pretentious. I suppose when u r paying that much money for a meal, they have to create the image of a fancy restaurant.
My least favorite Chinese food place. Four stars off because of the horrible service, from the hosts to the waiters and the dim-sum pushers. The food is all right but not fantastic. Every time I've been there, the food takes an inordinate amount of time to arrive, the waiters forget to bring you things or check up on you, the dim-sum pushers are rude, you know, usual standard rudeness.
This place is hugely overrated. The only thing they have going for them is how big the place is. Otherwise it is very overpriced and the parking in their building experience is a complete nightmare.
I really enjoy going there for Dim Sum and dinner. My family always have the special occassion dinner there. I love the service and the food! We go there atleast 3 times a month for dinner and almost everyweek for dim sum! I like the comfortable seating.
I don't mind paying alittle bit more for the food they serve. Yummy! Can't wait to go back!
It's def pricey for the food they offer. The waitress spilled soy sauce on me, but did not apologize. How rude is that.
Would not go back.
It felt odd to be eating Chinese food again as soon as I stepped off the plane coming from Beijing. I did not sleep for over 30 hours, got picked up from SFO, then headed straight for some dim sum. That's alright because I didn't get to eat dim sum in China.
I was surprised to see how popular this place is on a weekday. Parking is a little crazy and you almost have to valet.
At first, I was seeing more of the unusual dim sum but then it got to be the same and familiar things I usually see. I get the sense there's a reason for its popularity, besides the awesome service and ambiance. I wouldn't make a special trip out here, but if I'm passing through, it's definitely worth it to see what else is on the menu.
I went here for grandpa's 93rd bday dinner on a Saturday. I always liked how the place looked from the outside and it wasn't until I got there that I realized it was owned by Mayflower! I go to the Milpitas Mayflower often. They only have valet parking for $3 unless you want to look for parking on the street.
Most interesting food I had was shark fin and crab pumpkin soup. It was a little wierd to see shark fin in a pumpkin/butternut squash type of soup, but it was good. Other favorites were stir fry of snow peas with shrimp and scallops, steamed fish, and fried crab. Everything came out nice and hot. Service was prompt. For dessert, we had "butts," steamed peach-shaped bun with sweet white bean paste inside. Yum!
Only negative thing are their restrooms. It's in need of an upgrade. It was pretty messy and gross.
A few years back this place would have gotten 5 stars from me. For many years it was the very best chinese food in the SF Bay area. Since Mayflower bought it the quality has gone down markedly. It is still pretty good; a lot better food quality than the Pearl or Kitchen, both down the street a ways. It just is not the best anymore.
I was a regular there; but now go less than 6 times a year.
I have a new favorite chinese restaurant only a mile away.
This is a great restaurant to come to for dim sum. The wait can be a little long, but that's a sign of good food. The atmosphere of this restaurant is always relaxing, and the food comes around pretty quick. A little pricier than most dim sum places, but they also have quite a nice selection here.
One bad thing is that there's hardly any parking. They have a small garage below the restaurant, but that place is full 99 times out of 100. Also, the wait staff can be a little rude (but this is dim sum, so it's expected).
Otherwise, this is a great restaurant to come to. Good food, decent prices, good atmosphere.
My business trip out west took me to San Francisco, and we met a W. Coast coworker here for lunch on his suggestion. This was my first Dim Sum experience (I think I've had it once before in LA a long time ago, but can't remember). As a vegetarian, it's a little tough to know what you can and can't eat. As a native English speaker, it's a little tough to understand exactly what some of the servers are saying (sorry, but it is true), which exacerbates the vegetarian thing.
In any case, this place was really cool. I was so impressed at the operations of a Dim Sum restaurant, I probably spent much of our meal looking around at the servers and the carts going by every which way. And, before long, noticing how freakin' many people were in the joint!! It is huge and it was completely full on a Tuesday for lunch. (helps it is 2 min from SFO).
For non-vegetarians, I expect this place would be awesome. Reason being a good rule of thumb: you know it's a good ethnic food place when people of said ethnicity frequent it....
OK, I know I'm not supposed to expect that much in terms of service from HKFL. But I am really annoyed by them.
My family made a reservation about a week in advance for dinner Saturday night to celebrate my niece's 1st birthday. On Friday night, at *11PM*, they called my sister, woke her up (she has three kids), and told her that they were canceling our reservation because the wedding banquet they had going on that night was going to spill over into our room. Grrr....
We went down the street to Fook Yuen instead. It was pretty good.
This is hands down my favorite Chinese restaurants. I have been going there regularly since they opened, and changes of ownership. I do know the new owners, so the service I receive is always 5 star. The food is always fresh and seafood is their specialty, I always let the waiter/host recommend what to order, and have never been let down. I have had several parties here and the Hong Kong Flower Lounge never let's me down. Recently I brought a group of friends here from Hawaii, and they can't stop talking about how great their dinner was. they've never had Chinese food like what we had, and being from Hawaii, the Chinese food there has evolved into more family style and blended with other pacific rim cultures.
I can't relate to the other post, parking was free with no valet. We were seated immediately, the food came out promptly, and our plates were always changed when dirty.
BAD DIMSUM.
I'm white, but I don't deserve this.
Anything made with dough (like the shumai or wide noodle) was oversteamed to point of mushiness. If I wanted congee, I'd order it -- I don't want my food to turn into it right on my plate.
And it was freaking cold too. You'll get hypothermia if you stop drinking tea.
Millbrae, CA
Category: Dim Sum
Millbrae, CA
Category: Dim Sum
South San Francisco, CA
Category: Dim Sum
Millbrae, CA
Category: Chinese
Daly City, CA
Category: Dim Sum
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