Peony Kitchen - Bellevue

I love this place! Great food, cozy place and great service! The dishes are ready very quickly. We ordered some popular dishes that are really good. Duck is crispy and the chicken is very tasty from the inside and outside. The parking lot is simple, the entrance of it right next to the restaurant.

TL;DR: super for groups and food family style think: big, shady tapas. Don't get the Tiramisu. Parking: garage or street parking. Nearby are free parking for up to 3 hours, including Peony Kitchen. Menu: flimsy printer paper. Descriptive, no pictures. If you have a large order, you can mark the menu with a pen and hand it over to the server. Atmosphere: feels like a Din Tai Fung. It's a bit illuminated as you go on. You will open the glass walls during the summer, so be the fly if you wish to feed. We had a couple who swung around our food when we ate family style, so it was hard to throw away the flies with our hands in the middle of the big table. Service: ordering and payment at the table, water provided even with pitches. Larger groups can sit in some more private rooms. 18% tip for large groups. Orange Chicken: was surprisingly good! The sweet and sour taste was nicely mixed and the chicken had a wonderful crunch with every bite. The meat was also tender and not dried or boiled. Crispy Duck: I like this one! The skin was indeed crispy like a chip and putting the ingredients in the packaging is a cool thing to do with groups. The taste is also good. I recommend these if you have a group of people to dinate with. Or you can get it for yourself that I'm not urinating. *wink* cold tossed noodles: Served as a nice palate cleaner or supplement, but I would not go and eat a whole bowl to myself. It's a bit much and your taste buds get tired of it really fast. The cucumber flakes are a nice touch and are so refreshingly crisp. Mixed vegetables: everything is so beautifully burned and very freshly costed. Easily flavored and is an excellent palate cleaner between the strongly seasoned meat dishes. I really like the al dente snowbsen and the lotus roots. Five Flavored Beef: good taste, but a bit overwhelming on it. Pack a huge taste stamp. Use rice or vegetables as palate cleaner. Crispy Pork Belly: Wow that's good! Not excessively salty at all and has the most satisfying crunch. Really good appetizer or supplement for those between the bites. Tiramisu: Don't understand. I think this is by far one of the worst slices of Tiramisu I had. The sponge dripping, drying, and it was like 90% cream/fresh. The flavors were there, but the texture and cake to cream ration was badly executed.

The plating was gorgeous. Favorite dishes included the 5-spice pan fried buns and the duck lettuce cups. The Xiao long bao had some of the tastiest broth I?ve had in the greater Seattle area, but the dough was thicker than what I?ve had at other restaurants. We had the crispy garlic chicken which was delicious, but surprised us that even though we could see the garlic, we couldn?t taste it. Same with the black bean noodles? delicious but couldn?t taste the black bean at all. Service was impeccable. Will 100% come back to try other dishes.

Overall food is good, it's not pure traditional Chinese cuisine but with creative modern style. For example, the roast duck is really delicious!!! It even comes with roast lemon slices with honey which you would never find in Chinese cuisine but it tastes so fresh and wonderfully neutralize the oil taste of duck fat, it just bring the taste of duck wrap to another level! And make sure you order the fresh crab with Chinese rice cake! Of course this is not a cheap place locating at old Bellevue downtown.

Came here for dinner last night with some friends and it was good. Pretty decently priced as well, 4 entrees 1 app for about $105 and that included tax and the tip they add on which is 18%. Nothing really stood out as really good or really bad so I?m not in a super big hurry to come back but I also wouldn?t not come back. The only thing to mention is if you have allergies be careful! We ordered the 5 flavored pan fried dumpling, one of which was seafood, which it doesn?t say on the menu FYI (my friends very allergic to shellfish) the waitress told us what each flavor was via the color of the dumpling but she got it wrong? so my friend had a bad allergy attack at the restaurant. It got very hard for her to breathe which would?ve been avoidable had the waitress been correct in telling us the flavors.