Cafe Orchid — Restaurant in Millbrae

6/26/2025 update: Posted new menu photos. No kitten roaming in the dining area today. We had the baked pork tenderloin spaghetti $15.25, wonton soup $13.25 and a stir fry beef satay rice noodles $14.50. Everything tasted great. This was more of a revenge meal as the wonton soup I had on the day before was terrible. Food taste even better when you had something bad. The older waitress is back. She is pretty awesome. The kitchen was really slow today. It took over 30 minutes for my baked pork tenderloin spaghetti to come out.

3/27/2025 update: Weird lunch today. While we were eating, a kitten rubbed up against my friend's leg under the table. It surprised us. I didn't know this was a cat cafe. Apparently, it ran out from the kitchen. The waitress quickly captured the kitten. The other weird thing was, we ordered the 'curry pizza' (spring onion bread) appetizer, but it never arrived. Either the rookie waitress never put it in or the chef was too busy to make it. Finally, when my friend went to pay, the rookie waitress short changed us by $50 as my friend paid with a $100 bill. Luckily he paid at the cashier as he counted the change in front of her. Hopefully, the older waitress and the skinny one will come back soon. Today's peanut butter french toast $7.50, baked pork tenderloin spaghetti $15.25 and black pepper beef spaghetti $14.50 were fine.

7/31/2022 update: Cafe Orchid is still awesome and my go-to place for Hong Kong style meals. Off the menu, I got their Hong Kong style tomato beef crispy noodles. This was my first time eating this here. There weren't any photos on Yelp for this dish. Amazing flavor with plenty of pieces of beef and tomatoes. As for the beef and vegetables chow fun with gravy, this was great as well. The chef did a good job with the wok flavor. Excellent service. Good job my friends at Cafe Orchid.

9/24/2021 update: Cafe Orchid is still an excellent Hong Kong style cafe. There was a constant flow of to-go order pickups and a short line waiting for a table at 7pm on a Friday. It gets busier during brunch time on the weekends. I started my meal with an order of curry fish balls. They are a favorite street food among Hong Kongers. The only thing missing is the bamboo stick used on the streets. The curry sauce here is thick and smelled wonderful. The fish balls were firm with a soft snap. The beef brisket braised noodles are still good. It came with mostly overcooked tendons that were easy to chew. There's an option to get the thicker egg noodles, but I prefer the thin noodles. It was all washed down with a lemon tea with real lemon. Great job staff at Cafe Orchid. We are lucky they are in Millbrae. I like how the bigger waitress knows all the regular customers.

4/22/2021 update. Indoor dining. Tonight I had the beef brisket wonton noodle soup $10.50 and a HK milk tea $3. The beef briskets were more tendons than I would have liked. There were only two small pieces of meat and two big pieces of tendons. It was slowed cook and pretty flavorful. The three wontons were satisfying. It contains shrimp and a hint of sesame oil. Their milk tea tasted almost as good as the ones found in tea cafes in Hong Kong. My bill came to $18 with tax and tip.

Original review below

Indoor dining tonight 3/12/2021. Cafe Orchid 蘭苑 is a Hong Kong style tea cafe 港式茶餐廳. They do a very good job of offering the same style of food found in Hong Kong lunch cafes. We are talking about baked rice/spaghetti, little sandwiches, milk teas, rice dishes and soup based instant noodles/macaroni bowls. We had the cold HK style milk tea $3.60, HK Style milk tea and coffee $3.00, afternoon tea chicken wings $10, curry pork chops spaghetti $10 and baked pork chops over rice $10.50. The restaurant was spaced out for Covid and I felt safe eating indoors. The menu was under a plexiglass or can be scanned via QR code. The food came out fairly quickly and I had no complaints about the chef, food quality, wait staff. Great job Cafe Orchid. My bill was about $43 with tax and tip...

We were looking for a place to eat & thoughts to give this place a try as the rating were good. We were disappointed. First, we waited 15 minutes for our table. Sat down for about 8 minutes before we got the menu. We already know what we wanted as we looked through the menu while waiting for our table. Our hot tea & cold drink didn't come until we got our food. We found a hair in the cold drink just before drinking it & informed the waiter to replace it. There was no apology. One of the dish we ordered was the pork chop over the rice or spaghetti. We asked for the spaghetti. However, when it came, it was the rice instead so we flagged down the waitress & told her. Instead of offering to replace it, she said she wrote down rice. She made it sound like we were the one who ordered the wrong thing. She then said if we want to replace it, we will have to wait a while. We will not be returning to this...

I went to eat here with a friend of mine. He told me that this is a good example of traditional Cantonese food. I was not familiar with Cantonese food and he described it as Chinese comfort food. Kind of like food that you would go get at your Chinese grandmother's home. I don't know how accurate this is in the grand scheme of Chinese food, but it seemed accurate to me. It was Saucy and tasty and kind of like beef and gravy that I would get as a kid at my grandmother's house. Definitely different than most Chinese restaurants that I have had in my life. I recommend giving it a try. The place is no frills, but the service was great and the staff was super friendly. Take a bit of time to look at the menu. They have a lot of...