The Mandarin — Restaurant in Menlo Park

we went on christmas night and the restaurant was quite frankly overwhelmed. we had a 545 pm reservation and the next available at the time of booking was past 8 pm, so you get an idea of how busy the 6-730 pm area was gonna be.

it did take an hour from being seated to get our first course, which was hot and sour soup. there was a long line of to-go orders via doordash/ubereats/grubhub and phone-in orders that was also complicating matters, but the staff should be credited with handling it with grace even though everything took much longer than what i imagine is usual. communication was pretty poor, to be fair, however, and that's the only reason i would ding them one star. they should have told us they were running behind and set expectations accordingly. they did not.

that said, the food was fantastic. we had the orange chicken, mapo topu, some kind of prawn dish (they have several), the dry braised string beans, hot and sour soup and a mixed fried rice. everything was amazing in taste and the portions were very generous. price wasn't the cheapest, but they also as expensive as, say, tai pan in palo alto. food, however, is very comparable.

i will be back and hopefully will get the amazing service i have read about in other reviews so i can revise the rating to what i expect to...

I love this place! This is one of my go-to spots to take Chinese friends or people coming into town who like Chinese food! It’s a nice fancy Chinese restaurant with really beautiful and tasty dishes. The dishes are on the pricier end ($20-$30) but they come out very beautiful and tasty so I would highly recommend.

This time we got Spicy Beef Tendon, Salt and Pepper Tofu, Garlic snow pea leaves, Eggplant in Spicy Sauce, and Kung Pao chicken. Everything was delicious. The beef tendon dish looked especially nice.

Service: We came on a Friday evening and there wasn’t too many people so we were seated right away. The dishes came out one by one in a timely manner. They also box the leftovers for you, which I appreciate. They do start tip at 20% which is a bummer but not unexpected for a pricy place like this.

Interior: The restaurant feels like a pretty fancy Chinese restaurant. There’s lots of tables so there’s plenty of seating. And there’s a lot of tables with turntables on top, so great for family style dining.

Parking: There’s parking the back, behind the restaurant. There’s also many parking lots in Menlo Park downtown, so it’s not hard to...

Today, my family and I decided to celebrate Father's Day by going to this restaurant. We really wanted to try this restaurant out, so today was the day! After a long time of deciding, we decided to try out Mouth-Watering Chicken, and the Heart-Broken Noodles for appetizers. For our main-course, we chose General Tao's Chicken, Sichuan Style Beef Noodles, Boiled Beef Sichuan Style, and Golden Crab. Lastly, for dessert, we tried out the Sweet Osmanthus Fermented Rice Sweet Dumplings. For my father, he really enjoyed Live Golden Crab, my mom enjoyed the Heart-Broken Noodles, and for my brother and I, we enjoyed the Mouth-watering Chicken and the Sweet Osmanthus Fermented Rice Sweet Dumplings.

The service in The Mandarin is amazing. The server we had was very nice, and humorous. He also gave us a lot of recommendations!

The restaurant is very clean and grand, it makes us feel very comfortable.

My dad said that this was the best meal he'd ever had for Father's Day because the food reminded him of...