Liang’s Kitchen

It’s closed!

Great service with mediocre food!
There are a few things you should order:
— beef burito
— beef noodle
— side dishes
Came here a couple times, but I am not very impress by the food they serve! However, they have really great service compare to other Chinese restaurants.

Step 1. Confusion: where the heck is hotpot city/​whatever hotpot place after that?
Step 2. Picture of that beef pancake wrap looks AMAZING.
Step 3. Unilocal.Uhhh holy crap this place has bad reviews.
Step 4. Hesitantly steps inside anyways due to hunger/​hypnotizing promise of that beef wrap
Step 5. Foood soooo good, don’t wanna share
The order (shared among 4 people):
–Beef pancake wrap: I LOVE this dish. I could just eat plates and plates and plates of this. At one point, after we finished our beef pancake wrap, the waiter accidentally placed ANOTHER beef wrap at our table and our eyes ALIGHTED as if the heavens opened up and dropped down this beautiful plate of food. But then he took it away.
–Stewed oxtail with rice: The orangey, carroty, simmery stewed sauce is the best. No one even cared that there was meat.
–Pork cutlet: Tastes just like the popcorn chicken you get at boba places. But a big slab of it.
–Beef tendon soup with homemade noodles: my Taiwanese friend told me that the noodles are made by shaving of thin pieces of dough directly into a pot of boiling water. Similar homemade chicken dumpling soup but with pickled veggies.
We didn’t try the hotpot stuff, because it was expensive, but we all left plump and satisfied from our order. The tables are understandably awkward (residuals from former hotpot places) but I didn’t mind too much. One caveat: when I left, I had that weird msg after-​taste that may have been from the soup. Otherwise I’d say, give this place a chance! We were all pleasantly surprised and delighted and fullfullfull but still craving more beef pancake wrap.

Didn’t this place use to be a hot pot restaurant?!
Came with a friend who had been here before so I left him in charge of the ordering. We had the spicy wontons which weren’t spicy but tasty and they were seriously the smallest cutest baby wontons I have ever seen. We also had the spicy beef noodle soup with the hand pulled noodle option. The noodles were thick and chewy but once again I was disappointed by the lack of spiciness. We also split the cold noodles which had a peanut sesame-​y sauce, chicken, and cucumbers. Pretty tasty but not memorable. The hands down favorite of the meal was the beef roll in scallion pancake. Super yummy!
Reasonable prices.
I’d maybe come back for the pancake.

Liang’s Kitchen’s saving grace is their amazing Beef and Tendon Stew over wide handmade noodles. It’s Taiwanese comfort food through and through and can win you over with just one bite. I love the spicy tang of the broth, the melty stewed beef and tender tendon and fat chewy noodles that all gel together harmoniously. It’s so good and one bite instantly takes me back to the beef noodle soup my nanny made for me when I was a little girl.
The remainder of the menu has been inconsistent and unworthy to stand next to their Beef Noodle Soup. Anything with thin noodles is bland and mushy. The pork chop noodles are too breaded. The fried scallion pancake is too greasy and flavorless. The pig feet soup noodles did not have enough meat and was covered in strange boiled peanuts. Ox Tail Stew over Noodles is actually very delicious over wide noodles but the ox tail cuts are small with not a lot of meat and it’s dry so there’s no broth and it’s a bit of a sticky mess to eat.
The restaurant is spacious and there usually are very few diners. The table seating is awkward because they kept the hot pot stoves in the tables from the previous occupants and the bar seating is equally awkward because the chairs aren’t the right height to eat at the tables. As the only décor, there are model fighter airplanes hung randomly from light fixtures. I’m sure there’s a good story about them but I have no clue what it is.
The main failing of this kitchen is the wait staff who barely speak any English. I barely know any Mandarin so it’s always a strange nodding game when ordering and pointing at the menu, and it’s a pleasant surprise when my food shows up and they actually got my order correct but then they’ll ignore you for the rest of the meal. This location may be lacking but do try the Liang’s Kitchen in Cupertino or Dublin where you’ll be better served with yummier food.

*(Note: $ 25 minimum card charge)
I think this place is worse than the original hot pot that used to be here. Hubby got the seafood hot pot and I got the beef, $ 9.99 each. Very skimpy on the proteins but huge portions on the veggies and noodles.
We each got our own personal hot pot, that looked more like some sort of fondue thing, with barely flavored broth.
The place looked pretty disgusting, set up was cramped. The floor under my table was wet from spillings from the last group that sat there, chair texture was weird — it wasn’t your usual cloth or leather-​like upholstery, they were also pretty low compared to the table. There was NO napkin box at the table and they leave you with 2 tiny napkins… ended up stealing napkins from the empty table nearby since servers weren’t seen often.
The table in front of me ordered entrees, and some other reviewers mentioned some to try, but I’m in no rush to come back here. Our server that took our order was really nice, which saved this place from a 1 star.

So unsanitary. I’m totally appalled. And horrible clueless waiters… all 3 that served us.
We ordered beef noodle soup. Every time I’ve had beef noodle soup, it comes with BEEF, noodle, and soup. NOT AT THIS PLACE! Liang’s beef noodle soup is just watered down soup, tons of MSG, and overcooked noodles. No beef! Ridiculous! We asked the waitress about the dish, and she said beef noodle soup means beef flavored soup with noodles. huh??? ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!!!
When our soup noodles came, we also got 2 tea eggs. 15 minutes into our meal, one of the waiters swoops up the eggs and says that he gave it to the wrong table. He then brings the eggs to the table right behind us. What was so disgusting was that we had already poked and tasted the eggs! I told the waiter this and he said «i know, it’s ok.» OMG SO GROSS!
I had to tell the table behind me that we touched the eggs already and they left pretty quickly. Never ever coming back here again! Seeing with my own eyes how they reused the eggs was horrific (and those were just eggs! Imagine what they do to the soup!)
Definitely an F for being sanitary and an F for service. Just horrible!

It’s always hard to find good Taiwanese cuisine in any city. This place has a wide selection of decently-​priced options but I felt like the quality was only mediocre.
We ordered a beef noodle soup and a fried pork chop noodle soup (the pork chops come on the side so they’re not soggy). Although both were tasty, they would be far better with less noodles and more meat and vegetables. We also ordered a beef wrap as appetizer and that had the opposite problem — generous portion size but lacking in flavor.
All in all, it’s a solid 3-​star if you are craving Taiwanese food but I won’t be driving all the way over here from the city unless I get pretty desperate.

Came here for hot pot. Will not be returning anytime soon.
Food — (hot pot only) Decently priced, a little skimpy on the meat (whether it be seafood, beef, lamb, etc)
Service — Horrible. Might as well have it be a serve-​yourself joint
Environment — Not the cleanest. Cramped. Uncomfortable seats.
*Food*
9.99 for a personal sized hotpot burner, with a large plate of glass noodles, veggies, and a plate with your choice of beef, seafood, mixed veggies, or lamb. With this, you can pick 2 different kinds of sauces. If you want any additional ingredients (ie more meat, more veggies), there is an extra cost. This place does NOT charge by the number of people… only by what you order, so if you wish to share a hotpot, you may — but you may not be satisfied. Each hotpot is portioned out to pretty much satisfy one person.
*Service*
The waiters/​waitresses have little patience of explaining how hotpot works here — wasn’t sure if it was all-​you-​can-​eat or if they charge by head, or what… the workers seemed exasperated to be asked such questions. They don’t have a system of checking on their tables, so if you need anything, be it a tea refill, the check, a box, napkins, more soup in your hotpot… you better be ready to raise your voice or wave erratically at them before they’ll notice. Once they acknowledge you, prepare to have them take their time finishing their current task (ie cleaning a table) before helping you… your request may take 10 – 15 minutes for completion.
*Environment*
Not the cleanest feeling place to walk into. The seats are incredibly low for the table height. If you like the table coming up to your chest, then you’re in luck. I saw a neighboring table snag some extra seat cushions to put on their seats… yea, high-​chairs for adults — awesome. The tables are close together so that it is difficult to walk between tables. Even when you ask others to scoot their chairs in, you have to suck in your breath and maneuver yourself carefully between other diners. Uncomfortable!
Frustrating dining experience, no thank you. !

This is a difficult rating.
— Food, 4 stars —
It’s reasonably priced. It’s the only Taiwanese food I can get within a reasonable distance from Berkeley.
I personally like noodles, especially the. «shaved» ones they have. I forgot how they named it on the menu.
— Service, 1 star —
It usually takes 5 minutes of standing before they notice you and seat you. Takes another 5 to bring the menu. Oops they also forgot the water/​tea. Takes another 5 minutes to try to get them to come to you. Takes 5 minutes to get the water. Then they push you to order. Staff don’t seem very familiar with menu items.
— Atmosphere, 1 star —
They tables and seats are not short-​people friendly. I always have an awkward time with the height of the table.
Then there was that. infinite distance between you and the person you’re sitting across from. I have to increase my volume significantly when I try to chat with the other person.
Of course, there is also the stove for hotpot in the middle. Liang’s Kitchen is sharing the store with the previous owner (hot pot place). You can order from both «stores» and the profit gets split accordingly to what you order. ANYWAY, it’s a really bad design.
— Overall —
I do rate the food on the higher end and that’s the most important thing for me. So this place still gets a 3.

It seemed like there were a few bad seeds among the staff, but the ladies who helped us, while they were not speaking the same language as us, were making an effort to be very helpful and we got by. Make sure you can in some way review what they *think* you ordered, because we totally didn’t get what we thought we ordered!
Perfect food for cold weather. The dry noodles, especially the fat wide kind (I don’t know the name!) were terrific, and the skinny kind (why mine didn’t come with hand pulled) in my #28 with ox tail were good too, I liked the rich seasoning of the dish, but I did have to add a little chili oil. I couldn’t believe how awkward the table height in proportion to the chair height was… as others mentioned, the chairs are too LOW for the tables and it’s super awkward.
Décor wise, this place is awful, and I feel weird eating off of dishes with Liang’s face on them, but overall, for heavy, beefy, delicious noodles on a cold day, I will consider coming back.

Liang’s Kitchen is a pretty awesome restaurant franchise with numerous locations in densely populated Asian enclaves in both Northern and Southern California (i.e. Monterey Park, San Gabriel, Irvine, Cupertino, San Jose). This self-​touted «mama’s house» offers a nice, comprehensive selection of Taiwanese and Chinese dishes. Imagine my delight when they decided to replace the floundering bastard child of the Pacific East Mall (Hot Pot City) with one of these suckaz … a surprising and welcome addition to my favorite local hangout.
After a long night of mahjong and binge drinking, the only thing that could cure my seemingly incurable malaise was something beefy, broth-​y, spicy, and preferably noodle-​laden. It was my first visit and it definitely won’t be my last, since my options for decent Taiwanese food in the area are quite limited (Cupertino is far, yo), but I have to admit that I left feeling pretty disappointed.
Ordered the beef tendon soup, minced pork over rice, and an assortment of small plates. The pickled vegetable with bean curd sheet was pretty legit, as was the shredded tofu salad (especially when paired with the chili oil), and the pork flavor of the rice tasted almost authentic (but not really). But the marinated bamboo shoot was totally inedible and the soup was nearly COLD when it was brought to the table. Granted, said soup was delicious (mmm, tendon), but cold soup? Really? I’m sure I’ll be back though. Overall, B, maybe a B+.

They definitely cut inventory costs by keeping the ginormous hot pot tables from the previous owners. How very smart (and Asian) of them, but the deviation from conventional tables was a little uncomfortable for me.
I thought the food was pretty good. Broth, beef roll, pork chop, scallion pancake, every bite was a home run. My friend’s order, oxtail stew, comes with hand-​pulled noodles that I’ve only found in Northern China. The staff aren’t too fluent in English. When I tried to ask for «no scallion/​green onion» in my noodle soup, she just gave me a blank stare. The easier way to order: 1) find your dish on the order form and mark on it, or 2) tell the server the number of your desired dish. They might not understand «hold the bean sprouts» but they know numbers. Hey, just take comfort in knowing that your food is authentic. If I still lived in the California, I would totally return to Liang’s Kitchen.

Liang’s Kitchen took the place of Hot Pot City and didn’t really remodel very much. The chairs are wayy too low and the tables are way tooo high to be comfortable for eating.
Service wasn’t very good. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to us and we kept having to flag them down.
The food itself… Well I lived in LA for a few years do this isn’t comparable to anything they have down there but it is as good as it gets for the bay area since there are barely any Tawianese places up here. I will definitely come again since this is as good as it gets for my Tawainese fix but I do prefer the Pleasanton location. The seating is much more comfortable and it is definitely cleaner.

The food is good, everything else is off.
It is a chain store, but they do have cheap and delicious Taiwanese food. All the beef noodle, and the house made cut noodle. You can expect all the deliciousness you find in most so cal Taiwanese joint.
Okay, this can only be a place to fill your stomach, they took over what formally a hot pot place, they didn’t do any changes, so the light is this awful flood light, the table still have the medal grill in the middle which made it so odd to have some of your dishes 12″ higher than the other.
Service is okay, I give them the benefit for being a newer place, and things still need to get into motion.
Yeah, I will only make this my take out place. As it is one of the most uncomfortable «restaurant».

Coriya has gone, Liang mama has arrived. Heard that LA one is much better.
My experience here, you ask?
Meh… honestly, just OK imho.
Tried some cong you bing (scallion pancakes). too flat and bland for me.
Hong shao niurou mian… the noodles were actually still rawish and not boiled far enough. the tendons and such held good flavor and tender.
I’m not sure how I feel about this place… gonna give it some time to work out some kinks, as it’s fairly new inside of Pacific East Plaza.

Horrible service. Didn’t even get to taste the food honestly but this rating is ALL about the service.
I was excited to try this place because the Liang’s Kitchen in SoCal is delicious, especially the beef noodle soup. When we walked in… we waited like 10 minutes while all the waitresses walked past us and didnt say A SINGLE WORD. We decided to look past that and seat ourselves, grabbing our own menus. There is a choice to get hotpot (what the restaurant used to be) or Liang’s Kitchen’s menu. We accidentally grabbed the wrong one and started flagging a waiter down so he could get another one. He apologized and said «sorry we gave you the wrong menu» which sort of ticked us off since no one helped us get the menu in the first place.
After waiting another 15 minutes and being ignored while I tried to wave myself to death to get ahold of a waiter, we just ended up walking out of the restaurant and eating at the Szechuan place just down the hall (which probably tastes better).
Maybe if I feel kind I’ll come back one day and actually try the food.

Even though I grew up in socal, I’ve never been to a Liang’s Kitchen down there so I wasn’t familiar with the food they had. I was SOO delighted when I walked in and smelled the waft of TAIWANESE FOOD. If you didn’t know already, most of the food up in the bay area is canto chinese food… which is good, but you can’t only have so much of that. There are a few Taiwanese places around (like 168 next door) but they’re so expensive. Anyway…
— the hot pot here is okay. but it’s not primarily a hot pot/​bbq place. i think they just inherited the equipment and kept it. it’s affordable but don’t expect the best.
— try the stewed OXTAIL. so good.
— i think the beef in the beef noodle soup could be more moist and tender.
I have only tried 4~5 dishes here, but they were really affordable and delicious so I’m eager to come back and try more!!!

I really wanted to go to Young’s Hot Pot (which was here before for a very short time… and before that it was Coriya Hot Pot) but never got around to it. I was showing a friend the glories of this Asian plaza when we walked by and I was like, «O_​O LIANG MAMA IS HERE!!!» All of a sudden our original plans to get phở (pretty much my favorite restaurant here) vaporized.
Liang’s Kitchen (Liang Mama to us Chinese speakers) is a huge Taiwanese restaurant chain that has sprouted up all over the Bay Area. And I do mean sprouted up. Like weeds. But better than weeds. Many people give mixed reviews to Liang Mama’s, but they must be doing something right because whenever you walk by one of their stores (most of them having opened in the past year of 2011), it’s always got people. Young’s Hot Pot, unfortunately, was always empty whenever I walked by. Coriya fared better, not sure why they closed. Anyways, this is the 15^th Liang’s Kitchen in the Bay Area. No joke. New overnight phenomenon, literally. Not sure where all their success and money came from… hopefully not shady.
The restaurant itself looks the same as when Young’s was here, at least from my walk-​bys. Large mirror in the back makes the whole restaurant look twice as big as it actually is. The seating, as mentioned in another review, is kinda weird — you feel like a little kid with the table really high (or the seat too low) and the people you’re sitting across from feel really far away. Probably necessary due to how much space hot pot takes up. Perhaps adding a 2^nd style of tables, for non-​hot-​potter groups to hang at would be a better idea. But in any case, those seats definitely need to be raised higher.
On to the food:
They’ve got all the traditional Liang Mama menu options, my favorite being the beef noodle soup, a throwback to my Taiwanese heritage and summers/​some winters spent in Taiwan. They make a good version and I LOVE «la pien» noodles (thick knife-​cut noodles… not long skinny noodles stretched into a round spaghetti-​like noodle, but thick pieces of dough… yummmm). You can choose either type of noodle.
This particular location decided to continue the hot pot tradition of its predecessor renters and have individual hot pot starting at $ 9.99. Unless you’re a big boy/​girl and need lots of calories, the original hot pot is good enough without buying any additional items to throw in (though they range from $ 1 – 5 I believe). I got the seafood individual hot pot and expected it to be just broth and a few seafood, so I ordered a plate of tripe and a plate of fish balls in addition. Big mistake, it was enough for 2 people, which my boyfriend happily obliged (besides, I ate all his noodles from his beef noodle soup). You get a whole plate of clear glass noodles, fish balls, squid, shrimp, cabbage, enoki mushrooms, etc without ordering any of the extras. You also get 2 sauces of your choice. I forgot to specify mine and they defaulted me to some sesame paste and Taiwanese satay sauce. The satay sauce was quite watery and they added a bunch of soy sauce to it, so I asked for it to be refilled from the bottom of the can. I prefer Bull’s Head satay sauce but I have no idea what they used… probably not that.
I’d definitely come back here, and I love that it has preserved the hot pot. Coming here will now be a hard decision between Phở Saigon and Liang Mama’s…(p.s. 100% Sweet Café is a great place for dessert after either one of these)
Btw, this place now accepts credit cards.

Currently accepts cash only!
This Liang’s Kitchen has taken the place of the AYCE restaurant, previously known as Coriya. The interior has not changed much, which is actually quite surprising since all the tables still have these massive vents over them. The table is uncomfortably high since the chairs are extremely low, almost making it too difficult to eat. The tables also have the hotpot grills in the middle, which leaves less space for food.
The quality of the food here is just as good as the other locations around the bay area. I ordered the beef noodle soup with fat noodles and it was surprisingly barely spicy. If you enjoy your soup spicy, definitely mention it to the waiter. The pieces of meat are a little larger than I would like, but they are still tender. The broth is definitely very good and not too salty.
The service here was excellent. The server checked up on us, asked how our meal was, and refilled our water without being asked. Not something that happens very often at a chinese restaurant.
The food is 4 stars, but the seating is definitely something that needs to be fixed.