Apus Wok & Grill

Prior to Apus Wok and Grill, there were many previous tenants (restaurants) that were very short lived. So it was hard to tell what exactly this place was when driving by every year for the last 5 years or more.
However it seems Apus has some staying power, and apparently re-​branded itself to be a restaurant that in English serves Asian Fusion cuisine.
If you look at the Chinese parts of the name of the restaurant by the door (which I appeared to have forgotten) it is unmistakenably a Hong Kong style café (cha chaan teng), although it appears to have a slight South East Asian flair to it.
They have won ton noodles in soup, and also shui gow (bigger sized shrimp dumplings) as well as a small variety of congee (jook).
The «western» part of the menu includes a few baked rice or pasta dishes, or your choice of linguine or udon (for some stir fry stuff, inclusive of some that did appear Thai or SE Asian in at least the name of the dish which suggested their prep).
The beef congee here was decent, and tasted similar to Broadway Bistro’s in Millbrae.
The baked pasta dish of tomato sauce and melted cheese was not bad either, but it had no meat in it (not HK style bolognaise). At $ 8 it was not cheap but to their credit it included a cup of soup of the day (which was a decent cream of broccoli).
HK milk tea was average.
Owner/​manager was friendly and also fluent in English, so non Chinese speakers should feel pretty comfy here.
OK the oddball hardcore Chinese dish here, I believe it was #64 on the menu, and the item name has «Taishan» on it. You have to be a real OG FOB to want to order this.
Toi Shan Gau Jai Ngap Bo — Toishan doggie style duck clay pot (translation, not what is represented on the menu in English).
Now WTF is this, you may ask? Not to worry, this is a duck clay pot. Has nothing to do with Snoop Dogg’s preference with positions when it comes to mounting technique (not referring to horses either). But what exactly is «doggie style»?
Here’s the story. In parts of southern China, it is legal, and people still eat DOG MEAT (probably pups of a certain age) that to this day is still incomprehensible to someone like myself and practically all of you (unless there’s an OG FOB reading this that’s foaming at the mouth, in which case keep that dude away from the dog pound). But dog meat even to those hardcore locals, are considered tough and «gamey». So how would one prep it?
Apparently from what I’ve read, it would require seasoning with Chinese bean sauce (tou ban), sesame sauce, fu yue (fermented tofu skin), minced garlic or paste, dried peel (chun pei), soy sauce, rice wine, salt, sugar, and spices, and stewed for a long time.
In parts of Hong Kong, this dish is experiencing a revival, but even HK FOB$ love their canines too much. Savvy chefs re-​invented this dish, by bringing that «old school» dogg flavor back, but substituted Snoopy with Donald, if you know what I mean.
So yes, more like Ducky style. Old receipe, different (and more civilized) meat.
I’m not sure how authentic this duck clay pot dish is, but in case someone was wondering, that’s the explanation.

This place used to be a fusion style restaurant, but now it has more of a HK style cuisine menu.
We had:
* clear broth beef & daikon soup — this was their specialty and was really hearty and good… not too much msg
* organic «gai lan» chinese broccoli — tasty with stir fried garlic
* club sandwich — easy to make so it was hard to screw up
Enjoyed the service and felt comfortable with the ambiance. Would definitely visit again for lunch next time.

My husband and I went here on Friday. I spied the Unilocal sticker in the window so it seemed worth a shot.
I was wrong. We ordered spring rolls to start and they were super greasy. Husband ordered the chicken claypot with spring onions and ginger — it was made with chicken wings (we are weenies and totally weren’t expecting that) and had an OK flavor.
I ordered the red Thai chicken curry over udon noodles. The server warned me that the dish would be spicy. Uh, that would be why I ordered it.
Boy was he wrong. The chicken quality was excellent, but the dish was not at all spicy. Not even my husband thought it was good.
At that point, I was pretty much ready to leave. The service was so abysmally slow that our entire dinner took 1.5 hours. On the other hand, the bill was a little over $ 30 — not bad for two mains, an appetizer, two drinks, and a bowl of rice.
But the low price does not justify a repeat visit.

I came here with my family and we ordered the following items:
— HK Sidewalk Soup
— Linguine with tomato sauce
— Beef Stew with Lettuce in Claypot
— Some chicken, can’t remember which one
— Some other spicy beef
— Iced Milk Tea
The food was all pretty good, but the HK sidewalk soup and the Beef Stew is a must-​try if you go there. The HK sidwalk soup is basically an imitation shark fin soup that tastes as close to the original as $ 3 can get you. The beef stew is cooked carefully so the texture is just right, and the ingredients are added so there is just the right amount of flavor. I cannot find another restaurant in the area that makes it as well as they do for the price.
I don’t find the review from Donovan V to be very helpful or accurate. My order was taken promptly and the co-​owner was very courteous. She even gave us free drinks because apparently, my aunt visits this place quite frequently.
I would definitely come here again, especially to check out their lunch specials. I wish they would change their name to something more appealing though. Is it pronounced «Apu’s» or «A-​Pus»?? Either way, it does not seem to be a suitable name for a a fusion restaurant.

Questionable name and restaurant exterior.
My coworkers and I used to make fun of it and never even thought of trying this place until I saw its Unilocal reviews and menu on its web site.
I had wanton noodle craving and just had to go there today.
Surprisingly it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I mean, it was good. They have lots of fancy sounding lunch special menu, but our eyes were fixed on the noodle menu. Because of the price being so inexpensive ($ 5.50), we imagined the portion being very little and ordered xiaolongbao (Shanghai dumpling), but we were wrong.
Our misconception of noodle soup being very little was because it was listed in the menu as «shrimp wanton OR noodle.» I thought we had to choose either, so we ordered «shrimp wanton,» and server asked «you don’t want noodle?» Apparently the «OR» in the menu doesn’t mean anything and probably better if it’s removed to reduce confusion among customers.
Anyway, it definitely wasn’t the best xiaolongbao, but it was good enough for me. Wanton noodle was also good, and I’m definitely going back very soon.

Fusion is so good.
When you take the best elements of different culture’s cuisines it has a good chance to go well. We went to Apus Wok & Grill on Sunday evening hoping for a satisfying meal and we had one.
A mixture of Chinese, Thai, and Burmese foods, Apus (not Apu’s as some reviewers seem to have misunderstood; it means birds of paradise) gave us a really nice meal. My husband loves Chinese food and I really don’t care for it usually, and this satisfied both of us.
We ordered his favorite, Hot and Sour Soup. He loved it, just as he knows it in Chinese restaurants. For dinner he had the Thai Grilled Chicken Fusion Noodles, with udon (you get to pick from 4 noodle options). With a Peanut sauce and tender chicken, he found it very satisfying. With dinner he had a mango lemonade. I tasted it and thought it had a nice mixture of sweetness and tartness.
My dinner was very special: Salinas Fresh Vegetables stir fried with Spinach Noodles in a fresh Basil Garlic Sauce. The sauce was light and flavorful and the vegetables were tender yet still had bite. The spinach noodles are delicious, I’d never order anything else. Well cooked and very flavorful.
They have an unfortunate location on the busy corner of El Camino Real and 25^th Avenue. Go down 25^th to find parking and walk around the corner. This spot seems like one with high turnover of businesses, I hope they can build a following since the interior décor is nice and the food is delicious.

My husband and I met two friends for dinner here on a Sunday evening at 6. We were the first ones in the restaurant and sat down to look at the menu.
We ordered three starters for the 4 of us — the Crispy Calamari, Spring Rolls and Shrimp in lettuce cups. All three were nicely flavored — I like the dipping sauce — a lime pesto? for the calamari. It was a nice twist.
The main dishes orders were: Geronimo Steak noodles (with Udon), Pacific Seafood with Udon, Orange Roughy Fillet (with the Thai red rice) and the Tender short ribs.
I tried a little of all but the short ribs and liked all three. The noodles were cooked al dente — which I like — not too mushy. And the flavors for all three dishes were very good. The Geronimo steak looks kind of bland, but it has a nice peppery flavor to it and meat was very tender. The Pacific seafood was yummy, but the sauce got a bit rich after the first few bites. The Orange roughy fillet was nice and crisp and the rice underneath had a nice texture, along with corn and diced string beans to add a little crunch to it.
We skipped dessert because we were pretty full. Overall, I’d say a solid dinner choice. Nice service, (they didn’t rush us, we got water glasses refilled and the food came out promptly), decent décor and portions were reasonable.

My friend and I got takeout from here one night, looking to try something new. He got the steak udon noodle and I got the vegetable udon noodle. I was very impressed with all the different types of vegetables included with my noodle dish. It wasn’t just the typical Chinese broccoli and green beans. The egg noodle itself was very tasteful — I love the garlic seasoning. My friend’s steak strips were extremely tender, to our pleasant surprise. We both agree we’d definitely go back for tasteful, decently priced egg noodles!

I give this place five stars mainly for lunch reasons. It is very resonably priced and the service was on point.
The woman who is the co-​owner served us … she was very nice… I guess her husband does the cooking.
All the dishes I tried were very original and flavorful.
We shared all of our lunches family style and there was more than enough to go around.
The lunch specials come with soup, and an egg roll or salad… super good deal considering the qualiy of the food.
I highly suggest you try it for yourself…
ithe dinner I’m sure will be just as good but a little more pricey.

My husband and I came here on a whim after reading the review. I was kind of hesitant because of the name, but I figured, oh well — it’s worth a try, right?
Ok so the food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. We had the spicy calamari and potstickers to start. I wouldn’t order either of them again. The spicy calamari was soggy obviously from the thick sauce they glazed over it, but it was way too sweet and not spicy enough. The potstickers were also a non-​winner. They just were tasteless. However, I had the vegetarian noodles which were suprisingly tasty. The garlic noodles were ok, but they were in dire need of MORE garlic. Like MUCH MORE.
Overall the food was mediocre at best, but the service was great and my drink was yummy too. Sadly enough I will not be back here, I am just so disappointed with my fellow Unilocalers! Perhaps it’s a San Mateo things. good restaurants in San Mateo are hard to find. So Apus in comparison to other San Mateo restaurants is not bad. Or mayb the lunch specials are the thing to go for here. who knows? All I know is that Apus is lucky my husband isn’t reviewing this place, he is HARD to please.

If you want to pull up into a parking lot and unload the kids for a generic Chinese American lunch of greasy meat and canned vegetables at $ 5 per plate, then Apus is not the place for you. Sure the parking along El Camino Real can be a bit challenging at times, but the same can be said of many other Bay Area retail strips. With fresh ingredients and innovative Asian flavor combinations, Apus compares very favorably to the chi-​chi European and Japanese restaurants in San Mateo — but without the overly high prices. Though the outer façade is pretty nondescript, the interior offers a tasteful backdrop to a business lunch — excepting the carpet which I’m sure will get freshened in the near future. Notwithstanding the menu’s quirks — «tender morsels of soy protein» isn’t wording that I’d use — it lists plenty of choices for both a confirmed vegetarian foodie such as myself, and vegetable avoiding carnivores such as my luncheon companion. Overall, Apus offers great value, and I’ll be back the next time I’m on the Peninsula near lunch or dinner time.
Since I recently needed to be in San Mateo,

The restaurant isn’t located in the best place, but I wanted to try it because it got good reviews and seemed fairly cheap.
When we got there, the wait staff was really friendly, and the service was pretty quick. My friend and I both got lunch specials, which came with soup and an eggroll or salad (we both picked eggrolls). The eggroll was a bit greasy, but it was actually pretty good, and by the time we had both, we weren’t all that hungry.
Then our main dishes came, and the portions were huge! For $ 7.50, I got a cup of soup, an eggroll, and a big plate of Thai chicken with udon noodles, which is a good deal even for a fast food place, which this wasn’t. I liked my noodles (although they were a bit too sweet after awhile), and I think I’d go back and try something new. In my opinion, it was worth the price, and I’d pay more for it actually, but I’m glad I don’t have to. :)

Came here for lunch and it was pretty good! Decent sized portions of food relative to what we paid for it. I got the spicy basil tofu which was $ 7 on their lunch special menu. It came with a carrot/​ginger soup (yum!) and an eggroll (also yum). I’d definitely come again!
Speaking of coming again:
Apu from the Simpsons: «Hello. I am not interested in buying your house, but I would like to use your rest room, flip through your magazines, rearrange your carefully shelved items and handle your food products in an unsanitary manner. Ha! Now you know how it feels! (runs off])»

My boss took us here twice, for a Christmas party and for a promotion party for a coworker. This is her sister’s restaurant and her sister’s husband is the cook. This place is just wonderful! Every dish was flavorful and fresh. I’ve had their tomato pesto soup and it was a creamy delight! Their prawn salad was refreshing and succulent. The prawns were big, juicy and cooked just right! Calamari comes with a pesto sauce, I’ve never had calamari with pesto sauce before. =9
For my entrée I had the Salmon fillet served with jumbo prawns over jasmine rice and veggies! mMmm I enjoyed every single bite. I also tried some of my coworker’s grilled steak. yum! it was delicious. For dessert we had the banana fried ice cream and homemade chocolate moose! Their banana fried ice cream was the best! I don’t even like bananas! Their moose is good too but a little bit too rich for me.
Can’t wait to go back and try the other stuff on the menu!

i chance upon this place in san mateo and experienced the leandro curry chicken (9), very tasty. the interior is very tastefully done ahd the staff is smartly dressed in black.
⁵⁄₁₅ geronimo steak noodles (11) was a hit with tiger beer (4).
will definitely return to try more if i can figure out where to park my wheels.
12/08-it’s been a few months that they’ve redid their menu to include more hong kong style items. the asian fusion items are still avaiable but are being deemphasized since the poor economy has slowed their asian fusion patrons to a trickle.

I have been meaning to check out Apus since it opened weeks ago. We were there for dinner Thursday night. The Smoke PICANTE Curried Vegetables (A dry-​smoked garlic curry potatoes, bell peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and chili flakes, in our Thai basil garlic sauce) caught my eye. I asked the waiter if it was spicy. He, like most, assumed that I asked because I don’t want it spicy, therefore said, «no». I was a bit disappointed. Then I asked him to suggest a spicy vegetarian dish on menu given this was my first time dining there. He said he will check with the kitchen. At this point, my expectation for Apus has gone way low. It was 8:30pm-ish, I figured I will just bite the bullet and never come back. He returned from the kitchen swiftly and said they can make anything spicy. So I ordered my dish spicy with (or more like over) rice noodles. When we got our food, my dish had a kick, but was not overpowering. The cooking was outstanding. The smoked garlic curry potato cubes were out of this world. Asian fusion at a reasonable price (my dinner entrée was $ 8.50). What more can I ask for!
Update 3÷28÷08 — I went back for the Firecracker Rice Noodles Soup (with Tofu in a spicy lemongrass tomato soup base) as my entrée. It was very flavorful — spicy, sour and basil-​y at the same time! The only complaint I had is that flat rice noodles are impossible to pick up and eat with chopsticks … perhaps Apus can switch to round rice noodles for noodle soups?

We’ve pondered eating here on our luch break many times. You only get lunch once a day and we’re always nervous to waste in on something less than delicious!
We finally decided to give it a shot.
We were really pleasantly surprised! The lunch specials were really cheap. It started with soup, cauliflower, which I tasted reluctantly because I am a food wimp (I like tacos and spaghetti and I’m scared of everything else) but it was super tasty. They then brought out our grubbin eggrolls and we both thought our dishes were really really good. The amount was just right and everything was tasty but not too greasy. The waitress was very friendly and the shop was clean and surprisingly fancy-​ish. The outside really leads you to think its kind of a little dive but its not at all. We really liked it. Think we were about 2 notches louder than the other businessmen in there but whatever, we liven it up honey.
What a pleasant lunchbreak. Made us sleepy. Gonna take naps on the waxing bed…

My fiancé and I decided to give this place a shot for our Valentine’s day dinner. While we didn’t partake in the special V Day menu they had (it had beef in it and my fiancé is a vegetarian), it did look great and was reasonably priced at $ 25 per person.
Upon ordering (I had the Malaysian Prawns over spinach noodles), we told our waiter that we were in a hurry and the food came out in less than 5 minutes! That’s with a packed restaurant, too!
The food was really tasty and the restaurant was clean, modern and the service was excellent.
We will definitly be back! Thanks, Apus!

I’ve only eaten here once but I will be going back again soon. I got a bowl of the spicy seafood noodle soup that came with prawns lots of calamari and mussels that were not in the shell. Seafood soups are one of my favorite foods and I always end up making a mess when I have to shell anything over or in a bowl. The $ 7.50 lunch special price was super reasonable for a huge bowl of some really good noodle soup.
I also tried the calamari appetizer that came with a Thai basil lime dressing that was different from what I’m used to but it was very good.

After passing this place a few times over the past couple of weeks we decided to drop on in. From the outside the marquee and signage is quite plain and it’s extremely hard to tell what this place is about. After walking in you realize that they had done a full remodel of whatever it was before and the place could be any type of modern cuisine restaurant. We first thought Italian but that was only part of the equation. After looking through the menu we realized there were Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Italian and American elements involved.
We chose to start with the Chicken Satay Tortilla Rolls which had semi sweet satay marinaded chicken grilled inside four tortillas with mozzarella, shredded carrots, and onions. This was served with a sweet chili sauce. Thai meets soutwestern? Strangely it was decently tasty. We both then went with the lunch special noodle dishes:
Me: Geronimo Steak — Sirloin steak marinated in garlic soy and white onions sauteed tossed with udon like egg noodles.
Co-​worker: Leandro CUrry Chicken — Yellow curry, chicken strips, and sweet potatoes in a coconut curry sauce tossed with the same egg noodles as above.
Everything came out pretty tasty. The interesting thing is you can choose the type of noodle you want, spinach, linguine, rice or the egg. The specials came with a bowl of tomato basil soup which was tasty too. The waiter was super friendly and said they’d only been open a few weeks and they’re trying to start off slow and ramp up for the New Year. Definitely some interesting ideas on the menu and I’ll be back to try some other wacky combinations.