This past week I turned 30 years old. To celebrate, I went out for dinner with my wife and kids, and my wife's cousin Adriane and her family. We went to Koi Palace, a restaurant well known in the Bay Area for it's great dim sum. I've had their dim sum many times, and it really is good, although lately they've stopped pushing around dumplings on the carts - you have to order them all off the menu (or perhaps it's just because the last few times I've gone have been on weekday lunches). The dim sum is beyond popular - I've had to wait two hours in one case just to get seated. But I've never eaten a regular meal there, so I decided that this birthday I'd eat there.
We had four dishes: A double-boiled pigeon soup, a scallion and ginger crab (from the tank), steamed chicken with ginger sauce, beef with enoki mushrooms, and "garlic flavored pea vines". The soup had a deep, complex flavor, while still being light. The crab had a delicious sauce, which was a trifle salty, and the crab was fresh and tasty. The beef with enoki mushrooms had a great beefy flavor, the meat was a perfect balance between tenderness and body, and the mushrooms were a nice textural contrast. The "pea vines", were quite tasty, perfectly seasoned, crunchy, and full of flavor.
The place was expensive, though. Each of those dishes cost more than $10. But I paid, and I was happy. It was a good meal. And I learned it gets almost as crowded for dinner as it does for lunch. If you want to go there, get there before 6:30 pm.
Posted by ahyatt at July 20, 2003 10:24 PM