Monterey Palace Restaurant

The food tastes like crap, the service is so horrible, and the manager is rude. I recommend you not to go to this place. Parking is limited. SERIOUSLY THIS PLACE SUCKS.

My family comes here very often and I understand why.
Although service can be spotty, food is consistently delicious for its affordable price. Dishes are under $ 3 across the board. Food is ordered by marking it on a card, rather than having to flag down a cart.
Whatever you do, order the crispy golden cream buns!!! SOOOO GOOD!

Three stars because the bitch who rung me up at the chasiu place not the actual restaurant threw my change on the table and didn’t bother to tell me my total she just waited and I just waited until I had to look for my total like you can’t open your mouth? What is the purpose of your job? Stupid and rude.
But great food! Always come here for my chasiu and duck!

MMM dim sum is amazing here! And cheap! But beware! don’t even try parking in their little parking lot up in front. Accidents happen here all the time. Just avoid the crazy drivers and park on the street. Come early because there will be a line for Dim Sum! Don’t expect the service to be great here either. You’ll have to keep reminding them to bring you stuff, but who cares. you’re in MPK!

Extremely poor service at the butcher shop. They just do not care. I am Chinese and it could have well been my 1000^th time ordering barbecue pork at a Chinese butcher-​shop. Don’t pay the bill until you get everything you asked for first. I cannot stress how polite my grandma and I were. We paid and made requests probably 15 times and they seriously just crossed their fingers hoping we would leave. All we wanted was extra juice/​sauce on the side. We asked nicely so many times and they kept serving other customers making us wait. When they realized we would not leave without it they finally fulfilled our request but without making any acknowledgement of the delay or that we were still there.
Today around 3:30PM the lady cashier and the tall butcher-​man in his 50’s-60’s just did not care in the least bit. Even the other Chinese people around my grandma and I were wondering why we were being ignored. Seriously. They just do not care. With that kind of attitude in the front of the house, I am seriously concerned with how they handle the food in the BACK of the house!

Had a wonderful brunch here today! The dim sum tasted fresh and the service was above standard for dim sum. This place is a little different because you order the food by paper instead of your traditional carts. Practically no wait time at 10:30 in the morning. The only negative is a lack of parking but there is ample space on the surrounding streets. Overall, for the value, I would highly recommend Monterey Palace! On the way out, I also spotted a to go deli on the outside of the restaurant. I will be returning for Peking Duck

My new favorite Dim Sum spot.
Parking: Limited but I usually get lucky with parking. There’s also plenty of street parking around the place; just read the signs to avoid getting a ticket
Service: Average. You don’t really get «served» at dim sum spots, but at least I don’t have to flag down someone for a refill on tea
Tea: You’ll always get charged $ 1 per person for tea, although everyone at your table isn’t drinking tea. I would recommend the chamomile (?) «gok fah cha» tea.
Food: Fresh! Since this isn’t the «traditional» dim sum place where people push carts around, the food is made to order. You’re given a menu and just make note of what you want. My favorite is the shrimp noodles (ha chern fun). I usually get that, with a side of their famous baked crispy buns (filled with egg tart (?) and call it a day. What else is also recommended? Their spare pork (pai gwut) and chinese donut wrapped with noodle is pretty good too
Price: Decent. It’s honestly good for what you pay for. The restaurant is clean, big and food is always warm.

Best place for roast duck and roast pork belly!!!
Best in town! Parents come here to pick up dinner all the time

This place is very very busy on the weekends. Parking is limited but there is plenty of street parking near the restaurant. The dim sum is delicious and all the food comes out at one time. No waiting too long for food. Lots of choices at a good affordable prices.

Dropped in today for Dim Sum with my business buddies.
Nice looking building on the outside. The entry way is large and fancy, as can be expected of an upscale Asian restaurant.
You walk into a large room with 25 tables or more. Plenty of lighting and good a/​c make your experience a good one. The tables are well spread out, so there is plenty of room to walk and for the attendants to bring your food.
I looked around and the patron’s looked satisfied, eating away and ordering more.
We ordered many dishes, some which I recall are: one half roast duck, phat shumai w/​crab roe, plump steamed pork ribs with pumpkin, steamed shrimp dumpling, tender beef tripe, bean curd wrap with oyster sauce, steamed BBQ pork buns, baked egg tarts, baked bread roll w/​egg custard inside, pan fried turnip cake, shrimp rice noodle roll.
Stand outs were: the yummy roast duck, shrimp dumplings… honesly, i think all the dishes were stand out. That’s how impressed I am with the food quality and dining experience at Monterey Palace Restaurant. This dim sum restaurant is upscale, clean and roomy.
All portions were larger and yummier than expected.
This place runs a restaurant with class: it’s clean, spacious and enough staff to serve food while it’s fresh.
Parking: smallish parking lot in front and rear; we parked four houses down the street.

Type of food:
Lunch = Dim Sum
Dinner = A la carte
Food is okay.
Service = terrible (even the food runner, the old ladies are much nicer, sweet and care for customer’s need). The servers are just plain out terrible… they should just work in the kitchen. Better for them.
They do avoid customers at all cost.
The fifth time I’m here. Nothing has change. No more Monterey palace. I don’t care how good the food is. I won’t be coming back no more. I’m breaking up with chu!

If your family’s Thanksgiving tradition is basically ruining a a turkey and eating some bad homemade dessert, and you’ve decided to break from tradition because it’s just not worth it anymore, then maybe you’ll decide you just want to say to some Chinese restaurant: «Here, can you take care of this for me.»
If that’s so, you’ll be in good company, as the BBQ take-​out wing of Monterey Palace Restaurant basically becomes turkeys-​to-​go central on Thanksgiving, with dozens of turkeys with sticky rice packed up and ready to go. Just make sure you’ve gone in ahead of time to pay and get a ticket for your turkey (we tried calling it in and it ended up just confusing everything).
Oh and unless you’re coming at a really, really slow time, I might not even bother with that parking lot. It’s a war zone.

I haven’t been here in years but I’ll be coming back. The dim sum here is better than the stuff I’ve been eating in Arcadia and the lines are equally as long. Yes there is a wait here and if you come with someone they know, you’ll get seated a lot faster.
The har now is good but the skin was a tad thick but not a deal breaker. I like the chinese bbq here. the cha sui isn’t overly sweet or too fatty and the roasted pig has a great crispy skin to it. The brown sponge cake is a must as well as the Tung choi with the fermented tofu. Another popular dish was a thin rice paper wrapped over a crispy wafer with cilantro and shrimp inside. I was just okay with it but everyone seems to love it. The runny egg yolk bun wasn’t runny but the flavor was spot on.
They charge extra for mustard and hot sauce.

Was here for a Chinese wedding banquet and it was great!
Considering the entire restaurant was packed and there were children running around, the servers were still able to bring everything out in order, and the service was pretty impeccable.
The course selection was good — though everything was covered in heavy sauce — I don’t think it was all necessary.
I like that servers were standing around looking at all the tables to make sure we had everything we needed. They were also quick to move dishes around to accommodate the new dish. When service soup or broth, they were also very efficient and everyone was served immediately.
Parking lot is small, so get there early.
I will need to come back for a regular meal with my family to see what the restaurant is like on a regular day.

This was my second time trying out this place after being disappointed the first time. We came here because the wait was too long for New Capital and we just wanted food.
As soon as we got seated there was a weird odor coming from next to where we were (close to the kitchen). It smelled like the scent of the bathroom was seeping into the dining room.
I didn’t have high expectations for the food since I was so disappointed the first time. Nothing seemed to taste like the way it was supposed to. One of the biggest downfalls of the food is that their rice noodle doesn’t have sweet soy sauce! We got the shrimp one and the shrimp tasted like it was just harvested from the ocean and stuffed into the noodle (not in the fresh way).
Each plate comes in servings of three but we were a party of four. Normally you’d think that the servers would cut the buns for you seeing that we always had one less for each person but we had to keep asking for things to be cut.
I think dinner is probably their specialty but dim sum is not their forte.
TLDR; ⁰⁄₁₀ would not recommend. There are much better options that are worth the wait.

$ 2.09 per dim sum.
Quality to price is great! I got take out in the morning. Time estimate was on time.
Note: most «Chinese» restaurants don’t have «good» service because costs are low to get you cheap quality food. Quit your whining and enjoy you yummy Chinese food.

This place has solid dim sum. Nothing memorable, but nothing egregious either. You order off a sheet. Dim sum on weekends are $ 2.59 for most plates. Specialty plates (ie: rost duck, roast suckling pig, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, etc.) range from about $ 8 to $ 13. Not sure what the pricing of dim sum is on weekdays, but it should be cheaper.
Egg rolls were a hit with my table, as well as the siu mai (steamed pork & shrimp dumplings).
Service is OK. They do their best, but it’s obvious that they could use a couple of more runners during their busiest dim sum hours. Perhaps the staff needs better training as well. There were times when I wanted to ask for ice water or teapot refills, and no one was in the dining room, neither the waiters nor the runners.
Parking in their lots (front and rear) is a nightmare. If it’s full or crowded, save yourself the hassle and just find street parking instead.
Oh, and they charge $ 1 per person for hot tea, as well as $ 1 per dish of chile sauce/​hot mustard, or just chile sauce.

Whoa… I couldn’t wait to post this up while I’m eating!
So I’m looking through the menu to order some more food, one of the servers just grabbed the menu off my hands to check something off. Like, you couldn’t ask to see it?! RUDE!!!
Update!
I posted a picture of the person who served us and gave us such a horrible attitude! He kept muttering words in Chinese like «ugh. I don’t want to be here.» If you don’t want a shitty job, then leave? As a customer, I wouldn’t want to tip anyone who disrespects us and provides such horrible service!
I’m not only giving 3 stars because of him. This is me being generous because my family friend is the owner of this place. He was there and he gave us the best service ever. I would hate to leave him with a 1 star review only because someone he hired was doing poorly.
Pro Tip: Learning some English would probably get you a better job. Plus, I saw how he treated my neighbors disrespectfully too, and that was enough for me to blow up on here earlier today when I was dining in here.
I have never felt so disrespected in my life! Who the hell would snatch something out of someone’s hands while their looking through it?! UGH! SO DISGUSTED!
I couldn’t dine at peace until I took a picture of him. I don’t give two shits if he knew that I was pointing the lense directly at him. I need to show my fellow Unilocalers who he is and to not tip him at all. Freaking IDIOT!
Anyways, I came here around 3 — 4pm, and we were the last set of customers they would take in for dim sum. I felt super bad but I was craving dim sum for the longest time!
Ordered:
Cilantro Cheung Fun (Cilantro Rice Paper Rolls)
Ha Gao (Shrimp Dumplings)
Pai Guot (Spare Ribs)
Ngau Yok Yeun (Beef Meat Balls)
Dan Tat (Egg Tarts)
Cha Siu Bao (BBQ Pork Buns)
Bo Lo Gai Bao (Pineapple Chicken Buns)
Ga Lei Yeu Dan (Curry Fish Balls)
Total: Under $ 35
Not bad for a party of 3! and the food is good too!
We even had leftovers!
Nonetheless, come here for the food! If one of the employees are giving you a hard time, do what you gotta do and UPDATE US ABOUT IT!
Thanks for reading lovelies! xoxo

Though this restaurant was only half full, the small parking lot was almost full. There was no wait time.
The kitchen and service was quick and efficient. Each traditional dimsum item ordered was good.
The one standout dish is this fried sesame mochi ball with meat and vegetable inside. So good. Cooked fresh and arrived piping hot so you better be careful to cool it off a bit before taking a bite.

A little backstory — by the type of reviews and the stars Monterey Palace has earned, one would probably write off this place given how many delicious choices are in the SGV. However, my mom & uncle turned me onto this place after a conversation about a few specific dishes in Cantonese cuisine. And this is what I have to say about these seafood palace type places is that they always offer hundreds of items on the menu. There’s no way anyone can be great or even good at everything. With that said, if you keep in mind what to go after at certain places, you’ll definitely find yourself with some gems.
Monterey Palace excels excels at some of their particular BBQ type dishes. Their roast pork is exceptional, but what’s really a knockout are their «yellow chicken» and their roasted pork hock. It’s not exactly the most romantic sounding dishes, but its absolutely outstanding and some of the best in town.
The «yellow chicken» (and I’m translating here) is essentially a poached Hainanstyle chicken. In these type of dishes, what separates the best from the rest comes down to the quality of the poach and the quality of the chicken. The owners are also owners of a local poultry shop renown for the quality of their «yellow chicken». I wouldn’t be able to tell you which shop or what breed because that would be lost in translation, but it’s the kind of chicken that has that intense chicken flavor. A simple accent of a ginger scallion sauce with rice is really all you need for this kind of plate.
The roasted pork hock is a huge chunk of meat — it’s almost like a Chinese take on the German schwein-​haxen or a Filipino crispy pata. The who hock and shank is slow roasted and slow cooked for hours so that all the gelatin are thoroughly integrated, fat rendered, and then deep fried to a crisp. The skin is pure delight– don’t be afraid! It’s served de-​boned with the meat neatly sliced into quarter inch pieces so no getting messy here. But if you did, the bone is also served with the little random bits of goodness still attached. And in all honesty, that’s the best part.
I plan a repeat visit for some of their other stuff, but these two dishes are knockouts for me and worth the visit alone. Four star recommendation based on delicious specialty items!