Tai Kong Style

Been here twice and haven’t been impressed. What I thought was the cream baked rice dish was. coconut flavored?!? I’m cantonese, a amateur cook but I’m sure even I cook better than this. Also service is meh.

A cockroach in the rice!!! Not as good as before! I’ve been their royal customer for almost two years, but the service is getting getting very bad! I picked up my food today, (was told they will finish it in 15min, but after wait 30minutes they still didn’t have the food ready), they put the box side ways, so all the sauce was leaking in the plastic bag and all over my car.

The food was terrible. We won’t be here again. I couldn’t eat mine and the two people I was with agreed it was very bad. The meat was mostly fat and gristle and the dish was very bland with no heat at all. I will say our waiter was friendly, however. The service was really slow but that was because they did not have enough serving staff.

I don’t know why this place is rated so low lol. I love it! It’s very well priced and the food is decent too. I also tried rocking wok in Wallingford and I genuinely think that tai kong style is just as good.

Very small selection. No carts. Service is not friendly. there are about 7 different dim sum items. the place is not particularly clean. The har gow smells like old fish instead of fresh shrimp. I ended up throwing everything out because it was scary. on to the next Unilocal recommendation

Plum green tea, fried rice and roast duck lai noodle soup was actually good. Will definitely come back again. Keep in mind that there’s usually no service in a real Chinese restaurant after you ordered. And this place was forced to close when it first opened (probably under a different management than the current one) due to sanitation. However, it’s been continuously open since the name and interior changed (again, probably under way better management now).

This would be a 2-​star review of not for their black pepper beef chow fun, which salvaged the meal to a large extent. The dish had plenty of pieces of tender beef. The black pepper sauce coated the chow fun nicely. There were a good mix of veggies in there, with peppers, onion, sprouts and green onion, but there was on sweet, crunchy veggie that I couldn’t identify and did not care for.
We also ordered the shu mai and the pork chop over rice. The shu mai were meh, not bad but not as good as the ones you find at actual dim sum places. The pork chop was a big miss. For starters it came out about 15 minutes after the rest of our food. The two pork chops were thin and dry. The sauce was very bland and not enough to coat the pork chops, let alone the huge mound of plain white rice it came with. As an extra slap in the face, on the side there was a cold little pile of the same veggie that I did not care for in the chow fun. It didn’t help that our waitress blamed the delay in our food’s arrival on having to thaw the frozen pork chops…

I love this place. There’s just something so awesome about eating a whole fish for lunch. Plus they leave the eyes and head on which are the best parts! Black bean sauce is delicious and they have some more traditional ingredients to try (bitter melon) and less common things that I love and have a hard time finding (pork intestines). Their sticky rice is delicious and they have a huge tea menu. The only thing is, their sauce caddys are filthy. I mean, sticky and dusty and awful. That doesn’t really put me off personally, but I am probably in the minority in that regard.
Note: if you are looking for custard buns order the steamed butter bao, NOT the other ones. The filling in the sweet butter bao is thick and custardy. The others are filled with hot sweet soup, basically.

Seattle’s U District is lousy with eateries of every stripe catering to the hordes of students looking for a quick bite on the way to/​between/​from classes. How does Tai Kong Style stack up?
THE ROSES: The dingy exterior of TKS belies a clean and pleasant dining space within. Service is quick and courteous, and the large crowd of (almost exclusively) Asian patrons made me hopeful that the food here would be above-​average (Bob’s Dining Rule #407: When the majority of the patrons matches the ethnicity of the food, that’s usually a good sign). Sadly…
THE THORNS: While by no means inedible, let’s just say the food at TKS is solidly unspectacular. Congee had an odd burnt taste to it, and the Kung Pao Chicken was a particular disappointment, with a thin sauce that was conspicuously lacking of any depth or complexity of flavor. Also, some items ran out wayyyy too early (seriously? you’re telling me that delicious-​looking platter of Chinese broccoli that you just served was the last one — — at 11:30am???), and no bubble tea available, even though the machine looked primed and ready to go. The apparent lack of a lunch menu is a minus as well.
THE VERDICT: There are many good Chinese restaurants in Seattle, but unfortunately Tai Kong Style isn’t one of them. Good for a quick, albeit uninspired bite, but not much else.
OK if you’re desperate for Chinese and have no other ready option, but go in with low expectations.
TOP TIP (for the cooks): Roast the chili peppers in your Kung Pao Chicken more thoroughly before you add the other ingredients. This will give your dish the smoky flavor that one expects from a good KPC.

Update: After eating here over a dozen times. I have to say I like the Siu Mai, but on some days it taste funky.
AND. After going to Vancouver B.C. and back, I realized I thought Siu Mai here was good because this is the only option in the U district. But in all honesty, if this restaurant was located anywhere else, where convenience next to UW wasn’t a factor, it would be a below average restaurant.

Be warned: DISHONEST PEOPLE! They might cheat you of your money!!!
I would give it 4 stars if not for them trying to charge me a mandatory 15% service charge for just 2 people. I have been to the restaurant AT LEAST TEN times and this was the first time they did this.
When I asked the waiter why there was a 15% mandatory service charge he could barely give me an answer. All he could say was that «oh it depends on the machine, sometimes they charge when its over $ 35 and sometimes they dont». Firstly my bill was not even close to $ 35 and what kind of indecisive answer is that? Definitely not patronising them anymore!!!
Aren’t you suppose to earn a tip? If you have to start charging a table of 2 a mandatory service charge it obviously shows how the restaurant is LACKING in their service department!

The Chinese food selection in the U-​district is not great, but Tai Kong offers a few options that aren’t found anywhere else in the area. Dim sum all day? I’ll take it (even if the dim sum menu is not very big). A whole half page dedicated to congee varieties? Yes. The menu is pretty comprehensive and you’ll definitely find something you like.
The service here is sometimes hit or miss, but overall, if you’re coming for some staple Chinese food, then you’ve got it.

Good flavour, good portion overall good food. The foods good but not amazing so I would actually put this place at a 3.5 stars. Pretty decent pricing and got I got what I was craving: sticky rice. The sticky rice was pretty delicious and you get two big chunks of rice for around 3.50 or 3.25. Also their Shu may was nice and fresh with good light flat flavoring. I would recommend this place if you want some warm and yummy Cantonese food. :)

We liked the food but felt the service and ambiance to be lacking.
When I ordered the chicken, I specifically asked if they had the ginger sauce that comes with it and the waitress confirmed that they did. Despite having an entire conversation about the chicken and the ginger sauce, an order of duck (which normally comes with a sweet plum sauce) came out instead (without any sauce).
I would get to-​go from here (and check the food before leaving the restaurant) but likely will not eat in again.

Great chinese broccoli but the dim sum here is subpar… the steamed dumplings were really small and not enough meat inside.
The duck in the noodle soup was mostly bone-​based.
i did like the congee but it was a rare occasion for me to get it.
This is no Mike’s Noodle or Hue Ki Mi Ga but if you’re on the ave and craving chinese, this probably will do if you’re tired of phở and thai food lol

Not many vegetarian options, but the veggies with tofu was pretty good. The menu has 80+ items, but only 3 or 4 were vegetarian.

Seafood congee came with no vegetables at all. Order side of Chinese brocolli. Service was ok. Space is very big.

Tai Kong is my go to place for dim sum in the U District. While their dim sum menu is limited, and made to order, all that I’ve had there are good! I’ve even taken first-​timers here and they like it a lot.
They could definitely expand their dim sum menu, but as it stands I would recommend it!

A pretty decent new Chinese spot on the Ave.
They serve dim sum, which is rare for the Ave. They have items from bubble tea to typical stir fry dishes.
I have been here twice and liked it both of my visits. They are still pretty new so the first time I was there, there were several staff standing near the door to greet customers. The second time I was there, it was better. The wait staff seem to be better trained.
I tried a few dim sum items and really liked them. The prices are actually comparable with those restaurants in Chinatown.
I think I will be back again.

I just had lunch here with a friend, who told me this place just opened a few weeks ago. So I was pretty excited that there’s a dim sum place close to my workplace.
We originally ordered chicken chow fun, shu mai, shanghai dumplings (aka soup dumplings), sticky rice and shrimp balls. If you’re limited on a lunch break, I don’t recommend this place because the service was slow and we got our dishes one at a time. The chow fun was the first to come out, which tasted fine even though I would prefer beef over chicken. This was the best thing I ate here.
By the time the Shanghai dumplings came out, we were long done with the chow fun. I was disappointed with the size of the dumplings and they were pretty bland. After we finished the dumplings, Our server informs us the kitchen ran out of sticky rice and if we wanted to order something else. My friend and I didn’t bother and told him we were going to wait for the rest of the food. When our shu mai finally comes out, I was again disappointed since they looked sloppy. When I picked up one with my chopsticks, the wrapper was mushy and pretty much fell off. This was pretty bland as well.
Again, my friend and I had a long wait for the shrimp balls only to be notified that the kitchen was out. I asked if I can order spring rolls instead only for the server to say they’re out of that. I asked what I can order and a lot of the dim sum options were already sold out. At that point I just asked for the check since I had to rush back to work.
Sure there’s kinks they need to work out but I most likely won’t return for dim sum, only for entrees.
2.5 stars for now.