The Porridge

Good traditional Taiwanese food. No wonder they survive after so many years in business.

I love Taiwanese porridge. Their porridge is incredible and my go to dish is quail eggs. Service is good though I have not dined in for a while. Though their basic service seems to be the same where you go up to get food and they come and serve to you or give to you. Would recommend if you want some good food.

Incredibly simple, healthy, inexpensive and delicious Taiwan local fare. This place helps me reminisce the old days when I was a salesman who got tired of fancy banquets or hotel food and longed for simple meals. The choices are plentiful and everything is cooked so no need to wait for the chefs. I shall be back amigo.

If you like rice porridge, this place is good. The porridge is good and you can pick the side dishes you like. We like the ones we could've l chose

This is a no frills sort of eating place. Service is quick and minimal. Great deal during lunch where you get to pick 3 dishes for a fixed price. The sweet potato porridge is an unlimited refill. They also serve hot tea upon sitting down. You need to let them know up from as you walk in whether you will be dining in or take out. Parking is not too bad, but can be a challenge depending on the time of day.

My colleague took me here and now I'm hooked. I love the tofu options and cucumber salad 🤤 so fresh, tasty and light!

First time visiting. Full house. Friendly staff and delicious food. Great Taiwanese cuisine. Reasonable price on lunch porridge combo.

Fall in Love with this authentic Taiwanese comfort food oasis! This Taiwanese porridge place is an absolute gem! From the moment you walk in, you're greeted by the friendliest and most passionate staff. Their warmth sets the tone for a fantastic dining experience. The food here is a true taste of Taiwan, and I mean 100% authentic. It's like a culinary journey to the heart of Taiwan with each bite. What's more, the extensive menu offers so many choices that you'll never tire of it. One standout feature is the unlimited refills for the sweet potato porridge. It's a comforting, hearty food that keeps you coming back for more. And let's not forget the reasonable prices, making this a great value. If that's not enough, here's the cherry on top: a generous 20% discount if you visit after 8pm. I can't express how much I love this place; it's a true Taiwanese food haven. Highly recommended!

A place that makes you feel back home. You can choose from a wide variety of cooked plates and get unlimited rice porridge. Everything was pretty good.

SE Asian soul foods, very affordable, fast, best part is variety. Fav dishes: bamboo shoots and salted peanuts with dried tiny anchovies!

Most comforting Chinese food ever. Traditional Chinese stomach warming delicacies, not too salty very healthy, flavorful, decently priced. Cash only though. Crowded popular place.

Chung Liew

This is a no frills sort of eating place. Service is quick and minimal. Great deal during lunch where you get to pick 3 dishes for a fixed price. The sweet potato porridge is an unlimited refill. They also serve hot tea upon sitting down. You need to let them know up from as you walk in whether you will be dining in or take out. Parking is not too bad, but can be a challenge depending on the time of day.

Gina Lin

First time visiting. Full house. Friendly staff and delicious food. Great Taiwanese cuisine. Reasonable price on lunch porridge combo.

Stephanie Lee

Fall in Love with this authentic Taiwanese comfort food oasis! This Taiwanese porridge place is an absolute gem! From the moment you walk in, you're greeted by the friendliest and most passionate staff. Their warmth sets the tone for a fantastic dining experience. The food here is a true taste of Taiwan, and I mean 100% authentic. It's like a culinary journey to the heart of Taiwan with each bite. What's more, the extensive menu offers so many choices that you'll never tire of it. One standout feature is the unlimited refills for the sweet potato porridge. It's a comforting, hearty food that keeps you coming back for more. And let's not forget the reasonable prices, making this a great value. If that's not enough, here's the cherry on top: a generous 20% discount if you visit after 8pm. I can't express how much I love this place; it's a true Taiwanese food haven. Highly recommended!

Lingchao Mao

A place that makes you feel back home. You can choose from a wide variety of cooked plates and get unlimited rice porridge. Everything was pretty good.

Kevin Tr

SE Asian soul foods, very affordable, fast, best part is variety. Fav dishes: bamboo shoots and salted peanuts with dried tiny anchovies!

evelyn chu

Most comforting Chinese food ever. Traditional Chinese stomach warming delicacies, not too salty very healthy, flavorful, decently priced. Cash only though. Crowded popular place.

Marbo Cheng

Great lunch combo - $14 for 3 choices with rice or congee

Very convinient, a lot of parking, located right next to our Zen acupuncture clinic, so we go there a lot for lunch. Its very good!

LH

100% to view Christmas atmospheres train in and out, no need to aboard, just park at the side at Niles Canyon Railway on Sullivanupas, Niles Fremont, check the map, free parking

Tianlei Zhang

Great prices for the dishes and unlimited refill for the porridge. After 8PM there is 20% discount. The plates are small but it's like Tapas so you get more options. Had 4 dishes between 2 people for 45$

Like the porridge much and the dishes they prepared .

+2

Same kind of food as the one in cupertino but with less people waiting in line. Decent price and food.

Great for light and reasonable priced meal. For non-Chinese patrons, like I am, don’t be intimidated. Just come in get a table and head for the line to choose what dishes you like by pointing with your index finger then head back to the table. Congee and your dishes you selected will arrive and you are ready to chow down. But the servers can speak English too if you need help. Each dish roughly $9. So for 3 dishes for 2 people, $18 lunch. I have never eaten here for dinner so I don’t know the pricing for dinner. I imagine it would roughly be the same. Quick and tasty bites and you are off back to work or whatever. 👍

Pretty good authentic Taiwanese dishes here. Not easy to find places that serve pig ears and tripe. The porridge is good and they give you plenty even if you take it to go. The weekday lunch special is great when you are dining by yourself otherwise it could get a little pricey if you want multiple dishes. The dining area was clean but does look like it needs a little updating. The service is fast and friendly.

We have not been here for more than 10 years. Five of us went last Sunday. We arrived before it was open, at 11:00 AM, just in case it gets crowded. The place is still clean. Food was ok but I really liked the porridge. To me it’s like Taiwanese Dim-Sum. Small plates so you order a variety of them. Service was good and very friendly. Price was acceptable. We left around noon and the place was not crowded. I'll come back when I feel like porridge again.

Food-wise, a little salty to my liking. But I love the sweet-potato porridge. Will be back again for meals 😊

Very good standard buffet style Taiwanese dishes with authentic flavors. Portion is quite good. The service, as some have previously noted, leaves something to be desired, but overall it is generally worth the experience if you want to have a pretty good lunch special!

One of the best Taiwan style sweet potato porridge with pick-dishes-yourself style casual dining restaurant for weekdays lunch. There are plenty of different dishes to choose from, most with pretty good taste.

Porridge and a wide variety of cooked dishes that you can choose from. You can request them to heat up the cooked dishes too. They also have other dishes that are cook-to-order. If you want to have a variety of dishes for one or two persons, I suggest that you go for their lunch before 4pm. Else it’s a great place to share different dishes for a group of 4 and above.

Cafeteria style dining experience, have to order food at the front and they’ll bring it to you. The porridge is unlimited and overall pretty good. For the price, I felt this place had high value! For the food, we really liked the fried egg, the tofu strings and basically all the vegetarian dishes were really delicious.

Been coming here for many years. Always a hit especially for lunch with friends. Love introducing new people this place. Weekdays @ lunchtime can be quite busy because of the tech crowd. However it's worth the wait. Always at least 30 options ready to go cafeteria style and more a la carte menu items. Come try for yourself and see why my family and I keep coming back here

It is just a neighborhood food joint, very much like the food serving in food court in a shopping mall, and very topical of Taiwanese style. I like the porridge, which warms to your stomach! Cheers!

When I first heard of the term "comfort food," it was in relation to things like fried chicken, mac & cheese, ice cream, french fries, etc. I never understood this. Whenever I eat those high-fat, high-calorie, high-salt foods I always feel nasty afterwards. Perhaps those foods should be labeled as discomfort foods instead. Why do I mention that? Because the REAL comfort food, in my humble (but correct) opinion, is porridge/congee with small side dishes. Like a pair of Levi's jeans, porridge literally matches with everything. You can get a side of diced cucumber or a side of pig ears. Porridge complements both of them equally. You can get an oily eggplant dish or a light side of tofu skins. Both ways, eating them with porridge is like heaven in your mouth. And the best part? You don't feel gross afterwards! It's comfort and deliciousness packaged up into one glorious watery rice-soup. My favorite part about this place is you can get unlimited porridge refills. I feel like I could just eat plain porridge for days and not get tired. I will, however, deduct 1 star because the porridge refill that I got was exceedingly watery, as if we fell on some 苦日子 and needed to ration our rice. So that was a tiny bit disappointing.

Chew Loay Chang

Porridge and a wide variety of cooked dishes that you can choose from. You can request them to heat up the cooked dishes too. They also have other dishes that are cook-to-order. If you want to have a variety of dishes for one or two persons, I suggest that you go for their lunch before 4pm. Else it’s a great place to share different dishes for a group of 4 and above.

Susie Su

Cafeteria style dining experience, have to order food at the front and they’ll bring it to you. The porridge is unlimited and overall pretty good. For the price, I felt this place had high value! For the food, we really liked the fried egg, the tofu strings and basically all the vegetarian dishes were really delicious.

Paul Nguyen

Been coming here for many years. Always a hit especially for lunch with friends. Love introducing new people this place. Weekdays @ lunchtime can be quite busy because of the tech crowd. However it's worth the wait. Always at least 30 options ready to go cafeteria style and more a la carte menu items. Come try for yourself and see why my family and I keep coming back here

Qihua M

It is just a neighborhood food joint, very much like the food serving in food court in a shopping mall, and very topical of Taiwanese style. I like the porridge, which warms to your stomach! Cheers!

Luke L

When I first heard of the term "comfort food," it was in relation to things like fried chicken, mac & cheese, ice cream, french fries, etc. I never understood this. Whenever I eat those high-fat, high-calorie, high-salt foods I always feel nasty afterwards. Perhaps those foods should be labeled as discomfort foods instead. Why do I mention that? Because the REAL comfort food, in my humble (but correct) opinion, is porridge/congee with small side dishes. Like a pair of Levi's jeans, porridge literally matches with everything. You can get a side of diced cucumber or a side of pig ears. Porridge complements both of them equally. You can get an oily eggplant dish or a light side of tofu skins. Both ways, eating them with porridge is like heaven in your mouth. And the best part? You don't feel gross afterwards! It's comfort and deliciousness packaged up into one glorious watery rice-soup. My favorite part about this place is you can get unlimited porridge refills. I feel like I could just eat plain porridge for days and not get tired. I will, however, deduct 1 star because the porridge refill that I got was exceedingly watery, as if we fell on some 苦日子 and needed to ration our rice. So that was a tiny bit disappointing.

Grab lunch here and the portion is pretty reasonable for their lunch portion. Food Taste ok and service is good. Will be returning again

Christopher Chan

Grab lunch here and the portion is pretty reasonable for their lunch portion. Food Taste ok and service is good. Will be returning again

Cold dishes are very good. Porridge is average at best due to the cheap rice choice. Services are freezing especially the Lady. They will do the best to make you not coming back. They could easily be my everyday dinning place if the boss really cares. The other takeout store in the same plaza has very friendly crews though food is not as good. Most people like me rather line up there. I added one star for the improvement. Before the cov 19 related shutdown at end of 2020, my last three trips received improved rice, porridge and services.

Mixed feelings about this place, can be hit or miss but lately it's been more hit than miss. Dinner is all a la carte but lunch has a combo special: pick three dish items (comes with white rice or container of porridge for an extra $1) for $8.99. Flavor-wise the taste is pretty spot on and the food is authentic but the portion size tends to be wanting.

E Y

Mixed feelings about this place, can be hit or miss but lately it's been more hit than miss. Dinner is all a la carte but lunch has a combo special: pick three dish items (comes with white rice or container of porridge for an extra $1) for $8.99. Flavor-wise the taste is pretty spot on and the food is authentic but the portion size tends to be wanting.

Food is OK - but for a veggie + a meat dish, $26 (including tax + 15% tips) for real? I feel the value is around $15-18 or at most $20 everything included for two small dishes. Prices are getting ridiculous in the Bay Area - I get it. But there are many other <$20 options around - Pho King Long, New Tung Kee, or even Panda Express (this place is just a premium version of Panda imo but charges 2X of the price).

This is the spicy chicken with chili pepper. It’s sooo organic, the feather are still on the wings. Impressive, good work!

Plastic pieces in food, disgusting! Plus, ordered online, when picking up, the front desk's attitude was cold.

I paid $10 for my lunch at this place. The tea pot was leaking badly due to the lid could not be placed straightly. (The next table's tea pot was missing a top knob with only a screw sticking out.) It used up the only provided napkin to soak it up. The pork was dry due to the possible leftover from the previous days since they are so stingy in throwing the day-old food away. The waiter? Watching his SMART PHONE and not seeing me for missing items that should be provided to customers without asking. Come again? Hardly! Poor management, poor food quality, unclean teapod with soy sauce stained and dried. They absolutely have no intention to serve customers. They bought this place for $ and profit only. The prior owners and managers should be feeling so sorry for the selling of this nice place to such a run-down management. Total embarrassment to the Fujianese/Taiwanese food restaurant that will bring bad names. They have no intention to provide any service that we will call it quality. None! (None of them that I saw is from either Fujian or Taiwan. How could they possibly know how to cook the proclaimed food?)

That's ridiculous restaurant I ever go. When you ate on the half way, they come and pushed you to order some more order that you feel very uncomfortable and embarrassed. They treated the customer as they doing the small business at the side of the street. How many portion for one person needs to order they should post at outside the restaurant. You already inside and after ordered some and on the halfway of eating, they forced you to order more is very rude to the customers. Never ever not going back to this restaurant 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡. They can't steal the customer's money with dishonestly.

The attitude of the workers here are so poor. One Taiwanese guy always goes out to smoke near the glass door...and then he goes back to serve people food without washing his hands. Disgusting!! His demeanor is so poor and doesn't care for customers. They treat people so rudely here. It's cheap, but avoid at all costs. One time, I found a bug in my food :o

we saw the poster 20% off from 8-9pm, we arrived at 7:56pm and didn’t have food served before 8pm and checked at 8:30pm . However,the cashier consistently argued that we are not qualified for the discount and was very impatient to listen my questions. We have been here for several times and this was sooooo disappointing, will never be here again!!!

First time I have been here. Highly rated. But highly disappointed. Service was mediocre at best asked for assistance on how to order was passed around. I was excited to order and try their porridge and was very disappointed. It's bland and no taste at all had to ask for salt and pepper to give it a taste and it did but not enough. Over all just way below average rating. 😑

鵪鶉蛋豆腐 Quail Egg and Tofu very spicy, no other taste. No salt, no oil only hot . Disgusting, yukky. 蔥油雞 Green Onion Sauce Chicken, no flavor bland. Just boils chicken, 酸菜肚絲 Stir-fried Pork Maws with Pickled Mustard Greens. Pork maws has special flavor like they didn't washed it thoroughly. Spiced tofu is a little bit bigger than your thumb. Bad experience. I will never order anything from this restaurant. Portion is good, because after one bite you don't want to try another one. So it's good enough for ten people.

Ordered 蒜香雞 chicken and bamboo shoot for take out. Chicken was seriously NOT FRESH. I had half of it and felt so sick afterward. Had to throw up one hour later. Thinking back, the meat looks kinda red and tastes too hard and funny. I suspect it’s 僵尸肉 which was in freezer for a long time. Frankly speaking, I ordered from this place multiple times before and always loved the food. I don’t know why went wrong with dish. But this is not okay.

Received rice soup open the lid we fund the “smart water cover “ call them back poor service

Ordered the Napa cabbage takeout and found moldy cabbage in the dish. You can see from the attached photo that there was visible black mold right in the middle of the slice. This is not only unacceptable but also a serious health concern.

Tiffany y Chen

鵪鶉蛋豆腐 Quail Egg and Tofu very spicy, no other taste. No salt, no oil only hot . Disgusting, yukky. 蔥油雞 Green Onion Sauce Chicken, no flavor bland. Just boils chicken, 酸菜肚絲 Stir-fried Pork Maws with Pickled Mustard Greens. Pork maws has special flavor like they didn't washed it thoroughly. Spiced tofu is a little bit bigger than your thumb. Bad experience. I will never order anything from this restaurant. Portion is good, because after one bite you don't want to try another one. So it's good enough for ten people.

Jerry Zeng

Received rice soup open the lid we fund the “smart water cover “ call them back poor service

Eden Xu

Ordered 蒜香雞 chicken and bamboo shoot for take out. Chicken was seriously NOT FRESH. I had half of it and felt so sick afterward. Had to throw up one hour later. Thinking back, the meat looks kinda red and tastes too hard and funny. I suspect it’s 僵尸肉 which was in freezer for a long time. Frankly speaking, I ordered from this place multiple times before and always loved the food. I don’t know why went wrong with dish. But this is not okay.

ChiChi S

Ordered the Napa cabbage takeout and found moldy cabbage in the dish. You can see from the attached photo that there was visible black mold right in the middle of the slice. This is not only unacceptable but also a serious health concern.