Lai Hong Lounge — Restaurant in San Francisco

First time here even though I was born and raised in the city. There are just so many places to eat, you have to force yourself to go somewhere you've never been.

This place is clean and much fancier looking inside than your typical Chinese/Dim Sum restaurant. Even the crystals on the chandelier are clean and sparkly.

The food was equally clean, fresh, and tasty. Pork belly was delightful, subtle balanced flavor and had excellent crisp skin. The walnut prawns were expertly prepared. Sauce wasn't too sweet, batter was not doughy, thick, or chewy like some places and the prawns were very fresh, and perfectly cooked. XO noodles were the most tender we've ever had, I would like a little more sauce/zip but that's my preference, not necessarily how they're supposed to be prepared. Fried dumplings which are the ones with mochi on the outside and a pork filling inside were also excellent with a thin crispy outside (not puffy, just nice and delicately crisp). Fish cake stuffed eggplant was good, not at the same level of that other dishes but we'd order it again. I prefer shrimp filling. Deep fried taro dumplings were also good and something we'd order again.

Sorry I don't have photos of everything we ordered, was too busy enjoying the food.

It's clear there's someone with a deft hand with a quality consciousness in the kitchen. When you look around at the customers you know you're in the right place. They wouldn't be here if it weren't good. There are a few good places in and around Chinatown, this is definitely one of them.

Went again on 6/18/23

Salt and Pepper filet. It's panko coated and more flavorful than appearances suggest. We're used to the simple light batter coated ones with chopped jalapeno, lots of garlic, etc. This looks plain but has good flavor that's different and delicious. I wouldn't say it is the same dish but rather a different take on the classic preparation.

Salt and Pepper Tofu. Delicious, delightfully crisp, great light dish, loved it.

Honey Walnut Prawn again, Delicious again. Pork belly buns, as good as last time.

Stuffed eggplant with XO sauce. Good but not really special imo. XO sauce is a little weak, perhaps just get the black bean sauce version.

Oyster in clay pot. Pretty good, needs more flavor, more ginger, and scallions would go a long way but...

The wait is long. If you want to be part of the first round of customers that get in when they initially open, you'll probably have to be there half an hour before the restaurant opens. We got there about 15 minutes after opening and had to wait an hour or so to be seated (initial round of customers had to leave for us to be seated). Don't be alarmed if people who arrived AFTER you are SEATED before you. The wait time is dependent on how many people are in your party. So if you're a party of 2 and there's 10 other parties of 2 in front of you, they will be seated first (obviously). But if a party of 5 arrives after you and there's no other party of 4-6 in front of them and a party of 5 is finished eating, the party of 5 that arrived after you will be seated prior to you. Although they could easily move tables around so that seating is dependent on who arrives first, I think the restaurant designates locations for parties of 2-4 and parties of 5 or more. You can tell when they call out the wait numbers: A's are the smaller parties and B's are the larger parties (if I remember correctly).

Of course, the restaurant never explains this to the waiting customers, so you will get some irate customers from time to time.

As for the food? It was good. The menu has no pictures so if it's your first time at a dimsum restaurant, make use of your wait time and study the menu with the pictures that's outside. Keep in mind though, the menu is not up to date. I would like to eat her again except for 2 things: 1) I don't think the wait time was worth it and 2) the restaurant is extremely loud, louder than normal dimsum restaurants I've been to.

Five stars for the food, but I removed one star for the...

San Fran's Chinatown is about the next best thing you can get to a real Chinatown outside of China. This place may is on par to being authentic tastes and flavors of what dim sum should be. The only problem is I grew up in Seattle and ate a lot of dim sum there as well as Vancouver, B.C. So I became very accustomed to a certain style. It's kind of like eating Pho is the US - it's very different tasting in Vietnam.

This place was packed - I was extremely hungry and hoping it was worth the wait. It wasn't the same style of serving that I'm used to, which is having the hot carts being pushed around with stacks of steamers with the dim sum inside. They will open each one and you can visually see what you're ordering. At LHL, it's just a laminated menu and you mark what you want. The problem for me is that I know what it's called in Chinese but the menu was in Chinese (which I can't read) but it was also translated into english (which I didn't know the translations). So we were guessing what we normally eat to try it.

Everything was pretty fresh but the flavors were a little bland to me and the hot sauce at the table was very vinegary and not very spicy. The chicken feet skin wasn't flavorful and very tough. Congee was bland and my favorite are shrimp balls but there were steamed so much there was a bunch of water inside the ball itself (which led me to believe it was frozen shrimp) and the pork dumplings are my absolute favorite but they too were a bit bland and fell apart too easily.

Nothing there was bad... but it was far from good or hitting my craving...