Yi-He Garden

used to eat here a lot, food was decent, but now it looks like the boss could not handle the cost, so i think it’s closed. haven’t been in business for weeks and i also notified Unilocal regarding the business status being closed.

My overall impression of this restaurant is above expectations. They serve items similar to other Shanghainese/​Taiwanese restaurants like China Bee, Shanghai Dumpling House, Happy Café, etc. But what makes this place different and very enjoyable is how they season and cook these familiar dishes. For example, we usually order Stir-​fry Rice Cake (Chow Nien Gao), and we are so used to the typical pork and pickled mustard green flavor. However, Yi-​He offered a bamboo, cabbage, shittake mushroom and pork rice cake dish, and it tasted so good and different.
Yi-​He is also on my list for good Xiao Long Bao and steamed dumplings. We tried the traditional pork filling XLB, and all 5 of us liked it better than the XLB’s from Shanghai Dumpling House (across the street). By far, we still think Koi Palace has the best XLB. We also ordered the steamed vegetarian dumplings which also were very tasty. The folding of the dumpling skin made each one look like a leaf, and the filling consisted of mined veggies, tofu, rice vermicelli, and scallions. The flavor was so good even though there were no meat. I would highly recommend ordering this dish.
We also ordered green onion pancakes, which I thought was above average but still not the same as the thin Taiwanese kind that I remember. Even though the pancakes were thicker than I prefer, they were still crunchy and crisp, which in my book makes them delicious.
The serve here has improved since the opening of the restaurant. It’s a newly run restaurant so the owner is out on the floor with a couple waiters/​waitresses. We didn’t have to wait long to order or for our food to get to the table on a Sat. afternoon (1:00pm). They promptly filled the teapots and cleared out empty dishes.
I can’t wait to eat here again so I can try the Taiwanese items that are on the menu.

Definitely one of the better places in the Bay Area for dumplings. Overall, the food is decent and the place is clean for a Chinese Restaurant. They have a couple of nice little dishes but the one thing that brought me back were the dumplings.

some nice dishes including the Xiao Lung Bao and the noodle dishes. worth checking out again for more in depth review.

Before I begin, this place is incorrectly classified as Taiwanese as it is a Shanghainese restaurant. Is someone from Unilocal able to reclass this? Not that it makes a big difference as I’m only watching out for those who will assume it is Taiwanese food they might be craving. Believe me, I was one of them and pleasantly surprised to find out it was not.
This is my new favorite place for Shanghainese fare. We arrived a little after 7 PM and the restaurant was empty as we were the first diners of the night. This didn’t worry us too much seeing as the food would come out of the kitchen really fast and all of us at the table were extremely hungry.
We ordered the following: rice cake noodle with pork and mustard greens, green onion pancake, green beans with minced pork, and mabo tofu. They didn’t actually have the tofu on the menu as it was a special accommodation from their fried tofu. Just ask and they may be able to customize one of their dishes to your preference like they did for us.
Our food was really good and surprisingly none of our dishes came out of the kitchen tasting greasy. Even the green onion pancakes which are notorious for being oily. The flavors were spot on and the green beans were very fresh like they were purchased at a farmers market. I have a feeling they purchase their produce at Dean’s Market across the way. The mabo tofu was interesting in that they used Szechuan peppercorns and gave it that extra spicy peppery salty bite. Not as good as Silver House but damn close.
Service was really good but I felt the waiter hoovered over our table of three to the extreme. Yes, we were the only diners at the time but it felt a little too motherly as if we could not be trusted with hot tea and chopsticks.
They have off the menu weekend lunch items. Also, the waiter told me their specialty is a Peking duck style beef dish. He said the name in Chinese and I didn’t write it down. I am sure they will know what you are asking for it you tell them.

We came here specifically to have a really nice lunch. At most all we ordered were tons of siu long bau (both veggies version and pork version). The bamboo containers had 10 pieces each which is wonderful since we scarfed those up quick.
The hot soy milk which came either savory (had tons of peas, veggies, and egg) or sweet is a wonderful accompaniment to the fried dough sticks.
The side order of braised shrimp and peas were nice, but the overkill was the string beans in garlic sauce. We couldn’t eat anymore.
Service was good and the menus were made to look like large bound books. Parking 2 blocks away in an empty back lot is only 2 hours long for free. The free street parking only had 1 hour limits.

I went there about a month ago and there were 4 of us. Since we couldn’t make up our minds, we ended up getting one of the family style dinner packages. Each dish’s portions were obscenely large but it was sufficient. I disagree that it is classified under Taiwanese category. However, the taste was pretty unique and not very heavy. I would recommend it if you are done with the heavy dishes served by Mayflower or Fork-​yuen down the street.

Updated review based on 2 visits so far, with the 2^nd visit warranting a rewrite/​update and a lowering of rating to 3 stars.
Yi-​He Garden replaces Jumbo Seafood, a Cantonese restaurant formerly on the upswing prior to closing. The name Yi-​He Garden sounds phonetically similar to the Imperial Summer Palace
that was a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty, who was quite the big Biznatchi herself during the day. Luckily the people inside Yi-​He are the exact opposite.
A casual chat with the floor manager revealed that the restaurant is Taiwanese owned, and she herself was too. Other waitstaff spoke Mandarin and Cantonese to satisfy a majority of the local Chinese clientele. Décor is mildly impressive, very clean, with rather comfortable chairs.
The restaurant’s specials Chinese signage outside state a few of their proudest offerings, which include a braised eel dish, a sticky rice roll of some sort (not fan tuan), soy milk, yoh tieo (fried dough stick), and a few others.
Ordered these last time for dinner:
garlic stir fried ong choy — finely diced garlic with this hollow stem veg. Lightly crunchy stem with soft juicy leaves. Quite well done but not superb like Joy in Foster City (who do an even better job at stir frying A-​chai.
kung fu mien — the name incites a riot and perhaps multiple jokes. Was this dish prepared by Shaolin monks? Did the chefs go through some ritual and executed breathing exercises to retain some energy force and exerted it into the noodles? Neither… this was a long but flat noodle dish with minced pork and sauce, quite delicate and tasty, along the style of Taiwanese «gan mien» (dry noodle), which is technically not dry per se, but is hot noodles with sauce over it, with some meat and other ingredients. I’ll dare say this prep is not for everyone, but if you’ve had «gan mien» in Taiwan you may enjoy this (assuming you’re not THAT homesick for this stuff and tastebuds have someone numbed from not having the real deal for a while).
Chicken soup — «yuen zhong ji tang» — this is a small mini personal sized vat/​container of stewed (range?) chicken soup with a few other ingredients. The broth is fantastic, and arguably comes close to the same range chicken soup/​broth at Din Tai Fung which is a famous item (but not as famous as thier XLB). There were little to no traces of MSG in this, very flavorful and quite a surprise.
Tung Por Mahn Rou — I guess you can say this is braised «tung por» style pork belly meat in clay pot. Most Shanghainese restaurants would have this. But this restaurant takes it a step further. While this dish is a whopping $ 14.50 for those Asian Cheapos in all of us, YHG supplies SIX piping hot steamed white doughy buns on the side (in bamboo steamer) alongside a tray of condiments that include cilantro, roasted diced peanuts, sauce, sour veg/​pickle. The idea is that you take a nice slice of pork belly, add the ingredients and sandwich them into the curvy white buns (simliar to those at some Chinese restaurants that serve it with Peking Duck or roast squab, but bigger and softer) and you eat that together. And now you have the classic Taiwanese snack, «Ger Bao» or «Gua Bao»! While I did not have this in Taiwan, this was a fantastic item. The pork belly had some bite in it, although the meat was soft. Best dish of the entire restaurant.
Service was excellent, which is almost an oxymoron in a Chinese, let alone a Northern Chinese style restaurant. A very helpful and thoughtful floor manager really added to the dining experience.
However with tonight’s dinner that warranted a lowering of a star:
Sing Gua Tang Bao — (loofah with shrimp XLB) supposedly a similar version to the one I had at HC Dumpling House in Cupertino, and the rumor mill is that one of the dumpling chefs there came to Yi He. Sadly it wasn’t Donald Dump-ling’s Apprentice behind the helm, but maybe the dishwasher. While the TB’s came looking ok, I could see the chunks of green melon through the skin. The inside was dry without any soup coming out. A bit peppery, but really no taste or depth. A far cry from HC’s delicious version. What a shame, the floor mgr claims tang bao is their signature offering. Supposedly similar to XLB but has more soup inside, versus pork meat juice. Don’t be fooled otherwise.
Beef noodle soup (limited offering per the menu). Same noodles as Kung Fu Mien, not bad but not great. The cut of meat used is nothing like ASJs (cross cut flank with strips of tendon), but unfortunately beef brisket just like Cantonese places. Beef was inconsistently tender for some and a bit chewier and dry for others. Broth was ok. Not worth the hype.
Taiwanese style shredded pork stir fried noodle — sorry but I’d rather have the Cantonese style.
If your meal is $ 30 or over, you get a $ 3 off coupon for weekend brunch (soy milk yoh tieo etc)

This place has only been open for a few months but has become my regular place for dinner with family and friends already. Price is very reasonable and service has been good. I can’t agree more w/​Ken K’s review about their «tong poor» meat claypot. I usually don’t order that even when I see it on the menu because it consist of chunks and chunks of pork fat. But since the waitress highly recommended it and we had a table of 10, we gave it a shot and ordered two orders of that.
To a surprise, that dish had literally became the highlight of our dinner. The sauce was very good and went well with our «choy fan» (veggie rice). The meat was cooked just right that it made the fatty part of the pork nice and savory.
Another great dish was their dumplings — Shao Long Bao. We had 2 – 10 piece orders and was gone in no time. The best way to pick up those dumplings delicately without breaking the skin (to retain the yummy soup) is to dip clean chopsticks into tea first beforehand. =)

Tasty food, and lots of it, for a whopping $ 5.95 (lunch special). The waitress even checked up on me mid-​meal to ask if everything was to my satisfaction. Now THAT’s something you’d almost never see at a Chinese restaurant! Two thumbs up!

outside to in… clean…much needed face-​lift accomplished… nothing extreme… simple…standard…tidy…fresh paint… new linen… clean unstained white uniforms…“grand openning” up front…
variety…a major player in the menu…“juicy” shangai dumplings… various bitter melon dishes… fried tofu to standard sweet ‘n’ sour pork or fish, and kung pao chicken… shanghai dishes are usually characterized by the use of heavy and highly flavored sauce… as it is clear here… use of sugars, soysauce or vinegar… sweet, salty or tangy… shanghaniese cookin’…
the food subpar… disaster of ingredient harmony… unbalance of flavors… reachin’ far extreme of the tastebud spectrum… red zone… danger zone… confused…hot ‘n’ sour soup places a sour note to the palate…“warheads extreme sour” soup… entrees also to reflect the same… overboard of sauces and seasonings…
*relatively cheap soup, rice ‘n’ entrée. lunch specials available.$ 5.95…

this is a new place in Millbrae that replaced the former Jumbo Seafood Restaurant. I came here with family last Wednesday for dinner, and I have to say I was disappointed with the food – and the prices didn’t make it any better. the fish soup (West Lake Fish Soup) was ridiculously bland, and everything else was just so-​so.

This the best Chinese place I even been! The food was Delicious, price was cheap! The waiter/​waitress were friendly and willing to help with choosing dishes. The decoration was amazing and interesting, especially the paint on the wall, I really like that! It’s been 7 years since I came to US, this is the first Chinese restaurant that seems perfect to me. Hope they can have franchise stores near my house! Great job!

When I hear about a new Shanghainese place with possibly worthwhile xiaolong bao, I gotta go if I can get there. Since I am of the Idle Retired class, it was easy enough for me to hop on BART to downtown Millbrae for lunch today.
Yi He Garden (Yi He Yuan) is the latest in a growing collection of Shanghainese xiao chi/​xiao cai (snacks/​small plates) restaurants in the mid-​peninsula area. Locate in downtown Millbrae in the former Jumbo Seafood location, it is a typically tidy smallish Millbrae/​Burlingame kind of place. Though the name (which literally means «Summer Palace») might evoke Beijing, it plays up its Shanghai slant with an Old Shanghai calender girl picture on the cover of its menu and period recordings by my fave Zhou Xuan and other chanteuses of the era playing in the background. Nice touches, but could it walk the walk? With a couple of lunchtime noshes I had there today, it was (to be kind) taking baby steps.
The xiaolong bao orders at Yi He Garden come in two sizes — steamers of five or ten baozi. I ordered a small order of the standard pork and the «crab paste» version, as well as another of my test items, congyou bing (scallion pancakes). Neither salty doujiang nor shengjian bao, my other two fetishes, could be found on the menu.
The only virtue I could find in the xiaolong bao was a thin skin. Both the pork and the crab versions (which, in fact, were almost indistinguishable from each other) were overly large, had ample but peculiar-​tasting «soup» and were very stingy withe the solid fillings. They were so flaccid that you had to lift them by the topknot, and dangle them droopily scrotum-​like from the chopsticks. Another problem was that they had a tendency to stick to the paper liner of the steamer; more than one broke while trying to detach it from the liner. The soup inside was thin and strangely sweet and tart at the same time; the sweetness was not uncharacteristic of XLB, but the sourness certainly was. There was no need, really to even dip them in the vinegar provided, and the ocean of sweet-​sour liquid pretty much drowned out any separate taste the solid filling had.
If the xiaolong bao were disappointing, the congyou bing was even more so. The serving size was two disc-​shaped pancakes, quartered, which separated when you lifted them like the two sides of a pita bread, revealing a bit of mashed scallion in between. They seemed to lampoon the platonic ideal (crispy on the outside, soft on the inside) by being hard and brittle on the outside and gooey on the inside. The predominant flavor was, shall we say, «skillet breath.»
I should make a disclaimer here that these are just the opinions of a crochety old man on a couple of lunch items he happens to be particular about, and should not reflect on the rest of the lengthy menu of soups, noodles, and small plates, which deserve a vetting by persons who spend time in the area. The restaurant staff were all so friendly, efficient, and almost worriedly anxious to please it’s painful to divulge my honest thoughts.

food was mediocre, pricing is reasonable. The staff is friendly and know their stuff. The place is decorated nicely, but does need to work on their food. The noodles aren’t made from scratch, i think they bought store dry noodles.