Satisfy cravings for Chinese food at Kaneohe spot

Kin Wah Chop Suey has been a Kaneohe mainstay for some 33 years.

The Cantonese-style restaurant serves up all the comforting, familiar Chinese dishes a diner might want, including some spicy Szechuan options. It offers the familiar lazy-Susan-topped round tables and can offer banquet dining for 70 with a week’s notice, as well as booths and rapid-fire takeout service.

About the business: The restaurant was established by its namesakes, Wah Chung Cheng, president, and his brother-in-law Kin Sang Wong, vice president.

The restaurant was later purchased by Wah’s niece, Lisa Toyomura, who answers calls and fills orders. Jimmy Cheng and Joy Sanchez serve as managers.

Some regular customers come in every day, and many tend to order the same things, said Sanchez, but she encourages them to try new dishes and the staff will make suggestions.

The restaurant has seating for 150 diners. The business is about 40 percent dine-in and about 60 percent takeout, Cheng said.

About the food: The regular menu is grouped in categories, featuring variety of options in each. There’s soup, chop suey, chicken, duck, pork or beef, seafood, vegetarian dishes, chow mein, egg fuyong, rice, gau gee, wun ton, rice noodles and sizzling platters, which tend to be show-stopping, conversation-halting affairs in any restaurant they’re offered.

The humble, crispy gau gee (rectangular, deep-fried dumplings) are so popular that managers and staff gather around a table each morning and crank out some 40 pounds’ worth of pork-filled goodness, more than 700 pieces.

“We sell out every day,” said Cheng.

Ten pieces sell for $7 and can be a meal in themselves.

The crew makes about double the normal amount around Mother’s Day, Cheng said.

Just as delightful is the steamed ginger wun ton, which is a revelation in a wrapper. Filled with pork, it is seasoned with ginger, green onion and chili oil — and while the menu describes it as spicy, the heat won’t blow off anyone’s head. The dish is popular as a pupu during football season, Cheng said. An order includes 10 dumplings for $8.50.

The most popular dishes include minute chicken with cake noodle and the Chinese chicken salad, though at Kin Wah it’s just called chicken salad. There’s also bat jun tofu, featuring eight (“bat” means eight) ingredients: tofu, fish cake, shrimp, tender abalone and squid, black mushrooms, choi sum and carrots.

How to order: Cheng recommends calling ahead for takeout orders, which are ready quickly, in about 15 minutes. The restaurant posts menus online.

With 10 cooks in the kitchen, phone-in orders for catering pans also can be assembled in about 15 minutes. The restaurant has no set catering menu. Staff advise callers of pricing based on quantity.

Kin Wah has two phone numbers to accommodate the volume of calls.

Grab and Go: Kin Wah Chop Suey is in a strip mall at the corner of Kamehameha Highway and Luluku Road. There is a parking lot but it is often filled. Double-parking to pick up an order is not recommended, but it happens.