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The crowd of people, the long wait, the clanking of dishes, and the loud chatter of a roomful of Cantonese people can be a bit much to handle early in the morning, especially after having spent the previous night up late dancing and taking shots of tequila in a random bedroom. But, I braved it all for dim sum at Koi Palace in Daly City.

According to my Cantonese workers, this was the place to go for dim sum in the Bay and we had made plans to meet there for Sunday brunch. There were six of us—Billy, Jo, Alex, Katherine, her boyfriend Nick, and me—and a sea of other eager diners waiting, wrestling, for a table.

Trying to get a table at a busy dim sum restaurant on a Sunday morning is like a game of bingo. You show up, you get a number from the host, you clench that slip of paper tightly in your first, repeating the number over and over in a bare whisper, you anxiously wait for your number to be called, and when it finally is you feel like a winner. It’s high drama at its finest. Then, once table procurement is accomplished, you try to squeeze and maneuver your way around the room jam-packed with tables full of diners with chopstick weapons in their hands and servers carrying pots of boiling tea and trays of steam baskets with dumplings and buns barreling straight at you with no sign of letting you pass first or even of stepping to the side. Quick feet and a sharp mind pay off here.

I was happy to finally make it to our table, which was a little small for the six of us but manageable. We settled in, ordered a pot of jasmine tea, and waited for the food frenzy to begin.

There were items being walked around by the waitresses that I had never seen before. According to Alex, one of the reasons why Koi Palace is so popular is because they have tons of items on their menu, most of which you don’t see at other dim sum restaurants. I was wary of some of those plates being brought over to our table, but we got some things that I never had before in all my countless of times of going out for dim sum, including the duck tongue and egg custard tart topped with bird nest.

I’m a daring eater but there was something about the duck tongue that got to me. I don’t know if it was because the duck tongue looked so much like duck tongue or that they were so small and pale brown or that they were just something I wasn’t used to, but I had to really think about eating one before I took my chopsticks to the little plate of tongue, picked one up, and put it on my own. The tongue had a chewy consistency on the outside that tasted just slightly salty and in the middle was the inedible thick cartilage that got discarded. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t so good as to warrant me having to mentally psych myself up to eat more.

The egg custard bird nest tart was an interesting variation of something I’m used to eating, the plain egg custard tart. I’m not exactly sure what bird nest is made of, but I do know that the bird uses its spit to hold the nest together. So, bird nest is also sometimes referred to as bird spit, which was how my coworkers and I were describing it. It seemed like an odd combination but I tried it. The egg custard part was enjoyable; the custard was smooth and sweet while the crust was flakey and light. I couldn’t taste the bird nest that topped it and the jello-like texture just sort of melted into the custard, not adding much to the dish. But, apparently, bird nest has restorative qualities and its production is so costly that I couldn’t bear to waste any of it.

What impressed me most about Koi Palace was the quality of the dim sum standbys. The shrimp dumplings (ha gao) were filled with large and tender shrimps, and the wrapper tasted as if they were freshly rolled in-house. The pork dumping (xiu mai) were made of very finely ground pork (it was almost paste like) with chunks of shrimps for added texture, and the flavors were delicately sweet and salty. The chicken feet (fong jiao) were large, meaty (for chicken feet), and well seasoned. The steamed barbeque pork bun (cha xiu bao) had an airily light dough encasing a succulent pork filling. The steamed shrimp roll (ha chien) was a silky smooth rice noodle wrapped around the largest shrimp I had ever seen and the soy sauce was light enough to not overpower the delicately sweet flavors of the noodle and the shrimp. The eggplant stuffed with shrimp paste (my favorite dim sum dish) was just a little spicy from the eggplant and shrimp paste wedged between the two eggplant slices was delicious. And the deep fried pork dumpling (ham su gok) was crisp on the outside, not at all greasy, chewy within, and full of flavorful pork and mushroom.

We also ordered the beef tripe in a curry sauce, the Shanghai soup dumplings, the shrimp dumplings with chives, the old man tofu (this is how the Chinese gets translated, although it’s a fried tofu dish with a velvety smooth interior), and spring rolls. Each dish was good, and the flavors, compared to other dim sum restaurants, were fresh and clean. We finished all the little plates and left the restaurant just a little bit heavier.

Oh, I also have to mention that Nick, a non-Asian, and I think Katherine as well were both dim sum virgins and ate everything, including the tongue, the feet, and the intestines. That’s impressive.