Five Happiness

Love the food here. Especially the lion head soup. Tried other vegetarian dishes. They’re great. Not oily. I’ve been here before and after the renovation. Food is still up to par.

Great service, SUPER salty food! Went around 2pm on a Wednesday so it wasn’t busy at all, got seated right away and was served a lot of tea. Even if they lightened up on the salt, the food would still taste good. All three dishes we ordered were salty — spicy beef tripe, Taiwanese style pork chop over rice and Taiwanese style squid soup.

ordered hot chili oil dumplings but it’s not hot or spicy at all, somehow it came out sweet. the Shanghai noodles was basically noodles in soy sauce, it’s salty, one dimensional, just like cooking it yourself

Dined in on Friday evening with party of 7. Food is okay. Service was okay. Nothing special. Ordered sweet & sour chicken, stir fried green beans, beef chow-​fun, and lastly chicken& basil. Honestly the food here was pretty plain and forgettable. I’ll probably come back to give another try but as of right now it’s on my no list.

I like the dishes they had so I came to try it. I’ve had much better elsewhere so I probably won’t be coming back. Great service though.
— minced pork over rice — if you want this dish, go to Grand Harbor in Fremont. Best ru rou fan I’ve had so far in the Bay Area.
— beef noodle soup — broth was pretty bland
— sweet soymilk — they used powder so it was pretty bad but to be fair I came at 8pm on a Sunday and this is a brunch dish
— veggie: da dou miao — probably the most decent of the dishes here
— spicy wonton — decent

Coordinating a retirement party for thirty people can be a challenge.
«Bill» and «Joanna» helped with the menu AND decision making the dishes tailored to our guest’s palates. The event was smooth and our guest of honor and friends were very happy thanks to «Bill».
We will return to enjoy more of Five Happiness’ menu.

Haven’t been here for dim sum, so can’t comment on what seems like wonderful Chinese donuts, but the dinner is just so-​so. Honestly, there are a lot of Chinese people eating here, but the tastes are very American. Every dish is heavily doused in soy sauce, oyster sauce, and salt. As much as I enjoy flavorful food, when I tried some of the soup in the Taiwanese beef noodle soup, I could taste the sodium. The noodles themselves were springy, but the beef was chewy, and it had been braised for so long that the tendon just fell apart when you bit into it. Same with the chow fun. The char siu just tasted like a huge salt lick. The szechuan string beans had a nice kick to them and were still crunchy, but again, overly salted and made for American tastes. Service is fine, as this place is never really busy, but I was really hoping for more. Only $ 26 for those three dishes, and portions were decent. It’s Chinese food.

So happy to have found a good Taiwanese place in the city, and so near to where I live! I came here with a fellow Taiwanese friend, and we really enjoyed the food. We got scallion pancakes, beef noodle soup of course, ground pork bowl (lu rou fan), and kong xing cai (don’t think this was on the menu but the waiter suggested it to us!). The pancakes were a little too fried, but it’s the yummy thicker kind with many layers! Beef noodle soup was great, with that authentic Taiwanese spice taste. Lu rou fan was also good, but a little bit oily. Kong xing cai was soooo good, I rarely find it in the markets so it was a treat! They also bring a complimentary sweet cold almond jelly dessert — the perfect end to a delicious, filling dinner! I’m so happy that I have a go-​to Taiwanese place to eat at now, though it’s a little dangerous because I’m gonna want to go all the time now!
tl;dr delicious authentic Taiwanese staples like beef noodle soup and lu rou fan! +1

An awesome Taiwan restaurant with very traditional Taiwanese food. I have not had such good Taiwanese food. It’s going to be my hang-​out place every weekend!!!

Really unhappy. Called to check about their Chinese breakfast menu on the weekday. They said they serve a limited breakfast including soy milk and Chinese donut, 油條, until 2pm. We arrived at 1pm specifically for these two items only to be told that they ran out of Chinese donut because they just cut up all the remaining Chinese donut and cannot serve it. Why would you give out false information? Really upsetting!!!

I walked into this restaurant by coincidence. Originally I was in some kind of Chinese/​Vietnamese restaurant called something Island a block up from Five Happiness. If it wasn’t for their «fruit fly» soup noodle, I wouldn’t have walked in here and I’m so glad I did.
Five Happiness is bring and clean. Very welcoming feeling. I didn’t know what to order to I ordered my favorite which I haven’t had in a long time. The Shanghai Chow Mein. I loved it. It had simple but fresh ingredients. It wasn’t oily and heavy like most places. I ended up finishing the entire plate on my own. I had to tell my waitress how much I loved it and she told me the Shanghai chow mein is one of the chef’s favorite.
While I was enjoying my simple chow mein, I noticed the owner was chatting with a couple who seem to be their frequent customer. The couple was trying to describe to the owner the type of lo mein they like and immediately the owner came out with a plate of lo mein and asked them to try it. This is why this place deserves and good 4 stars. The friendliness i saw and the dedication to their customers.
Next time when I go back and try more dishes, I’ll most likely change the rating to 5 stars.

Not amazing, but not bad.
We ordered the vegetable chow mein, hot garlic eggplant, and veggie dumplings (it was a vegetarian day for us!)
The hot garlic eggplant was actually surprisingly REALLY good. It’s fried, so the eggplant is crispy on the outside but nice and juicy in the middle. Flavored really well.
The veggie dumplings were meh. Kind of flavorless on the inside. The dumpling wrapping is clearly made from scratch and wasn’t too bad.
Vegetable chow mein was about standard.

We came here for Mother’s day dinner on Saturday. And as much as I hate to admit it, my mother in law was right. When you order from the Chinese menu, the food is definitely better. We started off with the cold platter that had some jellyfish, sliced beef and drunken chicken. Next we had some kind of soup that had shitake mushrooms in it, two kinds of shrimp, two crabs, sweet and sour fish, yang chow fried rice, mushrooms with snow pea shoots, peking duck and sticky rice dessert. Everything was okay and much better than the last time we came here and ordered off the American menu. My mother in law was happy and that’s all that really mattered.

The hubby and I were so pleasantly surprised by our experience here that we had to chime in via review. We were craving Chinese food and went on a whim based on the great looking photo of the green onion pancakes. Expectations were not that high based on (1) reviews were all over the place for this restaurant, (2) we haven’t had great experiences with Chinese food in SF proper, and (3) Mother’s Day likely meant the restaurant would be crazy busy and good service less probable.
We ordered the green onion pancakes, half tea duck, bok choi sautéed with garlic and ginger, string beans and a few other items … Overall, the food was quite flavorful, tasty, and great value (green onion pancake = hearty and crispy! duck = meaty and juicy; bok choi = crunchy and savory; etc.). We were also really surprised by the relatively low cost of the dishes. The service was also good for a traditional Chinese restaurant — meaning no one is going to be swinging by to check on how you’re doing but folks are friendly and will get you what you ask for (water, extra green onion, etc.) relatively quickly.
We were concerned about trying the beef and chicken dishes because some of the Unilocal reviews weren’t positive re those dishes — but we enjoyed the duck (our only protein dish) so much that we will definitely be back to try those other animals :)!

Not bad … I went to try the XBL dumplings, which were not great. The skin was too thick and the soup inside was barely there. However, the szechuan green beens were delightful and the green onion pancake was also good. This place is not for those scared of oil! I’ll be back and try some other things and get more green beans.

Service was a little lacking, but the food was pretty decent. Our teapot went missing after asking for a refill.
We started off our meal with half a tea smoked duck. The smokey flavor was on point and was excellent when paired with the sweeter hoisin sauce as foil. However, it didn’t have much tea leaf flavor.
Then came out main entrees:
1. The garlic chicken was not as expected — since it was minced chicken covered in garlic sauce. But I will say that if you like garlic, it definitely did its job of imparting such flavor.
2. The spicy braised eggplant was very delicious. Adding water chestnuts to change up the texture was also a great idea.
3. The shrimp and sliced green melon dish was also excellent. The melon was sweet and crunchy and went well with the shrimp. This dish was probably the lightest on the flavor palate.
4. The twice cooked pork was alright. It’s very thin sliced pork belly that’s, well, been cooked twice. However, most of it was hidden behind stuff — green peppers, white onions, celery, and green onions to be exact. It’s a pet peeve of mine.
My favorite plus was that the restaurant readily supplied refills on rice which made packing to-​go boxes as little lunchboxes for leftover lunch a breeze.

They are open again! Menu the same as before but the restaurant itself has had a wonderful makeover with new paint and carpet.

This is my favorite place in the city for hot savory soy milk. I come here for Chinese style brunch on the weekends and ALWAYS order the savory (salty) soy milk, which come with a few pieces of Chinese donut inside. If you are ordering soy milk (sweet or savory), you will probably want to order a side of Chinese donut as well. Some of the best items to order here ~ green onion pancakes (it’s light and crispy), beef noodle soup (spicy with clear vermicelli noodles, has a great flavor), and the Shanghai rice cakes (has diced pork and cabbage in it). This restaurant has been around for many decades so the inside is a little older looking. The service is standard for a Chinese Chinese restaurant. This is definitely a great place for Chinese style breakfast (although i’m not sure if they serve the hot soy milk on the weekdays as well).

I cannot believe I did not remember how good this place really was!
Pros: Accept CC
Cons: Not that many, one that stuck out is that many dishes were very salty.
My family and I came to celebrate a bunch of stuff and boy were we satisfied with what we got. We ordered the $ 228 banquet and it was pretty good (we ordered a day in advanced, I think they require that for banquets?, but I’m not sure).
Once seated, and given the okay to start with our meal,
the first dish that came out was the appetizer platter with jellyfish, some rehydrated tofu, pork, and boiled chicken. This appetizer plate was very good. Surprisingly good.
Dry scallop and mushroom soup: Nothing special, did not taste the scallop at all but overwhelming with shitake mushroom flavor.
Peking duck: Before our soup came out, the waitress briefly showed us the duck and then she disappeared with the duck. It wasn’t until maybe 10 minutes after our soup came out that the peking duck hoisin sauce and leeks came out. The duck came another 10 minutes after that. The duck came with crêpe pancake wraps, which I thought were very delicious (though a little thick, not that bad).
Mandarin crab: Though the crab was cooked perfectly, and the shell was easy to get through, the sauce that covered the crab was very salty, tasty, but very very salty.
Prawns two ways: nothing special here. Appearance shows prawns with two different sauces, but they tasted the same.
Pork shoulder with bok choi: Very tender pork, super tender and fat basically melted in my mouth. The bok choi was very delicious also. A nice accompaniment to the fatty pork shoulder.
Xiao long bao: I was a little disappointed. I love a good xiao long bao, and this dish did not come close to satisfying my dumpling craving. A tasty dumpling but not much soup and the sauce that came with the dumplings were very sour. I am not sure how the sauce complements the xiao long bao.
Sweet sour fish: Nothing special, basically a steamed fish with sweet and sour sauce. Veggies in the sweet sauce don’t do anything but give the façade of veggies in this dish.
Abalone with pea shoots: Very tender abalone with nicely done pea shoots. Though a little bitter, the pea shoots were a nice addition of some greens and the abalones tasted great. A great chew in the meal
Fried rice: Really good fried rice with nice and bright red pieces of BBQ pork. I enjoyed the fried rice very much.
Eight treasure sticky rice dessert: Sticky rice with different things stuffed into it. Strange sweet sauce made a pink lake around the mound of rice with raisins, dates, red bean and maraschino cherries. A different dessert to the stereotypical oranges or fortune cookies and not too bad. A nice sweet thing to end the meal.
The staff did not disappoint. Very friendly and genuinely seemed cheerful throughout our meal. This kind of service, I will gladly give them the tip they deserve. The only thing I did not like was that when the manager? guy saw that we still had some duck leftover, he offered more pancakes and little did we know that there would be a surprise $ 0.50 charge per extra pancake. A little warning would have been appreciated.
Overall a great place to have a family dinner. Large portions and satisfying food are what it takes to get 5 stars from me.

Had brunch here with my sister a couple weekends ago, and had a less than impressive experience, partly due to the rude nature of the owner (?) who interacted with us. Even though we’re ABC’s, we grew up eating Chinese food ALL the time, so we know our food. Only thing holding us back was the Chinese-​only menu (sorry, all those years of Chinese school did very little for me) so we resorted to using Google translate on our phones. Owner saw us struggling, laughed, and asked if we needed help. Later, when he saw that we’d barely touched our tofu dish, told us «we eat it this way…», and asked if we’d ever eaten it before. Um, yes, we have — our dad makes it regularly, and we just like his better! It was just really awkward and condescending.
Anyway, on to what we ordered:
Scallion pancake — needed way more salt
Tofu with thousand year egg — everything was in too big pieces
Red oil wonton — the only thing I really liked
Chinese donut
Xiao long bao — mushy filling and skin that was both thick and easily broken at the same time; and the sauce they provided was weeiirrddd
Salty soy milk — needed more STUFF inside
Fan tuan — the Chinese donut inside was way too crispy and seemed day-​old