Taste of Shandong – Alice Chinese Bistro

Both the dumplings and the noodles are very decent and homemade. The price is fair and the people are nice in the restaurant.

Nice traditional northern China food! Noodles and dumpling. Nice service! Free soybean milk.

Free hot soy milk by the door, score! Unlimited too!
Service was friendly and I’m always a fan of fresh hand pulled noodles. They were delicious and offered a variety of both wide and thin noodles. Every dish had good flavors, with some being more mild than others. Don’t let the red peppers fool you, it may look super spicy, but they were well balanced.
Their dry fried chicken wings were also very tasty, generous portion too! My gma really enjoyed them and that says a lot considering she’s a huge fan of her usual San Tung wings. I’m a happy camper when I see her enjoying her meal.
If you plan on ordering the Xinjiang Chicken w/​wide noodles (E1), order that dish first since it takes about 30 minutes to make. However, it was worth the wait given the size of the dish (it was huge!) and can easily feed a family.
Parking was a bit rough given it was a Sunday but the entire family left with happy tummies! :)

I would rate this Awesome restaurant 5 stars! I come with my friends today. And we ordered Xinjiang chicken with wide Noodle Which was very delicious and we love that. We also ordered corn with chicken dumpling and pork noodle soup. Every dishes was great and also the service. Can’t wait to recommend to my other friends. Great!!!

Super friendly and delicious mom & pop shop! My sister and I came by for a quick lunch before her dentist appointment. We ordered the beef shank noodle soup and har gao (shrimp dumplings). We checked in on Unilocal and also got free home made soy milk.
Everything was really good. The noodle soup especially was delicious because the noodles were so fresh and chewy. Meat was tender and broth was tasty.
The waitress was SUPER friendly and very nice. It was also pretty cheap for the amount of food we got. 5 stars,

This for delivery. Food wise this place is pretty solid. I get some traditional cold apps with Americanized dished like general tso. The GTC is really good. Big pieces of chicken with light batter unlike other places.
The only thing that annoys me is that the delivery boys are getting lazy and most don’t speak a lick of English so it’s hard to communicate.

I truly enjoyed this place.
I came here on Friday around 6:30pm, and there were plenty of seating, no wait needed! We immediately found a big table and filled up on cups of free Chinese soy milk. It tasted authentic and amazing. We also received free hot tea quickly without asking.
We proceeded to order sesame balls, beef pancake rolls, and couple’s delight (beef tendons and slices). Then we ordered dandan noodle soup with pieces of grounded beef, and eggplant in a garlic sauce.
The couple’s delight was very refreshing, not too spicy, with cucumbers and crushed peanut mixed in. I thoroughly enjoyed it because it didn’t taste oily like many Sichuan style restaurants around.
The beef rolls were in generous portions. And I liked that it was a cold appetizer. There is cucumber, cilantro and green onions stuffed Inside together with the thinly sliced beef.
The sesame balls were hot and fresh, yummy red bean filling.
The dandan noodle soup is extremely red, but don’t be intimidated, it’s not spicy like it looks. The noodles were fantastic, chewy and thick, like the true northern style.
The eggplant wasn’t too oily nor salty, good even without rice.
At the end of the meal, we took 4 of the 5 plates to go, because the two of us were so stuffed.
I definitely will come back to try their other dishes, like the dumplings, other noodle soups, fried chicken wings, or Shanghai dumplings. I promise the menu is so comprehensive you will find at least one dish you’d love.
Also there are bathrooms, yes!

Soo much cornstarch… (slowly seeps into cornstarch quicksand)
Came here on a Saturday night with friends. Ordered hot and sour soup, garlic eggplant, mapotofu, and lamb and green soup for the carnivores. Every dish save for the last had so much cornstarch in it. FYI authentic Chinese restaurants typically don’t require gratuitous cornstarch use, and it’s necessarily in sparing amounts-​but the mapotofu and eggplant had SO much cornstarch in it, that there were visible cornstarch-​sauce globs. Plus the dishes didn’t taste like they were made by Sichuannese or Northern Chinese people at all. I later found out the cooks were Cantonese, which explains the slight inauthentic quality.
The service here was surprisingly nice however. They gave us a plate of liangpi (cold noodles) on the house, which turned out to be delicious. There was free homemade soymilk which was quite tasty. And I accidentally spilled tea (sorry!) and the waitress graciously cleaned it up while I continuously explained how sorry I was.
Food– 3 stars
Service-​4 stars, which for inexpensive Chinese restaurants makes it a relative 5 stars
Quantity/​price– 4 stars for SF
3.75 stars overall

The workers here are top notch the service is notably perfect — no nonsense and consistently efficient and friendly during all my 3 visits so far. Next door there is a donut spot for dessert. What more can you ask for?

I was born and grew up in Shandong, China. I have been in Bay Area for 3 years and tried some Shandong restaurants. Taste of Shandong’s food has the closest taste to traditional Shandong food than food of any other Shandong restaurants in Bay Area.
I go to this restaurant every time when I want to eat Shandong food and don’t want to cook. Pork Pot Sticker, Pan-​Fried Chive Pancakes, all types of the dumplings with pork, Black Bean Sauce w/​Pork Noodle, Chicken & Seafood in Egg Flower Sauce Noodle, and Fried Sweet Cake give me a sense of home. They are all proved Shandong tastes. Especially, Fried Sweet Cake recalls my childhood.
Though Couple’s Sliced Beef in Chili Sauce is a common dish in Chinese restaurants, I recommend you to give it a try. It is the best that I have ever had in San Francisco.
From other people’s posts, I think that the delivery is usually very busy. Order and pick up by yourself may save your time from waiting the delivery. (I usually order and eat inside.)
I agree with the idea that the customer service could do better.

I like alice chinese bistro. Original dry fried chicken wings is very good！Very delicious！Service is very good. I like the food here. I’d highly recommend the here.

The food is serviceable. Far from great. There is much better Shan Dong cuisine in the City. House of pancakes is outstanding, I should have gone out there.
These folks lose a big star for horrendously bad service. I don’t like not saying nice things but I feel it’s my duty to tell the truth.
Cold noodles that don’t seem fresh. Disappearing wait staff. Too much sugar in garlic eggplant. And ordered dumplings which were never served.
Ok, I’m giving a star back: Chef just came out, most apologetic, with dumplings to go. They apologized. That’s worth a star.

The restaurant is still in training mode. We sat there for 10 minutes without any menu and tea. When we ordered the cucumber and fungus salad, the waitress told us «That’s not Chinese cucumber salad.» We were ‘huh?!’ What do you mean? We were in a Chinese restaurant, right?
Hand pulled noodles with beef: Noodles were very good, but so little beef.
Cucumber and fungus salad: Very salty
Xiu Lu Bao: it tasted like store bought XLB and steamed it up in the store. Not juicy.

Was craving Chinese food, not the oily, Americanized kind, but something more homey and authentic, like this place!
We ordered:
Pork and napa dumplings: Super good and fresh! Tastes just like my mama’s dumplings, back when she loved me enough to make them for me :(
Jiajingmian /​Black bean noodle: I thought this tasted pretty authentic and the flavor from the beef and black bean was soooo good
Beef stew: felt like the beef flavor could have been brought out more, it tasted a bit watered down.
Spicy fish stew: The fish was tender, my soup was delicious and spicy, and the noodles were excellent!
I’d recommend anything with noodles or any of the dumplings since I think they must make the noodles/​dumpling skins fresh here, based on how they tasted.
Had to dock a star for the poor service (food came out slow, waitress never gave us our free soy milk) but I think that’s just something I’ve come to expect everytime I go to a Chinese restaurant lol. I’d love to come back!

I don’t know what’s going on with calling the Chinese food Shandong food. Maybe it’s a fad. Anyway, the 餃子 and the noodles here tastes more like they are from Beijing. The food is clearly home made — as in the noodles are rolled & cut I the back and the 餃子 was stuffed in the back. Nothing store bought or made in a factory here. Nothing is from Costco. Don’t come here. So I can get a table when I come.

Was craving xiao long bao and crack wangz on Saturday, January 2^nd. Decided to try Alice Chinese Bistro since I’ve read good things about those particular dishes. The roommate and I ordered delivery for dinner through Eat24. I placed the order at 8:51pm and it arrived around 9:30pm.
*Pork pot sticker: 8pcs ($ 6.95)
*Steamed shanghai dumplings: 9pcs ($ 7.95)
*Original dry fried chicken wings ($ 10.95)
*Combo spicy seafood, chicken or pork noodle: hand pulled noodle, spicy, pork ($ 7.95)
*Chicken chow fun or hand made noodle: beef, chow fun ($ 7.45)
I liked the XLBs. The wrapper was the perfect thickness and they were nice and soupy. Plus, they all stayed in tact during transit! The chicken wings were my favorite dish. Crispy with a good contrast in flavors: garlicky, spicy, sweet, etc. I didn’t try the pot stickers, but the roommate seemed to like them. The spicy noodle soup was okay. The broth was flavorful, but I wish it had more spice. The chow fun was awful! Super mushy. And the noodles were more or less all broken.
We also ordered Spinach: sauteed garlic ($ 7.95), but they ran out. They kept offering broccoli as a replacement, but I had no desire to eat broccoli, so I asked them to cancel that dish. Apparently they couldn’t do that because I ordered through Eat24, so I was forced to pick a replacement vegetable. I mentioned I like pea shoots, but they didn’t have those either. After listening to her rattle off a bunch of veggies, I just said how about Bok choy? They had that so that’s what I got. It was super overcooked and mushy.
The food overall was probably more like 3 stars, but no one should be forced to pay for something they don’t want to eat. Plus, I have a hard time believing there was no way to cancel that dish. Minus 1 star for that.

It is traditional! They do not cheat on the imgredient!
The dumplings (Leek Pork Shirmp) have an entire shrimp in one dumpling!!!
We also ordered noodles from there. Everything taste great!

What are you thankful for? Frendos & fam? Good health? Your new tinderoni bf /​gf? Car didn’t get broken into? Eff all that — I just need food. *Alice is open Thanksgiving day.*
S’right, suckas. While you were exploding with turkey then food comaing through the Charlie Brown special, I was getting my shandong on. #nobromo
(^_​^) Beef Roll Cake $ 7 (
)
Why the pilgrims landed.
(^_​^) Cold Marinated Pig Ear Salad $ 6 (
)
You had me at pig ears.
(-_​^) Sea Snail Pork Chive Dumplings $ 8 (
)
Sounds cool; kinda bland.
(-_​^) Shredded Tripe & Parsley $ 13 (
)
More texture than taste.
Pretty sure when Benjamin 3000 Franklin proposed the turkey as our national bird, he was unaware of the invention of pig ears. Or beef pancakes. Well tell him to order it via app now & THANK me later. Beezys.

I gave Alice a second chance. Like how dates should be, cause, who knows. Maybe love at second time.
I went again with my family because they love food just as much as me. We ordered different things than last time to really gauge their overall food. However, we couldn’t pass up on ordering their chicken wings again. Yes, it was that good. It’s really crispy on the outside and moist in the inside. I enjoyed the sauce more than San Tung. My dad is a picky eater, but he ate like ¾ths of the plate. Go figure.
We also ordered their potstickers. It wasn’t good. Small pieces, so much more skin than meat. On the other hand, their spicy eggplant was DELICIOUS. It was a pretty big portion and the eggplants looked healthy and not lumpy and mushy. Everyone approved of this dish. The next dish we ordered was their hand-​pulled noodle soup with lamb. I think their noodles have definitely improved the first time I went. It was chewier, but it still wasn’t chewy enough to my liking. I found it weird that the noodles were inconsistent in width. I had some very skinny ones and some thicker ones. I wish they were all thicker and chewier. Besides that, the soup base was really rich.
In addition, we also ordered their special chicken noodle dish ($ 19). BEWARE: The chicken noodle dish could feed 4 people. They don’t use just any regular noodles, it’s more wider. There are LOTS of chicken, maybe more chicken than noodle. This dish takes time to make, so order accordingly.
Oh yesssss and their soymilk machine works again. Check-​in for free soda or soymilk.
Overall, there’s still room for improvement. Enjoyed it more my second visit. I see potential and I’ll come back for a third date after I see more positive results.

So, here’s the thing, I love certain things about Alice Chinese Bistro but there are also some tips and tricks that I’ve learned.
1) The wait time can be enormous (to receive dishes). Like, I can’t possibly fathom how long it could possibly take to make some of these dishes but apparently 40 minutes is a reasonable time to wait for a dish to come out. I think this has something to do with their enormous take out/​delivery clientele but it’s still kinda inexcusable.
2) **Order the dumplings, hand-​made noodles, and the beef roll (niu rou zhun bing). The other typical dishes I haven’t been wowed by but the dumplings are homemade and the handmade noodles are chewy and delicious. Just what I need on a chilly San Francisco night. Also, the beef roll is spot on – chock full of green onions, cucumbers, and that yummy hoisin sauce to pull it all together. The roll could have been a little crispier/​warmer but it was still a delicious treat since it’s a hard dish to find.
3) Don’t expect your order to actually come out correctly. I’ve been here twice and they’ve screwed up the order both times. Once, we never got our beef roll – which was like the only dish I was super looking forward to. The second time, they gave us the wrong dumplings (we ordered the ones with shrimp and there were no shrimpies to be found in our dumplin’s) and they conveniently substituted chicken instead of pork… in the mustard green & pork soup.
4) Don’t order what you can’t see on another person’s table. We ordered the cucumber salad as an appetizer, thinking it would be the traditional vinegar-​sesame seed oil-​spicy cucumber like the one served at EVERY other Chinese restaurant I have ever been to in my life. Wow were we wrong. Out came a plate of sliced cucumbers with Italian dressing drizzled on top. ITALIAN DRESSING. Yes, ITALIAN DRESSING at a traditional Chinese restaurant. I didn’t even know what to do with myself when it came out. P. S. it cost $ 5.95. Like, what is this Italian dressing imported from China?! I couldn’t even bring myself to eat more than two bites because I was so disgusted by it. Oh, but they put sesame seeds on it. Because, if I plop on some sesame seeds, it suddenly becomes Asian, right?
So, will I be back? Probably eventually but I will only order the beef roll, dumplings, or hand-​made noodles. Everything else I have ordered outside of that was lackluster. The chicken wings aren’t bad – but they just seemed too sweet and sticky for my liking. Also, don’t expect much from service, as I mentioned. Nice people but not really «with it».