King Yen Restaurant

Okay, I've been living in the Berkeley area for most of my entire life and King Yen has been around longer than my existence. Pros: Portions are extremely generous and ingredients are fresh! Cons: Busy on certain weekends. more

Honey-glazed walnut prawns are fabulous, and the appetizer ""Steamed Shrimp Dumplings,"" which is always slow to arrive, is well worth the wait. King Yen has been a favorite restaurant for me for many years. The ambiance in the small front room with three large windows is charming and that area is quieter than the other two larger dining rooms. I have been eating there for over 10 years and the food consistently meets my high expectations. Pros: Consistently well-prepared food with no MSG. Cons: Parking can be difficult in the Elmwood District more

This place used to be good...expensive, but worth it. Not any more...I called in a to-go order:fried prawns, garlic chicken, chicken chow mein and combo fried rice. I went and picked it up in the time frame I was told, and it still wasn't ready, but I thought ""thats not a biggie, it is Sat. night, and a CAL game had been earlier that day"" When she rang up my bill, it came to $39.73 (damn, just for that?) anyway, I drove home, and opened the containers, and both the chow mein and garlic chicken containers were barely 3/4 of the way full! They couldn't even fill the containers all the way! The vegetables were soft--like overcooked...not crunchy like they should have been. And on top of that, there was a hair in the garlic chicken! I'm never going there again...very disappointing. The only thing that was good about the meal was the big chunks of chicken in the chow mein...they did use white breast meat and not the rubbery thigh meat. Which I did like, but everything else was a HUGE turnoff. Pros: nice big chunks of white meat chicken Cons: soggy vegetables, high prices, small portions more