Hey everyone,
Just had a little jaunt at Grand Palace this past month to try their dim sum and dinner. Located right on Grand avenue in downtown South San Francisco, this is one large banquet seafood restaurant that routinely does wedding venues in the area. Also a good location if you’re around the biotech area of the oyster point region. In any case, I tried out their dim sum lunch and dinner and if you’re too lazy to read whatever I write afterwards, I’m more impressed with their dinner than dim sum.
Lunch time:
We ordered a smattering of items, but to start it out from the top left and going clockwise:
- Steamed radish cakes (a little more on the dense side for me but alright).
- Steamed phoenix scallop dumplings (I think they add maybe a spring of cilantro with this dumpling but I’m not sure if the open top dumplings are that great compared to the regular enclosed ones where it traps more juice.)
- Shrimp dumplings (Okay, not super juicy but not bad)
- Siu mai (more on the denser end, doesn’t feel hand chopped)
- Yuba lined beef balls (on the par with most dim sum places, I always liked adding the Worcestershire sauce but personal preference)
- Steamed mushroom buns (I first recall seeing these in HK but now they appear to be popping up all over the place. I think a thin layer of cocoa on top of the bun to give it the shitake look, but pretty good bun overall).
Baked BBQ pork, was pretty good as well, though I prefer the crispy or pineapple bun top on these. Mushroom bun with the stem in the back.
Rice noodle roll medley (BBQ Pork, shrimp, beef, and vegetarian in one order). The rice noodles were pretty smooth though I thought the BBQ pork had too much gristle.
XO stir fried rice noodle rolls. I wish they had a little more crisp stir fry on the rice noodles (bit soft) but the XO still had a nice bite to it.
My dad went and ordered the XLB but I still prefer the ones made by Koi Palace/Dragon Beaux for XLBs ordered in dim sum restaurants. The meat just felt solid and the skin was a little bit thick.
A personal favorite of mine, the dumpling soup (where I think originally, the soup was actually contained within the dumpling…). A sizeable amount of broth is surrounding the dumpling, but alas like a lot of the meat dumplings everything felt a little too solid and dense.
Overall, decent dim sum if you’re around the area but I think dinner is a better choice.
Dinner
Woo hoo! Promotional price of 40 dollars, I was expecting more of a tiny winter melon soup. Nope, this thing is huge!
Also not recommended to order if you only have three people eating (oops).
In any case, the wintermelon soup was quite nice. A bit heavier on the shaoxing wine fragrance, but a nice broth. Ingredients include crab meat, conpoy, duck, ham, chicken, springs of carrots and ginger. I’ve always loved wintermelon and I think Grand Palace did a good job (not as good as Yum’s… but I don’t think I can ask for his version anymore).
We also noticed on their special page about a yuba braised black bass and that seemed like a good choice. Personally don’t think the shine is on the fish’s flesh but the brown savory sauce covering the entire dish. Not too salty, but goes great with rice.
Thinking it was a small wintermelon, we decided to order the pea sprouts with abalone mushrooms. Nice and tender, no super stringy bits. However, the gigantic wintermelon soup pretty much predominated our meal so we didn’t have much headway into this dish.
Not pictured was the clear broth with beef stew. I forgot to take a picture and pretty much started eating it before really thinking. I wouldn’t order this dish for my next visit. The beef was okay, but a little tough and stringy. The radishes were just semi-hard and did not have that soft bite that you would expect. And for personal preference, the clear broth was not too my liking (maybe a little much on the star anise?).
Dessert was red bean with tapioca (super hot which is a delightful sign, but I … don’t really enjoy the dessert soups). The coconut mochi had a nice chewy bite. I’m not certain the reason why we got this dessert, usually its only the soup but I was happy with its inclusion.
Overall, I found dinner to be much more enjoyable than lunch. I saw a huge clay pot brought out to another table and we asked the server what that was. Apparently they do the pepper pig intestine with gingko soup. I recall having that in Vancouver, so I think we’ll try to preorder that soup the next time we come around!
