Peony Seafood - San Jose

I went with a small group for Lunar New Year, and we came in at different times and they were cool with that. I know that can be tough on restaurants, so I appreciated the patience. The food was decent, but I do think some of the cuts of meat were not the greatest and the portions weren't the largest. Some of the shrimp dishes had a skimpy amount shrimp, in my opinion.I'm seeing some complaints about service, but this is a traditional dim sum restaurant; you aren't going to receive the type of table service one would expect in a regular restaurant. Is the service better if you or someone in your party speaks Cantonese? Yes! If you aren't prepared to flag someone down for extras or be ok with being left alone, you need a different type of restaurant. The Bay Area has so many amazing dim sum restaurants so I wouldn't necessarily rate this as my favorite but it's a traditional place right in the heart of downtown Oakland.

I've been coming here for years and there are many pros and cons. Please see below...Pros: The food is really good! Along with Americanized Chinese food Monday Sunday, they also have a great and expanded dim sum menu every Sunday. The seafood is always fresh. When you walk in you're assured by seeing fresh lobster, crabs and fish swimming (not floating dead in their tanks. The restaurant is absolutely massive and can host large groups. (Still call in advance for a group of 6+ . Great venue for a banquet or large celebration. They have 2 banquet rooms that can easily host groups of 50 each.Cons: Unfortunately some of the cons bring the overall rating down. The service is pretty bad, because the restaurant is so large there is often one server for a section of 10+ tables. They're overwhelmed and to get noticed you literally have to flag them or put your hand in the air. Also, I've seen the price steadily go up and they charge you for EVERYTHING, including the doggie bag container(s .

I ended up here the other day when I was craving dumplings, but all of my regular dim sum haunts were closed. It's a large restaurant and there was a bit of a wait, so we assumed that meant it was pretty good. We were seated within 10 minutes and a tablet was brought over to our table to enter our dishes. This is not the cart situation that I'm familiar with, but perhaps its safer for covid times or something?Unfortunately, although we could add the items we wanted to the tablet, there was no way of sending the order to the kitchen and as a result, we ended up having to wait about 20 minutes for a waitress to come by and grab the tablet to send in the orders. Once this happened, the food started to come out pretty quickly. Some of it was pretty good and unique (the shrimp red yeast rice noodle for example), but most of it was just okay, with a couple dishes that were pretty much universally disliked at our table (like the dumplings in spicy sauce).The wait staff didn't check up on you very often and requests for additional condiments or flatware required several follow ups before they finally arrived. Finally, the bill for 4 people ended up at nearly $200, which seemed pretty high compared to some of the restaurants I normally go to.

Growing up I've been to many of the dim sum places in Oakland Chinatown, and they're one of the few that has stayed around even though it has changed owners a couple of times from my understanding.walking in you still has the classic feel of what dim sum used to be like the interior is a bit more old school and not much has really changed physically. but the small details like ordering your food through the iPad have been modernized and what I do appreciate about the spot would be the minor details like having an extra water jug to refill our tea kettle (which saves sooo much time with waiting on refills and etc super convenient)however, the reason why I say that they got the rating is due to the food quality and the service itself. for $7.20 the porridge was barely the size of my hand and we had asked the server for 4 bowls to share amongst our party they gave us attitude (which i feel can be typical at an Asian hole in the wall) but even when we had asked nicely they questioned why we needed the extra bowl/made it feel like it was a really hard ask. for the noodles wrapped donut the donut was super stale and had a weird taste intermixed. i feel like the dish sizes were misleading from the menu. for example, the porridge was listed as large but as mentioned before it was only the size of my hand.i don't really recommend this spot as the ambiance, food, and service weren't the best but at the same time it might be worth visiting as it truly has been a huge part of the history within oakland chinatown!

The food was good but the service was terrible. I had to ask for hot oil at least 7 times and had to flag the waitress down a could times to order food. It was a Friday morning and the place didn't look too busy. Food (4.5/5)Service (2/5)Ambiance (4/5)