Joy Luck Place

UPDATE: This place is now called «Champagne Seafood Restaurant» but they still have great dim sum. I love that you can get the best of both worlds:
They have a dim sum menu and you can order exactly what you want so that you’re not at the mercy of the carts being pushed around.
But you can also point to things on the carts that you want to try.
I like a lot of variety when it comes to my dim sum, and the food is quite good. Lots of seafood tanks with fish, crab, clams etc. too.
Great food, reasonable prices, efficient service.

Today is my first time having dim sim for lunch and, surprisingly, the dim sim are delicious. For sure I will return and try more dim sim this weekend!
BTW, to determine whether a Chinese restaurant is worth trying should also consider their fish tank. If they have reasonable amount of live seafood and the fish tank is clean, that will tells you it has a lot of Chinese customers meaning that their Chinese food is authentic.

i looove loooove loooved their dim sum. It was super tasty, their bbq pork buns were nice and hot and they gave me my food FRESH! it had just come out of the kitchen. Nothing makes my eyes light up more than a piping hot fresh foooood! i’m like a damn kid in a freakin’ candy store! Thank you Joy Luck you were superbly delish and I will be back. Luckily my husband has fallen in love with sweet breams custard fishies! muahahaha!

Tasty place for a Chinese New Year gorgefest. Huge airy space with giant floor to ceiling paintings.
We started off with the standard mixed cold appetizer dish (jellyfish strands, cracklin’ skin piglet, and duck tongues). Little side dollop of hoisin sauce.
Little tins of shark fin soup followed up. Great broth, but when is the chicken broth for shark fin soup never awesome? A little too much pepper for my taste, but the red vinegar cut through it some. Had a little sand at the very very last spoonful, but that’s supposedly a good thing.
Roast chicken was decent here, with a nice crispy orange-​red skin, but the sauce that it came with was great. Chicken drippings mixed with soy and some kind of citrus tang.
Pea sprouts with dried scallop. I could probably eat this all the time.
Cucumber rounds stuffed with dried scallop, roasted garlic, and fat choy. Standard CNY dish. Umami bomb number two after the pea sprouts.
Dessert was a choice of mango pudding or red bean sweet soup with a sesame ball dumpling. You also then got a plate of lotus paste pastries and sesame fritters.

I can’t speak for the dim sum here but the dinner menu is definitely different from the normal Kung Pao Chicken and General Tso type of fare. I also noticed the prices reflect the cost of the remodeling but with the linen napkins, LCD television displays, and overstaffed floor, I guess they’re making good use of the markups.
My sister and I were looking for dim sum and I guess we came too late ’cause they were clearly only set up for ala carte dishes. We decided to take a chance on it anyhow and be a little adventurous. The servers, managers and bussers were always on top of us from the moment we sat so if we had any needs that needed to be met, someone was always within arms reach.
The menu as I’d stated before is not your typical Chinese takeout fare so I had to scratch my head at some of the interesting combinations. Geoduck, lobsters, prawns and clams jump out at you with every page turn so if you have any friends or family that are allergic to shellfish, I’d steer clear of this place as most items come with some sort of crustacean, fish, and/​or oyster sauce.
We ordered a lobster in black bean sauce ($ 27), chow fun with scallops, shrimps, and eggs ($ 13) and a side of Chinese broccoli in garlic sauce ($ 13). The seafood here is definitely market price or slightly below. I was a little surprised a side of Chinese broccoli cost as much as an entrée or maybe they don’t know how to charge for sides?
In any case, the lobster wasn’t on the meaty side but the presentation was definitely beautiful and the black bean sauce made for a nice addition to the chow fun noodles anyhow. The chow fun was definitely the surprise that gave the dinner a little bit of a boost. The size of the scallops and the healthy portions of the shrimp was more than generous and it was an nice surprise to see so much Chinese broccoli in it to give it a little color.
Overall, I might give this place a try for dim sum but probably wouldn’t go again for dinner unless I was truly out of options.

This place is alright. This place recently got renovated and now it looks amazing. Before it was really odd that the restaurant was essentially split in two parts. but now it is much simpler. The food here for the price is ok. Not the best and I’d rather pay more for better quality. The only thing that I love having is the salt and pepper fried oysters. The dimsum here is not bad.

This place is basically your go-​to place for dim sum. It’s a little pricier than SF, but anything outside of SF will be more expensive. For dessert, I highly recommend the glutinous rice dumpling with black bean paste! Warning: Make sure you get your teeth checked before smiling.

The dim sum here is excellent… the restaurant is huge and the food is always very fresh. –1 star because while a bunch of interesting dishes were going by, it took FOREVER for simple shrimp and pork dumplings to come out.

Large, airy, spacious, modern. And great food, too. Though the space isn’t huge, the cart ladies push around their wares. We had all the usual, shanghai dumplings, egg tarts, har gow, shui mai. Fresh and delicious. We had reservations for 11 people and were led to a large table by the window.
Remember to bring quarters for the metered parking.

I was brought here on a Sunday around 1pm. Typical dim sum joint: packed. Luckily we had someone who arrived early to grab a table for us and from what it seems, he didn’t wait long for it. The food overall here was good, nothing spectacular though. My buddy was craving dim sum, so I’m pretty sure he was satisfied.
What stands out about this place is the ladies who are pushing the carts or holding the trays of food. Why you ask? They’re so persistent and in your face. I’m so use to LA dim sum restaurants where the ladies there push the food around taking their precious time, disappearing, and are just on cruise mode. No, not here. They are all up on your table with what they are trying to sell. Definitely the ABCs to sales, Always Be Closing! Sometimes I don’t think they understood us when we said «no» or «no, thanks.» It was amusing at first, then got a little bit annoying.
If you come here and don’t see an item come by, you can always pull a server and ask them to go get it for you. We did that a few times and it wasn’t an issue. You’re just not going to get it right away, so be patient!
We had no issues with the parking. Free parking behind the restaurant. If I’m in San Mateo again and craving dim sum, I would come back here.

My review is based on dim sum. I usually judge a place by how it’s foong jow and pai gwut are since they are 2 of my favorite dim sum dishes.
They were both good here, i was pretty satisfied.
I was actually pretty impressed with the xo sauce cherng fun. or fun cherng as some people called it. They pan fried it PERECTLY. Each piece was slightly crispy on the outside and still soft on the inside.
Another thing I liked was the lo mai gai. The order had 3 small pieces rather than the 2 large wrapped up ones a majority of dim sum joints use.
By having 3 smaller pieces to an order, each wrapped up one didn’t have a shitload of rice and just a teeny portion of meat. It was a better ratio.
We went down the gauntlet of the normal stuff like, ha gow, siu mai, cherng fun, gow choy gow, etc etc you get the ideaaaaaaa
the one and ONLY thing I hella did not like NOR appreciate.
the shark fin dumpling soup.
OMFG. EW. WTH. GROSS. MUDDA ESSHOES OMFG WHAT DA HEW?!
there was a ton of CILANTRO in the shark fin dumpling!!!
imagine my surprise after i drizzled in a bit of vinegar, sheepishly punctured the dumpling with my soup spoon and seeing itty bitty little pieces of green burst out.
CILANTRO
*barf*
i have NEVER had any restaurant make the dumpling with cilantro! UGGHH GROSS!!! even my boyfriend the cilantro lover didn’t like it!
otherwise, the rest is pretty good.

I like this place. I come here for a late weekday lunch sometimes. They do have a lunch specials menu, short, and it has some good choices.
The restaurant experience is like traveling. Somebody there speaks English, although not everyone. They’ve all been friendly, either way. A chance to practice your Cantonese.
The setup is that of a big Chinese restaurant; manager types wearing suits. It’s cute.
Food is tasty, a good value, comes quickly. The lobster sauce prawns has pork in it (?) but they’ll make it without pork if you ask.
They close for lunch at 2:30; I flew in here at 2:20 and they served me with no complaints. At least for lunch, it’s just a solid, sensible sort of place.

What happened to this place??? Used to be medicore service with slightly above average food that I could bring my extremely critical parents to. Now it’s awful service with below average food and higher prices.
The restaurant was a total mess tonight. Most tables waited at least an hour for any warm food (cold dishes admittedly came out within 30 minutes). When food finally came out, it was served to the wrong tables in several instances. We finally got fed up and decided we didn’t want to wait another hour for our next warm dish and watch tables that arrived after us get the same dish before we did. Sadly, we weren’t the only table that did this and the wait staff did not seemed surprised/​upset to see this happen.
The two dishes we were served in the hour and half we waited were below what you could get at other places. The dishes were not as refined as they used to be, the ingredients not very fresh, and not properly flavored and over salted.
Next time, I’m taking my parents to Koi.

Came here for a company luncheon w/​my «extended group»… due to a suggestion of a colleague.
The food was pretty good for a Dim Sum restaurant. Since we had some novice dim sum eaters in our group, we decided to stick w/​the traditional Dim Sum dishes (Har Gow, Shiu Mai,) instead of the exotic: Roast Pork, Crab claw etc.) dishes.
The service was mediocre, typical of a standard Asian restaurant where one needs to put in multiple requests for the same item… a little annoying… esp. for a «higher-​end» dim sum place like Joy Luck Place.
Pricing, I assume is on-​par w/​the Cupertino counterpart in Cupertino Village. Since I didn’t take care of the bill, I can’t say w/​certainty.
Food: 4 Stars
Service: 3 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars
…oh…and they ran out of Egg tarts… at a Dim Sum restaurant on a Friday afternoon at 1 pm? …unbelievable!
…they don’t accept Amex either…

Kids, co-​worker and I were here for lunch. As we’re seated, we saw the working ladies pushing the carts filled with the freshest Dim-​Sums. Each of the items were $ 3.00 a dish or plate. The kids love Shrimp Dumplings, Shiu-​Mai and mini custard-​Tarts, and the steamed appetizer was in steamed dishes and had 4 pieces.
Co-​worker is African American and has been here many times and says the Porridge is according to him, «IT“S THE SHITZ!» There are 15 different kinds of porridges and he ordered one of his favorite, which is the Preserved Eggs and Salted pork Porridge. Being African-​American, he loves all Asian Ethnic foods including Chinese.
Porridge sure sounds good on a rainy day, but I’ll take a future rain check and got a Beef with Black bean sauce over Rice. For $ 8.00, the rice plate was very pricey for a simple rice plate consists of a Black Bean Sauce with chunks of Onions, Green Peppers and beef pieces. But nevertheless, the rice plate was very good.
I also split an order of Mango Tapioca pudding with fruit-​topping with the kids. The kids enjoyed the elegant presentation and the silky taste of the $ 3.50 dessert. Another picture-​perfect treat that they felt guilty of eating. They couldn’t wait to go home and tell mommy about the eye-​pleasing dessert.
With the city of San Mateo being so clean, this restaurant is likewise spotless. The prices are a bit high, but like a Unilocaler say to me, «you’re paying for the ambience!»