Top Chinese Restaurant in Mountain View
Kirin Restaurant
485 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
Good food, great value, lackluster service, elaborate decorative structures but unimpressive decors. That is Kirin in a nutshell.I still remember the crabs we had when a friend from Washington, D.C. brought me to Kirin more than a decade ago. Thats right, an out-of-towner first showed me this place. My first impression was: The portion was generous. (There was never a doubt about quality of food.) The three of us spent about $50 and still had leftovers.It wasnt until I moved to Mountain View before I went the second time. The third time. And more times. Some of my favourites are steamed flounder, cod, any crabs, clams and, of course, lobster. In short, any seafood from this Cantonese restaurant. If you do not want seafood, my recommendation is to stick with Cantonese dishes. (Be very suspicious of other cuisines from a traditional Chinese restaurant.)There must be good reasons why Kirin stands across the City Hall for so many years. Castro is a brutal street for food establishments. In less than 10 years living here, Ive noticed more than a dozen restaurants, even ice cream shops come and go. Along seven short blocks, there are usually half a dozen Chinese restaurants, and a few Chinese tea places either on Castro or on side streets. (Merely three blocks outside town center along the same road is another Chinese restaurant that changed hands but always popular, now the best Chinese in town.) Kirin is one of only two that havent changed hands; one of three if you count the Chinese bakery.Most clientele are of Chinese descendant. And if these people keep coming back, you know you are in the right place. Kirin isnt my go-to place for Chinese food - my first cuisine choice is Szechuan. They are not even the best Cantonese that I have had. But I go back because I know I always get good value, and because it is so central.On the negative side, I did experience really long wait with a small party, both in how soon a waiter comes over and in how fast the food arrives after ordering, when the restaurant wasnt even busy.But the most curious thing about this restaurant is its interior and decoration. Kirin is relatively spacious among Chinese restaurants, and relatively clean. It has several pieces of elaborate, colourfully painted wooden structures, sculptures if you will. One of the walls also has some pretty Chinese paintings. They even use full tablecloths and cloth napkins instead of plastic and paper. But the whole place radiates this low-maintenance feeling. At least part of the problem is the bland lighting. I often take pictures in restaurants I visit but have not managed to find a good angle in Kirin.Still, this is a restaurant. Food quality and food value ought to outweigh other shortcomings. For this, I give them four stars.
Queen House
273 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
Chinese restaurant in downtown Mountain View, you can order many kinds of Taiwanese snack. The next is Tea Era, you can also order the drink here.
Dumpling Garden
108A N Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States
[Edit]Take out is even worse than ever for company orders.At least before we could order individual items, but now theyre forcing all of us to order their lunch specials, which is good for anyone who wants to carb up on 蔥油餅 and some brocolli and carrots, but the restaurant is called Dumpling Garden, not bloody Cheap Fillers Garden.Let us order individual dumpling dishes. No one goes here with the intent to eat par-boiled veggies.[/Edit]Ive had take out from this place at least once a week for the last 6 monthsTheres definitely some issues to discuss. Is there good cooking here? Well, its certainly possible. Theres been times whereve thought it was pleasant enough. But the truth of the matter is, Mountain View has always been a dead spot for good Chinese cooking, and if you need proof, just walk down Castro street.Dumpling Garden is a restaurant where there are moments. Moments where the food is fine, especially as they are comparatively more affordable compared to other Chinese restaurants in the area.The issue is primarily in the lack of consistency and the clear evidence of skimping. If you order the pan fried dumpling, youll find yourself biting into the air as only 1/3 - 1/5 of the dumpling has any protein stuffing. If you order take out soup dumplings, theyll conveniently forget the vinegar and chili or the chopsticks. The Thai tea will taste of 25% sugar and taste muted.Off memory, in the last 6 months, you will more often come across at least one notable issue that diminishes the flavor of the meal. It never feels like theres intent to make the food taste poorly, but there is a feeling of nickel and dime-ing.Maybe the dine-in experience is better, but the take-out leaves much to be desired.
Panda Express
1035 El Monte Ave, Mountain View, CA 94040, United States
One of the few fast food restaurants on the planet where you can get a decent amount of vegetables for crying out loud. Cheap and come on people dont get all high-and-mighty about authenticity. This place makes Chinese food better than lots of real Chinese restaurants so to speak. You can even drop a few pounds if you skip the fried rice or noodles and get half brown rice half steamed veggies for your side
Happy Lamb Hot Pot Mountain View
102 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
Not the best hot pot ever.Feels like they nickel and dime you on everything. It doesnt even come with rice or any veggies. Most non-AYCE hot pot comes with some base amount of veggies and rice or noodles if not rice *and* noodles.Its difficult to eat there as a couple since everything is extra. Makes it really hard to get all the accoutrements without ordering too much food for two. Plus all the platters are huge, so if you want more than one thing youre going to be saddled with a ton of leftovers.Also not knowing how it works or having it explained at the beginning, we didnt order everything we needed right away, until we noticed we werent getting vegetables, carbs, or other sides. I feel like now that I know I could have ordered more intelligently, but A., I shouldnt have to eat here more than once just to have the meal go as expected, and B., why would I even bother to come again after the first time didnt go right?And dont tell me to just go to AYCE. I avoid AYCE on purpose because I dont like fighting the crowds of cheapskates and having my meat orders throttled to keep me from eating my fill.The sauce bar has hardly anything on it but they charge per person. And dont tell me its cuz you get sesame balls. Sesame balls are a dim sum item; its an odd thing to have on a sauce bar (also theyre a thing that should be enjoyed fresh and hot, not lukewarm and sitting out for god knows how long). They already have a whole selection of other sweets so its just plain weird to offer them separately. Plus they waited until almost the end of service to put out more green onion and cilantro. I expect an additional fee bar to have more choices and not have various buckets go unfilled for an hour. Id rather they get rid of the sauce bar entirely, put the sesame balls on the dessert menu, and only let you choose 1 or 2 sauces/toppings per person than that fiasco.They dont have my favorite sauce or soup bases. All the soup bases have medicinal herbs in it which are not my thing; even taking care to order a soup base that did not mention any medicinal ingredients I still got a medicinal soup base. And the mushroom soup base was 99% king and had literally half a shiitake in the whole thing.The lamb rosette was frozen and stuck into a bed of ice and took half the meal to thaw enough to separate into slices to cook them. The meat seems fresh enough (considering it has to be frozen) but thats not enough to save it when the overall experience was lacking. Not to mention that fresh food should be a given, not a bonus.The service was uneven. There was a lack of coordination among servers such that at the beginning we got asked repeatedly whether we had ordered but after that it was really hard to get someones attention to get refills or even to *order more food* - which pads your tips, guys. I feel like I shouldnt have to tell you this.
Lucky Chinese Bistro
1040 Grant Rd STE 100, Mountain View, CA 94040, United States
This place feeds their customers old disgusting foods and eat the fresh lean food themselves. I went there since its close to work. It was around 2 pm. All the food choices didnt look good but I was hungry and thought everything around here is almost the same type of food. I ordered my food and thought $12 for a fast food lunch was fine. As I just got my food I saw the owners of the place, two ladies and two man who all are speaking Chinese to each other are having a nicest, fresh plate chicken, vegetables on top of rice. I ask the lady who helped me that I like that food too. She said no, this is only for us, you eat your own food. This was the craziest thing ever. Even one star is too many for this gross place. I give them negative 5 star to serve the customers old very greasy food and eat the fresh food themselves.
Seasons Noodles & Dumplings Garden
702 Villa St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
First time to Mountain view visiting my daughter, Im glad to find this newly opened restaurant. Food are yummy, Id strongly recommend their noodles, dumplings, steam buns, savoury Chinese pancakes with different fillings. Both food quality and price are excellent, very friendly service?What first attracted me going into this restaurant is their clean and bright atmosphere. Ive tried both dine in and take out??
CHINA WOK RESTAURANT
2633 California St, Mountain View, CA 94040, United States
Our whole family is fan of their vegetarian food. One of our favorite Chinese restaurants in and around Mountain View
Zhangliang Malatang
246 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
The food is overpriced and meh. You’re better off going to literally any of the 10 hot pot places nearby. Food was like $35 for barely anything good. Soup base is meh.In particular, I took issue with the fact that someone came over and got upset with us and explicitly told us that we have to tip when we were discussing how much to tip given that (we select our own ingredients, get our own sauce, pack our own food in take out containers—in other words this is just a fast food counter version of Chinese food). I fully understand that tipping is currently a necessary part of American restaurant culture because restaurants won’t pay their employees, but at a restaurant where no service is provided, having a manager come over and explicitly tell us we have to leave a tip when we are paying the bill is both very uncomfortable and very inappropriate.
Fu Lam Mum
153 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041, United States
If you show up to a Bay Area dim sum place near noon on a weekend and they can seat you immediately, youre probably not about to have excellent food. That set my expectations going in, and Fu Lam Mum didnt surprise me. The eggplant seemed to be an entire Chinese eggplant cut in thirds, drowned in oil, and made hot with some tastier bits stuck on as an afterthought. I ended up squeezing as much oil out as I could, then pouring it off my plate onto another plate so I could eat another dish. The buns were frugal on mediocre filling. A fried pudding looked more like fried corn starch with some milk. There also seemed to only be one server who wasnt pushing a dim sum cart, and she seemed to have several responsibilities added on top of serving. Overall, my impression is that the high rent + high traffic in downtown Mountain View convinced the restaurant to skimp on ingredients and labor to maintain profit margins.In the future, Ill accept the longer drive to better dim sum places.