Koi Palace Contempo - Cupertino

Had brunch at this dim sum place. The place is spacious and offer outdoor dining as well. The place looked clean and organized.

We shared a number of dishes. Some were tasty, and some were just alright. My favorite would be the green beans. Very flavorful.

The XLB was just ok. I've had much better somewhere else.

The service was fast and the staff was friendly and attentive.

Would I go here again? Maybe if I'm in the area. But I wouldn't go out of my way just to get Dim Sum here.

Outdoor seating. Generous portions. Great flavors. Highlights for us were the shrimp paste rice noodles, the braised yuba roll (gluten free!), and the crispy dumpling with pork filling.

Yelp check-in = Free dessert after spending $50.

Cut and pasted from their website:
"Separated into two units, Koi Palace Contempo features a full-service, dine-in experience of Contemporary-Cantonese cuisine in Unit A, whereas Unit B features a different, Fine Casual Dining experience. "

Quality/Quantity - Interesting, missing many of my pictures...
Food was good, above average quality. But just like the younger crowd, I prefer their Dragon Beaux and Palette restaurants.

Atmosphere -
Indoor and outdoor seating. Two buildings, two styles of businesses; one for "fine dining" one for fast casual.
Open 7 days a week. See picture, as hours differ on Yelp and their website.

Service - Good.

Price - Above average, but you have to pay for quality.
I am glad that Koi Palace is adapting to the changing environments with Dragon Beaux and Palette, etc. This will keep them competitive and ensure more legacy.

Owner Suggestion - Congrats on all your success since 1996 and with your 6+ locations. We have been customers since you first opened in Daly City.
Owned Wok Shop Cafe & Happy Valley restaurants prior to Koi Palace.
1990 - Sold Wok Shop Cafe.
1996 - Sold Happy Valley Restaurants.
2005 - Opened Dragon Beaux.
2019 - Opened Palette Tea House.
2020 - Opened Palette Tea Garden.

The Peking duck skin is really crispy and the pancakes are thin and tender, highly recommend. The environment is also quiet and suitable for a cozy dinner. When you ask for something they give it to you really quickly.

Most dishes were good and we appreciate the elevated style of dim sum dishes; it's just a bit pricey.

We came on a Sunday around 11am without reservations and had no wait. The menu is nicely designed and the pictures + well-organized labeling helped! Once you select what you want, the waiter takes your menu and gives back a receipt so you can double check the items. As the food comes, they mark the receipt to track what has been delivered.

Quick comments on the items we got:
- Pan seared dumplings - a nice middle ground between Dumpling Home buns and a xiao long bao, so it's not too bread-y and not too thin.
- Fried daikon - haven't had anything like it before, it's good but a bit rich so best to share so you just eat one.
- Shu mai - a decent standard shu mai dish.
- Pea shoots - good! nothing to complain about.
- Swan taro pastries - interesting design with a savory inside.
- Wagyu dumplings - high meat to wrap ratio, was good!
- Unagi lotus rice - if you like unagi you'll like this, but after trying this I think I prefer a chicken lotus rice dish. Cool concept though!
- Truffle fried rice - you can see the truffle flakes but I didn't really taste it. It's a decent fried rice otherwise, perhaps overpriced, so we were disappointed.
- Egg tarts - light and not too sweet, and nicely crispy.

Tea was $2/person and was good quality; we got chrysanthemum.

Service was good though perhaps not proactive; but when I looked around for a waiter and motioned for help, they came quickly.

Small thing but I appreciate how the take-out boxes were not flimsy. They're cardboard stadium-shaped (rectangular) containers with secure plastic lids. Nice touch with a logo-ed sturdy paper bag too.

Not exactly a budget dining place, but we'd come back if we're craving dim sum!

Not good. I came here with friends (party of 4) on a Friday during lunch hours. The restaurant was 1/5 full at most yet it took us a good 2-3 mins to flag down a server to sit us. Once seated, we were given a paper menu and a pencil to mark what we want to order. However, it took us 10 more minutes to flag down a waitress to take our order. Then minutes later, the waitress realized that she didn't put our order into the computer system for the back of the house to start cooking, so we wasted even more time due to the incompetence. We actually ended up getting the food way later than other customers that arrived after us.

The 4 of us each ordered a lunch meal set which comes with the main dish, soup, and small appetizers. One of the waitresses suggested that we share one soup pot instead of serving us 4 soup pots, and said that we could always order for soup refill if we wanted to. Given how slow their service is, we immediately said we wanted our own soups. Yeah, no thanks.

Lastly, the food itself tasted mediocre at best. I ordered the baked pork chop rice that tasted quite bland. The only redeeming factor is at least they didn't charge the "mandatory service fee" of 18% like other Koi Palace establishments, but my friends and I all agreed that we wouldn't come back to this place.

We came here for a special occasion and made a reservation in advance for a Sunday lunch. Once we arrived we were seated right away. We ordered so much delicious dim sum it's hard for me to list them all, you can't go wrong with any order. Service for being the food was also pretty fast. Would definitely come here again!

I came here to eat for my birthday for dinner, and enjoyed the food and the ambiance. However, I wish that they kept the same menu for lunch & dinner.
On their dinner menu, they have a lot of dim sum items anyways, but they took off some popular items like the unagi sticky rice, and scallion pancake. They still have other options like har gow, xlb, etc.
I think this place could use some improvement on their drinks and dessert selection.
They should add cocktails, boba and better desserts to their menu to bring in more customers, kind of like palette tea house in SF.
The reason why I am giving this place 3 stars, is because if the service. The workers aren't friendly, and that doesn't sit right with me if its a higher end restaurant.

The service was nice but lack attention. My empty plates were stacking up but no one came to help clear it til we asked them which takes forever. Every dim sum I went to in the Bay Area had a designated staff pick up empty plates to clear room for new dishes. They pile up new dishes but not clear empty plates which crowded the whole table. If you ever go to dim sum, it will cause glass water and food to spill. Yes, we ordered way too many food but they need to help us organize the table efficiently.

Food portion was too little per plates. Chicken feet per plate had 3 halved feet. Other places I had at least 3 whole chicken feet at the bare minimum! Taste was just ok. Shrimp steam rolls were 1/4 of portion of other places. Many basic dim plates were missing and lacking.

Positives: the staff was nice when you see them, but they are clearly short staff. We came on Sunday during noon time. The vegetable plates like snow pea shoots and Chinese broccoli were decent proportions. My mom loved it! I like their teas. Very aromatic. Restaurant area and parking was nice. Easy to find parking since there was a parking garage next to the restaurant.
Would I come back again? No.
Do I recommend you to come and try out? Yes. My experience is bad, but it doesn't mean yours will be.
Hope my review is helpful! Happy dining yelpers!

We chose this place as the place to get together with my family on Christmas Day, but I was pretty disappointed by our experience - mostly because of the food.

I haven't had Koi Palace before, but I've heard good things about it, so I had high hopes for Koi Palace Contempo. Their portions were relatively small (for their special dishes) and expensive, but that is to be expected since they are in a prime location. Some of their dishes were for sure unique, like their crispy daikon cake, but not all were executed well.

We got their crispy tofu w/thai hot and spicy sauce, steamed crab claw, grilled bbq pork w/jelly fish, pan fried shrimps w/peppercorn, vegetarian spring roll, steamed chicken feet, Shanghai xlb, pan seared xlb, stewed beef gizzard, salt n pepper squid, crispy daikon cake, and spicy seafood dumpling. Out of all of these, I only liked their steamed crab claw. Their crispy tofu was not bad, but it's a huge uncut cube, which made it hard to split between 5 ppl without making it ugly. I wish we were given a small knife or something. Their version of the crispy daikon was too oily for me, but it wasn't bad at either (my bf loved it though). Everything else was subpar, so it's not really worth the price. I've gotten tastier version of those items at other places, but what made me give them a 2-stars overall was their spicy seafood dumpling. I hate to say this, but this was the worst dumpling I've ever had. The skin was super hard, it felt like it wasn't fully cooked.

In terms of service, it was on par with other dimsum places - aka a mix of nice service, no service, and straight-to-the-point service. For example, we had asked one of the servers for more sauce trays. She said okay, but she never came back. After 15 min, we decided to ask a different server. She said she was too busy (she repeated that 3 times), but she still managed to bring us one sauce tray immediately.

Also, minor blooper - I made a reservation for noon, but I got a text 10 min prior to noon saying my seat would be given out if I don't arrive within 10 min. That text definitely stressed me out a bit...but I think the reason I received that text was because my family arrived first to be seated. When we arrived, I found out we were seated outside. I wasn't expecting that w/reservation, but that would've been all good if all their heaters were working. People sitting at the corner of the table were freezing. They were apologetic about it, and did the best they could under the circumstances though.