Ho Sum Bistro

Wow, drove by for years and finally ate here. Blown away how good the food is. Also a great value. We ordered the Ho Sum salad with chicken size large. Literally 4 people can share this. Also ordered the Mu Sho with pork. Also unbelievable how good of a value this place is. We will definitely be back!

It's been here forever, it even burned down once! The salad is their signature dish but there are much better items on the menu. Ho Sum is always my Tuesday night choice. The staff are friendly but recently there was some confusion when members of my group paid separately, causing bills to be swapped when we paid in different cards and cash. Someone else ended up paying for a much less expensive meal in cash while I paid for theirs on the card and the waiter pocketed the cash difference. It was obvious, it was theft and it was fixed. After 15 years of attendance I won't be back for that specific reason,no matter how good the mu shu is.

The food tastes extremely fresh. Service was fast. Martinis were great. Cha Sui Bao: 8/10 meat to bun ratio is off Shanghai Spring Rolls: 10/10 BBQ Pork Lo Mein: 8/10 Too much noodle, now enough meat Pho - Phun Noodle Soup: 10/10 Chicken Lettuce Wrap: 7.5/10 Chicken was good, lettuce wasn’t green

The Sesame chicken salad has a better dressing than the Ho Sum (ginger) chicken salad. But the Ho Sum salad has better ingredients. So I recommend getting the combination salad. The hot kitchen operates way slower than the cold kitchen, so I highly recommend starting with a salad first, and feel free to order everything at the same time because the hot items will arrive way after the cold items. Also get a side of sesame dressing because it goes great with everything from the lettuce wraps to the dumplings. The salads are huge - a half size salad could easily feed 3 to 4 people. While the full size salad feeds 6 to 8 people! The soups are nice too. The hot and sour soup is great. The wonton soup has a nice rich broth and comes with the soft boiled chicken dumplings that are also available as Dim Sum. I love the red sauce that comes with the "Poached Wrapped Wontons" (which is really dimsum soft boiled chicken dumplings), and it's only mildly spicy. The quenelles have the same great chicken filling inside but are just different shape. The chicken potstickers are good, while the shrimp potstickers are average. The Ho Sum dumplings are just average and have somewhat of a Greek flavor to them with the minced herbs sauce. The combination fried rice is somewhat flavorless and needs soy sauce. The Lo Mein noodles are also somewhat flavorless, but are improved by asking for a side of Ho Sum BBQ sauce which is actually their home made version of Asian Hoisin sauce. By the way this place is very loud. It's a small place, but the sound bounces off the walls in a major way.

January 2017: 4-stars for what it is - a low key, fun, casual, salad and California-Asian cuisine restaurant very popular with locals for dine-in and take out. The restaurant recently reopened after being closed for over a year following a kitchen fire. Prices are reasonable, customers are nice, and service is friendly. Their salads are large (overflowing) and extremely popular. People also love their dumplings, noodle dishes, and California-Chinese preparations.