Rocking Wok Taiwanese Cuisine — Restaurant in Seattle

Not As Good As It Used To Be

This place has become extremely expensive and mediocre (which is a shame -- Taiwanese food is a treasure). It kind of breaks my heart a bit to say that; this used to be one of my go-to restaurants.

The Xiaolongbao were extremely thick and barely had any aspic "soup" in them. The dipping sauce came pre-mixed and was mostly just vinegar with a few shreds of ginger. The Hand-Shaved Noodles with Pork was so disappointing. The noodles themselves were more like the Southern version of "dumplings"; just huge, chewy, globs of dough. And I'm not against big chunks of dough -- it just didn't work in this (particularly underseasoned) dish. As for the meat -- weirdly chopped, difficult to eat, and poorly seasoned.

The Braised Pork Belly was upsetting; a few pieces of thinly sliced belly atop of a mountain of cooked-to-mush brown vegetable scraps (which, when a little bit gets mixed with your rice, is pleasant); which made up more than 70% of the dish. It used to be balanced a bit better than this.

Their Taiwanese Milk Tea (sometimes also called "HK-style Milk Tea") was extremely delicious, packed full of strong black tea flavor and just the right amount of milky sweetness. The Thai Tea was a sad powder with either water or skim milk.

None of our dishes were finished and we left hungry; which is extremely rare for Chinese or Taiwanese food -- probably my favorite cuisine in the entire world.

The bill was around $40 (which was about $8-10 too high, given the portions and the quality) for two dishes, an appetizer, and two teas. Rice isn't included, so -- factor "Rice Tax" into your $10-12 dish.

Given the high prices and the dip in quality, there's really no reason not to just eat at a better restaurant in Chinatown. If you're looking for better Taiwanese food, I would seriously make the trip to Gourmet Noodle Bowl, instead. If you're trapped up North, make the trip to HK Dim Sum (which is cheaper, cleaner, and has much better dumplings).

Perhaps there are other items still worth getting; I'm just not excited to go back to test that theory...

An out-of-the-way little spot cooking up yummy authentic Taiwanese cuisine! The service was blazingly fast - our dishes were brought out in such quick succession, I barely had time to take photos and sample each dish before the next arrived. Great place for lunch and can easily accommodate groups!

We ordered, in order of deliciousness:

Home-made Hand Shaved Noodles with Chicken. These noodles were so hearty and chewy! I loved chomping down on them. The chicken was tender, and the cabbage sweet. A well rounded dish that could happily be a quick cheap lunch in itself. Highly recommended!

Sauteed Chinese Spinach. I almost want to list this first, but that may be due to extreme personal bias towards Chinese spinach. It's got such an amazingly satisfying texture! If you haven't had them, the stalks are hollow on the inside, crisp and almost crunchy. The leaves are tender and great at absorbing the garlicy sauce. Such a simple yet delicious dish - it's all in the timing. Cook it for too long and it gets mushy and loses its wonderful signature texture, cook it not long enough and it doesn't pick up the flavor from the sauce.

Basil chicken. Deeply flavorful dish, best accompanied by rice. I loved the fried basil leaves!

The Oyster Omelette and the Thousand Layered Pancakes were both solidly tasty, but I'm afraid not as outstanding as I had hoped. These are two of the most classic and beloved Taiwanese dishes and I was really looking forward to them. Maybe it's my fault for having too high expectations, but they fell a little flat. The oyster omelette had the right texture, but lacked in flavor. The thousand layered pancakes were not flaky enough.

My least favorite was the Xiao Long Bao, aka juicy/soup pork buns. The skin was too thick and the filling was not juicy enough.

Still a really good meal and I would be happy to go back for a taste of some of their...

Food/Taste/Flavor: 2/5 - I wanted to love this place since it's hard to find Taiwanese vermicelli with oysters but the food was quite disappointing. Taiwanese Chow Mein was really thick noodles that were short so it felt like end of the batch and they just gathered all the leftover noodle pieces and threw it in a box. We had a few pieces of something crunchy like eggshells and the noodles were so oily that we couldn't eat the last quarter of the box

Taiwanese Vermicelli with Oysters was served very hot! The oysters were sad since I was eating more potato flour or corn starch than oysters that I couldn't even taste it anymore. The noodles were good but the soup very one dimensional

Mongolian Beef was decent with tender beef but too sweet in combination with the other dishes

Ambience: N/A - ordered food to go

Service: 3/5 - called to place an order, server was quick and responsive on the phone. When I arrived to pick up the food, there was a couple that seemed to be friends with the server. The server was cleaning up the restaurant and didn't acknowledge me until her friend said something to her in Chinese. Had slight communication issues requesting utensils but we did get them eventually

Value for price: 1/5 - not worth the price for the poor quality of food. Maybe it would have been better not so close to closing time but I wished they would have said the kitchen was closed rather than serve poor...