Stick and Steam - Tapas, Dim Sum, Chinese, Millbrae

350 Adrian Rd, Millbrae CA 94030
(650) 239-9240
Parking: in parking lot

Last Visited: December 29, 2018

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

Stick and Steam opened last month and has an interesting menu of snacks/small plates, skewers, noodles and rice, and different versions of Hainanese chicken.  You can also try unusual concoctions such as beef kimcheese (yes, cheese) fried rice and salted egg fries.  Rita mentioned that there is 10% off through the end of the year, so it's a good time to go in and check it out.

The restaurant has been nicely remodeled to have a more modern look than before (it used to be a Hong Kong style restaurant) with wood tables, black chairs, and even a neon S S sign (which you can see in the window in the photo above). 

The model is simple - you arrive and receive a menu with photos and a menu for you to check off what you want to order.  There are a number of drinks on the menu - from soju to boba, you'll find a lot of additional options, but hot tea wasn't listed as one of them.

- Beef Noodle Soup - By far, this was the best dish of the night.  Three large pieces of beef brisket and two large pieces of beef/tendon are braised until super tender so that it melts in your mouth.  The noodles are fine, but nothing special.   Although the menu says its egg noodles, and the photo on the menu look like egg noodles, these look like flat noodles that aren't egg-based.  Three romaine leaves along with some cilantro garnish the soup.  A sauce and minced preserved turnip/radish also accompany the five-spice based broth.  This would be even better if you could choose the type of noodles you wanted.  This dish gave the food rating three stars. $9.50

- Hainan Chicken Plate - The menu describes this as slow-cooked, served with fluffy short-grained rice, ginger-garlic, and sweet soy sauce.  The mound of rice is big and has more color than flavor - it's pretty bland.  The chicken is actually mounded on top of cooked cabbage, so there is less than what you think.  Most of my chicken was white meat - only the wing and another piece was dark meat.  The spinach salad comes with shredded carrots and candied walnuts which are good, but the dressing was not to my liking.  It has a strong flavor that reminds me of shiso, but it leaves a funny aftertaste.  A number of spinach leaves were also wilted, so I couldn't enjoy them.  The best thing about this dish was the accompanying sauces - the sweet chili sauce has a bit of kick and the ginger sauce was good, but there wasn't enough of it.  I would suggest you go to the nearby competitor around the corner that serves more chicken for a lower price instead.  I wouldn't order this again. $12.75

- Pork Belly with Charcoal bun - The steamed buns are tender and if it weren't for them being black, you would just call them fluffy and well-executed.  In a blind taste test, I don't think I would detect any charcoal.  The two glazed grilled pork belly skewers were tasty, but there was far too much fat compared to meat.  From the photo, you can see that one piece is virtually all fat - not a good ratio.  The pieces with a good portion of meat to fat were nicely glazed and juicy.  The strange spinach salad comes with this dish too. Okay skewers, but where's the meat?! $7

- House Potstickers (4) - Pork and ginger potstickers are served on a layer of rice paper.  In my book, these are not potstickers.  They're dumplings that got boiled and pan fried, and not even to the point of the wrapper drying out sufficiently on what is the underside of the rice paper.  The dumpling skin is quite different from that of real potstickers.  There is also insufficient browning so that the rice paper had no purpose.  What's a bit ironic is that when you make real potstickers at home, you can often get this rice paper skin as a byproduct of putting water into the pan and slowly frying the dumplings - here it's considered a novelty. At least the meat was juicy.  Even still, not recommended.  $6.75

- XLB Trio (original - white, crab - yellow, and truffle - black) - These Shanghai dumplings were pretty good - all juicy on the inside with sufficient amounts of soup and a supple wrapper.  The crab dumpling could taste more like crab, but it was still okay.  When I try these at most places, I like the truffle one the best and this was the case here too.  $5.75 

Service was okay, but not profound.  You can tell that the servers have been trained to state the name of the dish when delivering it to the table, to thank you for your patience when you've been waiting for a period of time, and to thank you as you leave.  Things that showed that it's still a new establishment - once our order had been taken, we were asked to relocate tables to fit in a larger party.  The patrons at the table next to us that arrived when the restaurant got a little fuller had to wait significantly longer for their order to be taken (about 15 minutes after receiving a menu).  Getting the check required flagging down a server several times, so there is still room for improvement. 

Other things that I found to be strange - during my first course, the beef noodle soup dish, I smelled this overwhelming scent of soap.  I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but I don't think it was the food.  Nevertheless, it throws you off and makes one think they're eating some kind of cleaning product. 

Better get going if you want your 10% off. 

Ipoh Garden - Malaysian, Millbrae

100 El Camino Real, Millbrae CA 94030
(650) 652-9588
Parking: street parking
https://ipohgardenmalaysiancuisine.eat24hour.com/

Last Visited: December 9, 2018

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

Rob recommended Ipoh Garden as a good Peninsula alternative for Malaysian food and from his perspective, shared that it is more authentic than other places nearby.  As Rob is from Singapore, I trusted his determination of Ipoh's authenticity.  This location was previously a bar, so it's not much to look at from the outside, but inside, they did a nice remodel and the restaurant actually fits quite a few tables.  The colorful walls and long bar and the whimsical painting on the wall of a boy reaching for his paper airplane (which is actually the 3D part of the art) show the character of the owners.  The first four dishes were ordered in April, and then I visited again for in December.


- Roti Canai - Just about every table ordered this.  Two rounds of slightly crispy roti is served with a spiced curry sauce.  These are served very hot and are a little bit flaky.  The dough inside is soft and you can see the many layers within the round.  I wasn't too crazy about the sauce - not enough curry flavor since the spice sort of conflicted with it.  I also found the roti thicker than I prefer.  Okay.  $4.95

- Crispy Calamari - This was easily the best dish of the meal.  The batter on the calamari was light and the calamari was tender and fried to a light golden brown.  Pieces of red and green bell pepper and red onions had been cooked with a little bit of spicy red sauce.  All was lightly stir-fried with the calamari so that every few bites, you would get a little extra kick of flavor.  Four stars.  $12.95

- Laksa Mee - The noodles in the laksa mee were pretty standard - yellow noodles, but the flavor of the broth was just okay - nothing outstanding, maybe even slightly bland.  Considering that it's a red coconut curry based broth, it should have been spicy and rich. Usually, a hot broth that has good flavor makes me pretty happy - here, it was nothing to write home about.  Tofu, chicken, and okra accompany the noodles. The freshness of the vegetables was good.   $10.95

- Pad Thai - Of all the dishes ordered, I found this one to be the most disappointing.  While the tamarind based sauce was pleasantly stronger than many other local restaurants, the wide flat noodles had too much moisture causing them to be pretty broken even before we stirred the bean sprouts and lettuce into it.  There was also very little meat - two shrimp and very few pieces of chicken.  The tofu strips were ok, but overall, the noodles were falling apart so much that it was pretty disappointing and getting to the point of being mushy.  This dish also took a long time before it finally arrived.   $11.45

On my second visit, the food experience was slightly improved.

- Beef Satay - Four skewers of marinated beef are grilled and served with peanut sauce.  It's served with slices of cucumbers and red onions.  While the beef is tender, it's not as good without the sauce.  The sauce was flavorful, but could use more ground peanuts. Good. $6.95

- Kang Kung Belachan - A hearty amount of kang kung is sauteed with a belachan sauce.  The greens were tender and the shrimp paste sauce was fine.  Jalapeno slices add extra spice to the dish.  Okay.  I personally prefer the version that one of their competitors in the next city over makes.  $11.95

- Hainanese Chicken - Served with fragrant flavored rice which you can notice in the flavor, not just the color, this steamed chicken comes with two dipping sauce - one is ginger-based and the other is chili-based. All of the chicken sits in a light version of soy sauce.  The dark meat was tender and juicy, but the white meat could have been more moist.  It's a good portion, but the chili sauce is not hot, so you end up gravitating towards the ginger sauce.  The rice was fragrant, but I wouldn't have minded more salt.  Good value for the price.  $10.95

- Chow Koay Teow - It's probably unfair to do a review of this dish after coming back from Singapore.  While the stir-fried flat rice noodles held up significantly better than the pad thai noodles from my last visit, the flavoring was too light.  Of the dishes tried this evening, this one stood out the least.  Shrimp, squid, bean sprouts, chives, and egg are served with the noodles. $11.45

- Singapore Chili Tofu - Large pieces of tofu are fried in a chili tomato sauce with strips of red onion.  The tofu was good, but the dish as a whole is a bit on the sweet side for my tastes.  Okay.    $13.95

Service during my first visit was fair - while we weren't neglected, it just took a while for food to come to the table after the order.  We added the pad thai at the end, but it took a lot longer than expected to arrive.  It also took a while to get a bill.  During the second visit, we sat a lot closer to the register, so the servers passed by much more frequently.

Ipoh offers some dishes that its competitors don't, and if you're craving this style of food, they have a good variety.  Try the crispy calamari and avoid the pad thai.