Lily Kai - Chinese, Petaluma

3100 Lakeville Hwy, Petaluma CA

(707) 782-1132

Parking: in shopping center parking lot

Hours: Mon - Thurs 11am - 9pm, Fri - Sat 11am - 9:30pm, Sun 4pm - 9pm

http://www.lilykaipetaluma.com/

Last Visited: June 25, 2011

Food: 3 stars

Atmosphere: 3 stars
Service: 2 to 3 stars
Price: $ to $$$

Voted Best Chinese Restaurant in Petaluma for the People's Choice awards in 2008, 2009, and 2010, you start to have slightly higher expectations for Lily Kai than you would for a regular Chinese restaurant in Sonoma County.  Located in the Adobe Creek Center, you'll find it to have an elegant decor in this newer shopping center with lots of natural light streaming from the windows.

Lily Kai has had a reputation for higher quality service and food compared to other Chinese restaurants in Sonoma County.  I first tried it when it opened, but it's been a couple of years since my last visit.  We had a good impression of it from past experiences, but it's still not to the caliber of San Francisco Cantonese restaurants in flavor, although the atmosphere is pleasant and good for bringing guests. 

Today, we came by for lunch to see if it has maintained its quality.  All of the lunch specials are served with hot and sour soup.  Most of the dishes, with the exception of noodle dishes, come with a choice of brown or white rice and an egg roll.

A photo of the hot and sour soup is shown above.  While the flavor is okay, it's not authentic.  There are a couple of missing ingredients, that may not be there on purpose because they don't suit the American palate, and fresh mushrooms are also not common. 

- Mongolian Beef Lunch Special - First, I'll start with the egg roll. The wrapper was underdone - the wrapper was kept whole and should have been cut down to size since the additional layers didn't get fried through leaving it soggy in the center.  The filling was primarily cabbage and carrot shreds and seemed skimpy.  While the price is low, I would prefer they not give an egg roll if its quality is poor.  The mongolian beef itself was spicy and the meat was tender and plentiful.  Two broccoli crown pieces blanched until its color changed was fine, but probably a little too crunchy for some folks.  The rice noodles that had been fried and used to garnish the beef were not fresh and you could tell it had been fried some time ago.  It would have been better for them to fry the rice noodles at the time of the order or just leave it off.  Fair.  $6.95

- Singapore Style Noodles - The broccoli crowns described above accompanied the noodles.  Flavored with a little yellow curry, this noodle dish was also plentiful.  BBQ pork, chicken, three shrimp, onion strips, bean sprouts, and green onion accompanied the noodles.  One thing I appreciated was that there were three shrimp - in Thai places, you have to pay way more than this price to get a few whole shrimp. $6.95

Service today was fair.  While the hostess took us to the table, she used the menus to slap the butt of one of the servers.  While I maintain a sense of humor about stuff like this when it's your own family or friends hanging out during non-business hours, it's completely unprofessional when you're at work and the customer can see you doing this.  For that reason, I dropped the service down to a 2 to 3 star range. I kept the food rating at three stars because of the generosity with the shrimp at the low price of the dish.  One thing I wanted to acknowledge - they've held their pricing for their lunch specials since they first opened in 2006 - that definitely deserves some recognition.  High on value, Lily Kai's still needs to work on overall food quality.