Cafe Yulong

(⁹⁄₁₂ addendum: Niji Sushi Japanese Cuisine now operates at this address.)
RIP Café Yulong (2002 – 2012), as the owners retire. 2^nd generation continues to operate the «Eat on Monday» food truck,
and listed on Unilocal too. It’s named Eat on Monday because for a long time, before the truck existed, its crew opened up the Café Yulong restaurant every Monday on its closed day to serve inventive hip modern international casual lunches there, unrelated to Yulong’s menu.
Yulong’s last day was Sunday, many local residents booked tables for dinner (or so we were told on stopping in for lunch). Some local fans I know ate at Yulong four times in the last week. Owner Miya Pei had warned people that the menu might shrink as inventory got used up. Yet yesterday she said there’d been such a run lately on the famous delicate fish-​leek dumplings (so subtly seasoned with a hint of ginger and micro-​fine minced scallions) that she was busy prepping more of them for the upcoming Last Supper.
No more fish-​leek dumplings now, alas. Or spicy seafood noodle soup or those many stir-​fries where Chef Pei showed his unusual touch with lots of fresh vegetables and little of the gratuitous fat or goop found in many Bay Aree Chinese restaurants.
Restaurantless Yulong fans now roam the streets at random, disconsolate, hoping to find some new regular restaurant home, but knowing in their hearts it won’t be the same.

Not even half a block off of Castro St., this is a gem of a place when everywhere else you want to eat has lines out the door. I stepped off the light rail and started the Walk of Business Lunch Hunger. Kind of like a Walk of Shame, but instead of just getting out of there as quickly as possible, you wrack your brain trying to decide what you want to eat that will be quick, tasty, inexpensive, and not crowded.
At lunchtime, Café Yulong has about 10 lunch specials that look like 40 specials because of the varying meat options. Everything is $ 8, and that comes w/​soup to boot. It is good, simple lunchtime Chinese fare, and they are open a good bit pas the lunch hour in case you want to really avoid the crowds.

Did I go to the wrong Café Yulong? I came here because of some of the reviews but left quite disappointed. Tried the Mongolian beef — there were a lot of beef but they were a little chewy because they were cut quite thick. The Dan Dan noodles were mediocre as the noodles were too soggy. While the menu had authentic sounding dishes, they definitely lean towards the more Americanized version of Chinese cooking.
The service was friendly though — I wanted to like the place just because of how tentative they were towards our table. However, because there are so many other Chinese restaurant around, I’m not sure if I’d return.
KPI (Key Performance Indicators) ratings (1 – 5, 5 — best):
Quality: 2
Delivery/​Service: 3
Cost: 3

One of the most highly regarded Chinese restaurants in Mountain View, and one still following the tradition of closing on Mondays. Daintier, lighter cuisine than most of the others. I particularly like the fish in black bean sauce.

I should have heeded the warning sign when I saw no Chinese diners eating here during dinner time.
Kung Pao chicken (1.5 stars) — missing the kung and the pao. Barely any sauce of flavor, missing any kind of authentic chinese «pow». Seemed like the cook just threw some chunks of chicken and some veggies together with some corn starch.
Stir-​fry eggplant (3.5 stars) — tasty
Chow mein (2.5 stars) — sad to say, even Panda Express has better noodle than this place.
Bottom line: Nice place, but very disappointing if you are accustomed to the many more authentic Chinese food places in the Bay Area. 2.5 stars.

On my last night in Mountain View before moving, my boyfriend and I were craving Chinese food so of course we turned to Unilocal to help us find the best one on Castro St. Unfortunately, everything seemed to be 3.5 stars. So we had a crazy idea, let’s visit 4 Chinese restaurants and order 1 item at each and then compare! (Side note: I do not recommend this…)
Café Yulong was our first stop. The inside is nice, prettier than some of the other places we visited and we were seated right away. They brought us some tea and service was attentive throughout our meal.
We shared the chicken curry claypot. I didn’t think it was very good and it was so spicy! Like, unedibly spicy! My boyfriend thought it was just a little bit too spicy, so maybe I’m just a wuss.
I did see some food coming to the table next to us that looked much better, so I think maybe we just ordered the wrong thing.

Im sorry to say but this place, despite pretty friendly service was a disaster waiting to happen. My friends and I originally wanted to go to a nearby sushi place after an 8−10hr work day but upon arriving it was crowded! So we decided, why not try the chinese restaurant down the block?
Bad move. walking there we saw there was absolutely no customers inside. I already knew it was gona be bad. The wait was nice, greeting us and seating us quickly (of course we were the only ones there!). We ordered our food and when we tried it. everything was just bland! No taste whatsoever! My wonton soup was worse than those that come in instant packaging (if there is such a thing). My friends calamari was also tasteless, until u put the sauce on it, and lets not start with the kimchee):
Funny thing was after finishing our food quickstyle, the waiter came up to me and asked if I wanted a 2^nd bowl in a joking way… i forced a grin saying «ohhh nooo its ok ha. ha» –_​_​– pretty bad. Next time we want chinese food, I rather just go home to mom’s cooking, unfortunately. Friendly service but does not make up for the terribad food here. Sorry! Next!

This was the first stop in a «let’s visit four Chinese places in Mountain View» night. One dish from each was ordered, but to make it less boring, we ordered different dishes from each restaurant.
In terms of ambience, Café Yulong is nicely appointed and a pleasant dining room. There were a few families here, but the room was nicely subdued and quiet.
Hot tea and kimchi was provided when we sat down. The kimchi could have been spicier, but it was still a nice treat.
We split the clay pot curry chicken. My date felt it was a little spicy, but for my palate, it was a nice kick of spice. The dish was a little over-​curried for my taste, but still tasty. Lastly, they gave us fortune cookies with the bill, which is always a welcome touch.
Overall verdict: good, quiet place to get inexpensive Chinese food. Service was alright and I’ll have to venture back here at some point in the future to try out some other dishes.

Café Yulong catered our event for 125 people and everything was tasty, ontime, plenty of food, just perfect! Thank you Mia!

I like their dumplings and ambiance. Their mushu is quite good too, as is their spicy chicken thing (fried, but moist on the inside). Good if you go in expecting more American-​style Chinese food.
My only complaint was that some customers were throwing a hissy fit because someone ordered the wrong thing. The staff replaced the item with the item they had wanted, but the customers insisted on getting the whole thing for free. it was very rude, imo. The server and staff handled it with grace, never raising their voices.

Talk about fast fast fast for lunch! Pretty impressive in DT MV I must say. I’m glad I was able to go for lunch and enjoy Chinese food instead of the usual Thai or Mexican.
My coworkers and I rolled up with 8 people, got seated right away, took a brief glance on the laminated with tons of choices that ranged in prices 7.95−9.95. Awesome.
Menu is sectioned off based on meats– Pork, Beef, Chicken, Vegetarian, Seafood, then noodles.
I got the Spicy Garlic Eggplant lunch special which was delicious. HUGE portions here and they did verify that no MSG was cooked in it. Good to know. Yay for dinner leftovers.
I’d be interested to try some noodle dishes. Its nice to have Chinese food when its not dripping with grease oh wait. Did I just think of Panda express? eww. BUT I still eat that too. lol

I came here for a quick lunch with a coworker on a weekday. We ordered the mongolian chicken and dan dan noodles to share. While the mongolian chicken was well-​flavored, the dan dan noodles were NOT what I expected (I guess this is what you get when you try to order this dish from a non-​Szechuan place… sigh). For the price, I’d rather eat at Hunan Chili nearby.
–L.

There are no less than 13 Chinese restaurants in downtown Mountain View. Its true, because I have eaten at all of them at one time or another. Some I think have to be fronts for something, because I can’t understand why they’re still in business. Others have good points, but missing things like quality produce and meats, or have poor service.
Café Yulong is the best of them all, and does it in every way. Comfortable, good service. The food is excellent, with high-​quality produce and meat. There are less expensive places on the street, but the quality is lower. There are bigger restaurants on the street but I like the space and feel of Café Yulong. They have a large menu and are good for lunch, dinner and takeout. Some of my favorite dishes are the garlic chicken with mushrooms and the chicken with cashews. If you prefer the sauce to be a bit lighter, they are happy to oblige.
So, why only 4 stars? Not for anything bad, I promise. Unfortunately, all Chinese-​style restaurants get compared in my mind to Amherst Chinese in Massachusetts, the restaurant of my childhood. And yes, I HAVE been back as an adult and its STILL just as good. But they have the advantage of owning their own farm. But I would compare Café Yulong as being very close.

Ordered yulong chicken to go. Felt like it had MSG in it. Flavor was good, combination of sour, salty. Not sweet like Americanized Chinese food.
Food was better ~10 years ago. Ingredients seem like they are lower quality these days.

I went to Yulong when they first opened years ago, and had not been back since until recently. Took a bunch of the co-​workers for a large familty style meal. Place looks exactly like I remember it but I cant remember what I had when I was first there. Today we got:
— Tea smoked duck
— Scallops in garlic sauce
— Shredded pork with Peking sauce
— Ghang don Lamb
— Vinegar chicken
Everything was solid and the service was also very good. I guess we were there pretty late and there were only a few other tables but at least 4 different people helped with our food and clearing including one of the owners. Guess we’ll have to put this on a more regular rotation as there are a number of dishes I’d like to try

I’ll give the food a four, but the service gets –1 star. We asked for a table for four while the rest of our party was arriving and we ended up being ignored until they came in. (Maybe we want something more than water while we wait?)
When our party suddenly exploded from four to six, they were kind enough to move us to a larger table; however, we got ignored again for another 20 minutes. It took too long to get one beer and even longer to get our food once we ordered it.
There is my one-​star rant on the horrible service.
On to the food, which a reasonably-​minded person would simply take-​out, unless they had two hours to just blow on ordering and waiting.
*Crab Rangoon — ³⁄₅ stars
*Steamed Potstickers — ²⁄₅ (We’re still unsure, even after the convoluted answer, what the difference is between prok dumplings and steamed potstickers was.)
*Spicy Garlic Eggplant — ⁴⁄₅ stars. I highly recommend this dish to any vegetarian or veggie-​lover
*Mongolian Beef — ³⁄₅ stars.
*Chow Fun — ³⁄₅ stars.

Unexpectedly good.
We asked for the food without MSG, and everything still tasted amazing.
Yulong beef — great, flavorful.
Zhajiang mien — yuuum. I was craving this and was safisfied. It’s more Korean style, which I like (lots of sauce) although the sauce was a bit drier than I usually like.
Beef and spinach soup — the broth is amazing. Didn’t have as much spinach as I’d like though. Beef was tender.
Sprouts dish — yummy.
They also have brown rice, I think it was $ 1 per bowl.
I’m not a noodle person but I still enjoyed these dishes.
~12 $ per person! what a deal, and we didn’t even finish everything.
I

Darn it! Ever since Secret Garden’s noodle chef got deported back to China, I’ve been craving perfectly chewy hand made noodles. Still… I was disappointed. The noodles here in the soup were soggy; not perfectly al dente. The soup flavor was good. The noodles, eh. I had the pickled vegetable and pork one. My lovely friend and occasional Unilocal party crasher had the jajangmein. It was solid, well flavored, same soggy noodles. S had the dry noodles that had some sort of spicy sauce on top. Omigod. THOSE were GOOD noodles… Now I know what to order next time…
#907

Quick service, decent food, okay prices.
The décor and restaurant is clean, relatively modern — there is a room in the back for larger groups.
We ordered sizzling rice, mongolian beef, chicken curry, XLB dumplings and the house noodles. Each dish was tasty and fresh, with the exception of the house made noodles which were in a dark brown sauce that just tasted too much like vinegar.
Though this isn’t a spot to frequent too often, it’s not bad for a meal with your relatives or old friends since it’s right off of Castro and parking is pretty easy to find even on a weekend.

When this place first opened I was reluctant to go inside because of it’s trendy décor. We loved the place that was here before, a family owned Taiwanese hole-​in-​the-​wall where the mama was super friendly and treated you like family.
Then, we came to try it and I knew it wouldn’t remain a place we would frequent that often. On paper (menu) the restaurant looks really viable. They have xiao long baos (really gross — sorry) and dumplings? Well the wrappers were what hubby would call bullet proof. OK, they’re not THAT bullet proof. We’ve had worse, but still, for a Chinese place the food tasted very westernized. Everything was really bleh and I could tell that they did this because it sells. If you’re getting customers coming in wanting Mongolian beef and what not then that’s what they’ll be making.
Nice décor, subpar food. You want authentic? You’ll get a far more authentic meal at Queen Café, just not the décor. You want noodle soup? Skip the one here… go to Queen.