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Joy Luck Place (Chinese cuisine) $$$$

10911 N Wolfe Rd, Cupertino, 95014 (Directions)

408.255.6988

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Cantonese Chinese cuisine known for their dim sum and banquet service
Reviewer: Jason Total Reviews: 992 Reviewed: 4/13/2008 Rating: 9 My photo gallery	I'm a loyal visitor to the San Mateo location and have been going for years. It's wasn't too much of a surprise when I ate at the Cupertino spot. I knew I would be eating tasty Cantonese cuisine with a hit to the wallet. Joy Luck Place dim sum is one of my favorites in the bay area. Some people like jellyfish/chicken claws kind of dim sum and I'm sure you can order from the menu but from what I saw, most of the items rolled by our table was standard issue stuff. If you want the more exotic selections, it's hard to beat Koi Palace. We ordered 7 items with nothing being exotic. har gow (image 6) - super hot, fresh, plentiful shrimp salt and pepper calamari (image 7) - I didn't eat too much of this since I've been on a calamari ban since my Spain trip. Nothing against Joy Luck Place, Terry seemed to love it. garlic eggplant (image 8) - loved it stuffed rice (image 9) - also very good, I think it had a duck egg, pork, soy sauce wrapped in banana leaf. rice wrapper shrimp something (image 10) - texture is kinda slimy but there are shrimps hidden in the stuff crab claws (image 11) - It's a crab claw surrounded by a thick layer of shrimp mixture, then breaded for deep-fried heaven. Disappointment of the lunch, served barely warm like it was sitting on a tray longer than 10 minutes. shu mei (image 12) - pork/shrimp dumpling, another favorite of mine, I can order these for days. Waitresses can be pushy at times, just smile, say NO even louder, and wave your hand over the table to block the incoming plate. I'd been wanting har gow (shrimp dumpling) from 2 waitresses and one of the waitresses told a manager who then walked into the kitchen and personally grabbed me a tray. Talk about awesome service. You ask 10 people who've been to Joy Luck Place and 5 people will complain about 2 things; price and service. Price - There's no doubt Pan Tao down the street is cheaper but in the 3 visits to Pan Tao, the dim sum wasn't as hot or fresh. Sure I saved 50-75 cents per dim sum item but I'm willing to pay $5-7.50 more to get a better tasting meal. Sunday might be a different story but weekdays, heavy traffic at Joy Luck Place, you're odds of getting fresher food is more likely. The Joy Luck Place's menu also offers 100's of items and I honestly think the people who price the menu don't realize how wide of a gap the lunch and dinner prices are. For instance, you can get lunch chinese broccoli for $6, order a slightly larger dinner version and it's $12. I think small sides/vegetables are overpriced but main dishes are competitive pricing with higher-tier Chinese restaurants. Bottom line in pricing, Joy Luck Place is expensive. You want to eat a budget meal, go elsewhere. You want to eat great food in a very nice dining environment, opportunity to expense a company lunch, visit Joy Luck Place. Service - Planets were aligned because we didn't experience any bad service at all. I've heard of the terrible service stories at Joy Luck Place. The long wait times, the dim sum carts that would avoid certain tables, water/tea that never got refilled and so on. Even in a packed restaurant, we were seated quickly and given the opportunity to pick and choose whatever we wanted. I won't dispute bad service as Terry and I witnessed the next table having trouble with dim sum carts stopping by. For us, service today was excellent. There are a lot of haters for Joy Luck Place, and yeah, I don't know my Chinese food, I can't order in various Chinese languages, I don't ever order the right items, I don't ask for the secret Chinese menus. What I do know is, I've eaten at about 100 Chinese restaurants (click the drop down menu for Cuisine and select Chinese) and can do comparisons against places I've eaten and not from what I heard/read from other people.

Reviewer: Terry Total Reviews: 724 Reviewed: 4/17/2008 Rating: 9 My photo gallery	Its quite surprising that it has taken us so long to add this place to the site. Its super close to work and considered to be one of the ultimate bay area dim sum destinations. We arrived early today for lunch and it was super busy, but we got in just before the lines started form - thankfully. We were shown a table waaay in the back and were quickly choosing items from the carts. That was great, the carts were coming fast and furious and we were never sitting around waiting for a cart, any cart, to come by - we were constantly being shown new items. A lot of the standard dim sum items are fairly similar at the top tier places (by that I am talking about places like Mings, ABC seafood, Koi Palace, and Joy Luck) but it comes down to service. For me, Joy Luck rates up there because of the swift, efficient, friendly service and the top-notch dim sum offerings. All of the items I tried were very tasty, relatively low on grease, (though I won't say low on salt). We were quickly shown many delicious items and were never waiting around. That one sentence defines greatness in dim sum service. Combine that with awesome food and you have a winner. Jason was asking for a particular item and it was never coming around. One of the managers hooked him up and brought over the item personally. Thats service. As long as you can get in early enough (before the lines) I would recommend Joy Luck as a top contender for Bay Area dim sum.


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