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.