So just a heads up Koi is doing dining service now, but their menu is still on the small side (its still the pandemic menu) and a few special items that is printed out on a receipt. I had two meals within the month… so lets start off with meal one!
Started off our meal with some soup!
So the soup of the day is chicken and pig stomach pepper soup! I can’t smell (no not from covid!) any off notes of the stomach but the pepper does certainly help mask that (probably also a reason why people wanted spices back in the uh… good ol’ days…). The soup gave a nice peppery punch, great during the chill winter/early spring months.
Some spicy soy sauce for you to dip the soup ingredients
The chicken was not the most juicy meat to consume after the long boiling of the soup, but the pig tripe was actually pretty nice. Not super chewy, but had a soft suppleness to it.
Had a little pork royale (alright, its char siu…) (Oh, on a side note, eater had a nice little blurb here: https://sf.eater.com/2022/1/31/22910896/koi-palace-willy-ng-san-francisco-dim-sum-restaurants )
A good sweet and savoryness, love it (then again… its rare to find a piece of roast pork I hate…). There’s some marinated soy beans underneath the char siu for a little nutty bite as well.
A little order of empress clams with vermicelli at the bottom, though I think they brought this out a little too slow top was a bit colder than I preferred. But not oversteamed, so they got the cooking part down.
Just need a dash of veggies to our meal, got the pea sprouts with braised straw mushrooms. Nice braised sauce with good springy pea sprouts! Though will say I can’t recall seeing straw mushrooms fresh at markets so… maybe they’re canned? No idea, I never ate fresh ones, they made little X incisions on the mushrooms for better cooking? Dunno, still liked the dish haha.
I believe this was the fish head clay pot that we ordered. Very meaty and the ginger and scallions sauce base made ever more aromatic.
Koi had a variation on those big prime rib bones for their service. They added some fruit sauce on top of the ribs giving it a nice tangy note, a bit like well… bbq sauce oddly haha. I’m not too certain what fruit they used actually during the winter, but it reminded me of plums. I really should’ve asked but I was too busy eating… The beef was well done to the horror of most people, but my parents probably preferred that… (weird how some people don’t mind the myoglobin showing on chicken bones, but medium rare steak, oh that’s too rare… -_- ). But you know what, even though it was cooked to well, the beef still had good marbling and was not chewy and tough but quite tender.
As the coup de grace to our meal, we got clay pot pigeon! I’ve never seen that at any restaurants and that was pretty fun to try out. The bird was pretty juicy and not dry while the bottom of the rice had a nice soccarat layer. Very nice!
Ended our meal with some tortoise-shell jello. A nice little herbal ting with the jello, a nice ending to our meal.
Now, you ask why we ate twice? I overlooked this item called salt baked crab, didn’t seem too interesting at first, until we saw another table order it. That thing looked fantastic, I really wanted to try it next time… and well guess what? I did. But before that…
Got some delicious roasted pigeon for appetizer. Very juicy with crispy skin. I think they did a great job (New Jumbo in the sunset does a good rendition as well).
And they had one of my favorite double boiled soup, watercress with pork bones! Seriously this soup is one of the best. Nice clear color, super savory, and the watercress isn’t turned into mush.
A little interesting twist on their rendition, they actually made the soup with corn which increased the sweetness.
The dipping spicy soy sauce for soup ingredients. I’d say most things aren’t that juicy, but if you like having some chicken feet or gizzard (I think its turkey since those gizzards were huge compared to duck ones but what do I know) have a gander!
For the star of the meal… the salt baked crab! They actually set the item on fire with what I think is brandy or rice wine… not too certain, but it had a nice pizzazz.
What caught my attention of the crab? the fact that it had rice inside! The crab I think was sauteed with some very aromatic ingredients, onions, green onions, garlic and ginger with rice placed in the crab shell then wrapped and baked with salt (does this do anything? I have no idea). This dish made my night as I haven’t had dungeness crab in a long while.
Next up I think this was the braised yellow sea bream (honestly… all the fish names now confuse me more especially when the english and chinese changes). Pumped with garlic, boy that was great! The fish is definitely boney though, so becareful.
Some sauteed choy sum with garlic.
And one little crabby surprise to end the night! I haven’t seen steamed roe crab over pork patties before but hey, good excuse to try it! The crab meat was pretty sweet as well and the crab roe added some ocean blast to the patty. The crab juice gave the pork some extra nice notes and to be honest, wasn’t super salty as I feared.
Ended our meal with some black seasame dessert soup. Wasn’t too sweet and had a great seasame aroma, I do wish it was a little hotter temp wise though.
All in all, I’m glad to still see Koi palace surviving (well they’re more like super packed during lunch hours). I hope they go full menu soon.
