Kau Kau BBQ Restaurant — Restaurant in Seattle

Order Meat Takeout; Skip Dining In

This place has the best Chinese meats in town; but expect to wait and struggle looking for parking.

The Char Siu is perfectly cooked and tender; sweet, salty, and absolutely wonderful (great Maillard reaction with the broiled sugar and meat); the duck is extremely salty, fatty, perfectly prepared with crispy skin, and is amazing with rice (use your hands); the crispy ("roast") pork is phenomenal and perfect with their fried rice (you can use this pork to make your own fried rice).

So why order takeout instead of getting the lunch special? Well...

The dishes for lunch ranged from sad to decent. The Egg Drop Soup was mostly water and not very edible. The "vegetable" with the lunch is simply a few steamed pieces of frozen broccoli. Lunch portions on pork were extremely sad, but -- I guess they need to make money somehow. Oddly enough, duck lunch portions seemed fair.

I want to emphasis that the place is extremely clean and the staff is very kind and friendly (rare in Chinatown). I did find a small hair in my rice (which was really decent, ignoring that), but, meh -- I'm sure there are dirtier places with worse problems. I'm sure I could've asked for a new plate, but they were swamped and these things happen.

So while the lunch combo wasn't great, please don't let that stop you from trying the roasted meats.

The meat here is absurdly fresh. The only time I've had Chinese BBQ that fresh was when we just cooked it at home. With a line out the door, all day, you're pretty much guaranteed to taste the best possible product; whereas a lot of places in Chinatown refrigerate their meats for days (where it dries out and picks up bad tastes).

The staff was also extremely knowledgeable about their products and took the time to ask us about slicing options (you typically don't want to slice it all up unless you're eating it within a few hours).

So what are you waiting for? Grab some sliced meat to go and eat it at home with your own rice and noodles. Absolutely incredible quality meats for the more than...

It's been yeeeaaarrrsss since I've sat in Kau Kau to eat. Usually we just place an order to go. Side note: as begin my review my mouth is already watering. Last night my hubby and I decided to sit down and enjoy our dinner fresh. We were very surprised to see only one other family in the restaurant, but it was kind of nice not having to compete with a room full of voices (if you've ever been in a authentic Chinese restaurant you know what I mean. We were obviously immediately greeted and seated with a smile and left to browse the menus. Of course with it just being the two of us we were pleased to see that they offered a combination meat dish. It just didn't have roasted duck so at first we decided to order an additional quarter duck until we saw the duck fried rice. Being that they weren't busy our order arrived quickly. The combo meat dish was AMAZING!!! Being that this is what they're known for and what we usually order to go we weren't really surprised. It came with a side of dipping sauces of which I did not touch as there was no need to. Seriously soooo good!!! Soon after arrived our Roasted Duck Fried Rice as well as our Seafood Mun Noodles. Both were OK. Not bad but nothing I'd crave. They were both very oily. Understandable with the roasted duck fried rice as duck is extremely oily, but both dishes were lacking the flavor that the meat was not. We both decided that next time (if we decide to sit in again) we would just order a double order of the combo meat dish and a steamed veggie like Chinese Brocoli and just have plain rice. Nevertheless it was a good meal, good atmosphere and our tummies were full. Geez... Kinda craving the combo meat...

1/2 roasted duck $16.90. Nicely seasoned, succulent, juicy, slightly greasy After 3pm lunch special, BBQ pork. $10.60. I'd say I got a couple cups of bbq pork fried rice, a few steamed broccoli florets, and 1/2 dozen so pieces of bbq pork. Bbq pork is fantastic, fried rice is great. However I think at $10.60 it's a bit pricey; lunch price is $9.60.

I saw they had togo boxes with bbq pork, a good portion of white rice, and thing of sauce. I wonder if that's what's $8.99 on the menu. I'd maybe go for that.

Chk chow mein $11.90. I'm used to chow mein with the thick yellowy noodles, more like yakisoba; here, they used thin noodles, poached chicken, and strips of celery and onion, mildly seasoned. Fresh, its just ok.

HOWEVER, once you add some soy sauce it's decent, although I prefer the thicker noodles. Also consider the portion size is gigantic (They use a huge chinese takeout box size i've never seen before), but I would not order again. I'd try another noodle dish.

So I'd say bbq dishes get 5 stars, chow mein 3 stars, 4 stars with seasoning, 5 stars given the portion and $10.60 price point.

Edit: Revising score from 5 to four stars. I recently ordered the kung pao chicken from the 'spicy' menu. There was zero spice, no dry peppers. The chicken had that slightly funky taste indicating that it's not fresh. Overall, the dish was mediocre, below Safeway deli in terms of quality.

It also had water chestnut slices, which are an indication of a shoddy operation. Yuck

However, I enjoyed the included mushrooms and bamboo shoots and they packed a medium sized takeout box. Also, just took a few minutes to cook.

Rice...