First rule about going to Joy Luck Place for lunch: Get there early. We arrived around noon today and it was fairly packed. The restaurant is located in the Cupertino Village strip mall -- behind the Ranch 99 there. There's a massive dining room, with private space available for large groups as well.So I'm going to apologize because I don't know the official name of most of the food I ate today. I was lucky enough to have two Chinese-speakers with me, so they could easily communicate with the servers. I can recognize my favorite dim sum items, but with this pair in tow, I was able to get a few dishes I don't normally order and I trusted that they would choose wisely for the table. (Note: I've heard that the service here can be bad, and that may be the case if there's a language-barrier.)
From what I can remember, this is what we ordered: shrimp rolls, shrimp dumplings (har gow), crispy shrimp dumplings (in a fried wonton wrapper, served with sweet mayo), pork and chicken with rice wrapped in banana leaves (mai gai), steamed pork buns (char siu bao), baked pork buns, pork in a sweet crust/shell, pork dumplings (siu mai)... Hmmmm, I don't know why we seemed stuck on shrimp and pork today... Oh, and we did grab a plate of the turnip cake -- as our veggies for the meal. (Nevermind that it was pan-fried and thus, probably the unhealthiest of everything we consumed.)
Except for the pork item with the sweet exterior (I didn't like the flavors) and the turnip cake (too mushy), all of the choices on our table were quite good. I thought the shrimp rolls and the mai gai were the best of the lot. I'm looking forward to going back soon and sampling even more of the dozens of dim sum items on Joy Luck's menu.
Joy Luck Place
10911 N. Wolfe Road
Cupertino, CA
(408) 255-6988
