Steam

Hits the spot when I’m craving authentic Chinese food. My top picks are the egg tofu with mushrooms, pea shoots, string beans (extra spicy!), and Taiwan stir fried noodles. Have tried a handful of other dishes, all good or ok but not great. A bit impersonal and transactional when it comes to service (re white board markers and laminated menu), but very good about promptness and getting orders correct

Had the beef noodle soup and pork buns. Also the red bean dessert. Both times food was delivered and both times tasted great. 4 stars

Me and my hubby love dimsums. We were looking for a good place nearby when we found this restaurant. We had gone here for dinner. When we entered, we kept waiting for 5 – 7 mins for someone to assign us a table. The person on the desk was busy on the computer and did not even notice us.
After being seated, we ordered scallop dimsums, pork and shrimp dimsums and tiger prawns in schezwan sauce.
The dimsums were below average. They were bland and did not taste good at all. The scallop dimsums seemed to be over cooked. The pork and shrimp dimsums– I could not eat them!!!
Tiger prawns was something we could have easily cooked at home as well. Nothing special!!!
For all this food, we paid a lot, and did not even like the food. WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME!!!
I would definitely not go back to this place and not even recommend this place to anyone.
Very disappointed!!!

I came here during my lunch break and was seated immediately at a long table with other single diners. The Braised Beef Noodle Soup was tasty and filling – pretty heavy, but that’s to be expected.
The ambiance is busy/​noisy, but not overbearing. The restaurant is small but has a nice modern yet authentic feel to it. All the waiters were male and one gave me a creepy smile. Other than that, I enjoyed my lunch in peace.

Saw the recommendation from a Chinese forum and came with a friend. The braised beef noodle soup was highly recommended by the post, but to me it was just mediocre. The meat wasn’t soft to be top class, but the soup was decent. Chow fun and their thousand island tofu were good though. Nice texture and not too oily. Dim sum was good too but slightly overpriced.
Not many Chinese restaurants can have an open kitchen (due to how much oil and spice we use in cooking). But this place did well. There are also heaters above the outdoor seats.

We came here to avoid the wait at Rangoon Ruby and boy were we happy we did! Everything we ordered was awesome. Favorites were pea shoot dumplings, salt pepper fish and hot spot soup. Definitely will come again.

I really enjoyed the food. The service was not great and we ended up waiting a long time to place an order, but every dish was great. I love the pot stickers, general Tso Chicken, and the stir fried noodles. The Shanghai Pork Dumplings were also great.
I am not a huge fan of the atmosphere, but take out is great!

The food is top notch! We’ve had: Har Gow, fried rice, hot & sour soup, steak, walnut prawns. And the dessert is AMAZING!!! Service can be slow sometimes. Can be pricey, but well worth it!

Popped into Steam randomly after shopping nearby — didn’t even know the name of the place until afterwards when I decided to review. We ordered shrimp and pork shumai (my favorite), shrimp har gow (dumplings), and one of the chef’s specialty entrees: spicy garlic chicken. Everything was delicious — super flavorful. You can tell when restaurants use quality ingredients. I took off one star because the chicken was a tad too salty. I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back but if I’m in the area — definitely recommend.

I can’t tell you how much this restaurant has gone down in quality! I first came here a year and a half ago for dinner with a large group of girlfriends. The service was good and the food was excellent. We ordered a wide array of items from the menu and everyone enjoyed the meal.
Then, two weeks ago, I returned with my brother who was visiting from out of town. The service was slow, despite the low volume of patrons at the end of the lunch hour. But even worse, the food was horrible! The chicken wings were over-​fried, the soup lacked flavor, and the chicken stir fry was abominable. It was not freshly cooked and the taste was horrible. We ended up sending the entire plate back. The only things suitable to eat that we ordered were the dumplings.
I’m not sure what happened to this place. Did the management change? Did the original chef die? Please don’t waste your money here. The dining experience alone warrants only two stars but the poor taste and quality of the food we were served means I will never return here.

Four of us came here for a Sunday lunch pre-​Stanford Theatre. We all love dim sum and were really looking forward to it. One of us lives in Taiwan and one other travels there — the other two are just foodies!
We ordered the siu mai (yummers!) the har gow (my favorite — also liked), the steamed pork buns (good), mushroom dumplings (very rich and tasty), the spinach dumplings (tasty) the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves (delicious), and the xiao long bao. These were strange in presentation. They were resting in a little candy holder cup, which meant the soup was lost when you were trying to eat them. This detracted quite a bit from the dumpling and I don’t think is a good way to serve them.
Along with this we had the Taiwanese pan fried noodles which we all liked, and sesame balls and mango pudding for dessert. The mango pudding has a thin layer of condensed milk (?) on top which was different but it was tasty with chunks of mango and served in a champagne glass which was attractive.
My suggestions to the management would be 1. Put the Mandarin or Cantonese names on the menu. They do have pictures as well as the English names which were helpful. 2. Serve the Xiao long bao with soup spoons and lose the weird little cups.
Logistics notes — tea is charged at $ 2 a person though they do refill your pot. You order by writing with an erasable marker on the menu. It is very noisy in there like many dim sum restaurants seem to be.

It is a very traditional Cantonese restaurant. They offer various kinds of steamed dishes, rice&noodle, dessert and Chinese dishes. We ordered shrimp dumplings, scallop seafood dumplings, Singaporean rice noodles and string bean w/​preserved vegetables. All of them taste good except Singaporean rice noodles.

This a fantastic dim sum restaurant, especially for the low price you’re paying. I don’t know how the hell it only has 3 stars on Unilocal… seriously get it together Palo Alto diners! Comparable to din tai fung, and beautifully decorated as well.
Go get you some of that braised beef soup right now!

It has a good location and good-​sized resto along Palo Alto’s busy street. They have good service and ambiance, but the food is too bland for my taste.
Other than the Beef Noodle Soup, the other dishes that we tried were either bland or were mediocre. It’s still a good place to grab some Asian fusion food. But I would prefer a more flavorful approach to the Xia Long Bao, Beef Fried Rice, Fried Prawn and Aspagrus than this place.
It’s good to bring young kids, since it’s very casual and a lot of patrons also have young kids with them. The kids loved the Beef Noodle soup. We had 3 toddlers and one infant. The 3 toddlers ate most of the Beef Noodle soup.
This place is good for families and friends, who are looking for Chinese fusion food. Based on experience, the ‘play-​safe’ approach to the food, it will be an ok meal in a nice busy restaurant.

The dumpling offering enticed me into checking out Steam, but overall, this place is just OK.
We tried the following items:
— Vegetarian Pea Shoot Dumplings: Pretty tasty! I hadn’t had pea shoot dumplings previously, so these were something new for the palate and the flavor was also great.
— Vegetarian Mushroom Dumplings: The pea shoot ones are the way to go. These were lacking considerable flavor.
— Hong Kong Pan Fried Noodles w/​Chicken: I don’t see this dish on other menus very often, so had to check out the crunchy noodles topped with a chicken and vegetable gravy. The dish came with a very small portion of chicken topping the noodles, so not all noodles were soaked in the gravy. It was less than stellar in terms of flavor, but was still nice to eat this dish after so long.
— Szechuan Spicy Chicken: Your standard Chinese fare. Not spicy.
Overall, the dumplings were OK, but nothing to really return for. All of the other dishes we ordered? Pretty much along the same lines. The food was good, but on the average side, and for the quantities served, pricey for what it’s worth. However, this is University Ave, so that’s somewhat expected, as well.

I can’t really think of a time when I haven’t wanted to go to Steam. It never gets old, and everything on the menu is delicious.
For the price, there is no better Asian food option in Palo Alto.
The best thing to do in my opinion is get a bunch of different dishes and share them.
The ambience is nothing special, but the food makes up for it. So worthy of five stars.

Not a bad chinese food place in downtown palo alto
The place is actually quite nice. The price is actually pretty low when you consider it’s right in downtown palo alto, and the food is definitely high quality. The dim sum is freshly steamed, the fried rice has just the right amount of oiliness, and the beef noodle soup has a pretty flavorful broth. The shu mai is Huge and meaty! And the shrimp dumplings are also large and watery. Overall, a pretty legit place.
The décor is clean and bright, and the serve staff are all very friendly and quick.
Overall, a pretty nice place to eat often!

Okay, first you need to set your expectations correctly:
1) Their food is expensive for dim sum. This is a very posh restaurant in Palo Alto and not your local hole in the wall dim sum joint. If you don’t like that, then you should go to your local spot.
2) Their food may or may not be authentic, but the bottom line is that it was very good and I ate everything on my plate. Not a single bite of food was left over at the end of the meal.
Alright, that being said, I really enjoyed my meal here! I was fortunate to have come on a night where their service was on-​point (since I had read reviews about bad service here). We ordered everything to share, so I got to try a lot of different kinds of dumplings and also a noodle dish. Everything was very tasty — there wasn’t a single dish that we got that I wouldn’t have again.
The dinner for 4 people came out to about $ 80 pre-​tip. We had ordered probably 8 dishes total and we were all STUFFED when we were leaving. $ 20/​person for dinner is high, but not unreasonable especially for Palo Alto. Could have ordered less too and that would have helped. :)
I will be back when I’m in the area and craving some noodles or dumplings!

Went here today for lunch. Ordered the har gow and the Hong Kong noodles with seafood.
First of all I got shuttled to a corner to eat. I prefer people watching so I felt as though my experience was stifled.
Har gow was tasty but the dumpling fell apart as soon as I touched it. And the sauce for the Hong Kong noodles was way too runny so it doesn’t stay on the crunchy noodles like the dish usually entails. I wish I has gotten the beef noodle soup.
Overall tasty though. I was a little confused as to what seafood I was eating.
Prices here are way too expensive for the quality of food I got.
Oh well, maybe it’s just life in Palo Alto. Too bougie for me.

This place has been sitting there quietly on my bookmarks for quite a while now. I love dim sum, but I was a bit off-​put by the three star ranking. Generally, businesses on this stretch of Palo Alto are a bit pricey, so I would have thought that it would really need to step up and impress folks to stay in business.
But finally, curiosity, and a siu mai craving, got the best of me, so in I went to check out this local eatery.
Three stars about sums it up, really. The prices were high, as I expected, compared to the San Francisco dim sum places I frequent, or even compared to Koi Palace, the almighty dim sum mothership in Daly City. The setting was cute, as one would expect of Yuppieville. Service was just okay, nobody was really engaged, it was pretty much boom here sit menu bye. Items were dropped off without so much as a word. Not atypical for authentic Cantonese fare either, truth be told.
The har gow and the cha siu bao were both just okay. Enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but certainly not in the upper 50% I’ve had. The siu mai, and fair is fair, were really quite good. Top 25%.
But yeah, it wasn’t very fast, they weren’t very friendly, the venue was cute and the prices were stiff, for what was overall pretty average dim sum. If you’re in the neighborhood, it’ll satiate your craving alright, but I certainly can’t imagine encouraging anyone with a dim sum craving to make a special trip here, as I’ve encouraged folks to do seeking other dining experiences from time to time.
Yeah… three stars about sums it up.