No One Goes Hungry At Burien's King Wah

Restaurant review

King Wah Restaurant, 605 S.W. 152nd St., Burien; 243-0323. Bankcards and personal checks accepted. Smoking section available. Hours are 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 4:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sundays. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Super-humans aside, no one leaves King Wah hungry. It just doesn't happen at this king-size Burien restaurant which prides itself on a never-ending supply of tasty Peking-style Mandarin and Szechuan dishes.

The place is packed with enough booths and tables to seat a small army (or at least 130 people, according to owner Lien Yu). The decor is equally grand. Gold trim and dragon art are the main themes and can be found in virtually every corner.

The menu at King Wah is several pages long, offering up almost any Mandarin dish imaginable. One section is written entirely in Chinese.

Whatever language you use when ordering your main course, don't skip over the hot and sour soup for a starter. The soup ($3.75), easily serves three or four and is so loaded with goodies it could be eaten with a fork. Tender chunks of chicken, shrimp, fresh-sliced mushrooms and carrots, bean curd, bamboo shoots and egg flower are all packed into this delicious broth which comes served in a large bowl.

From there, the biggest problem may be deciding what to have for a main course. Just choosing from the eight different fried rice dishes can be difficult. But it gets progressively challenging. There are 23 different chicken dishes to choose from, ranging from yu shang chicken, a diced chicken cooked with green peppers, water chestnuts amd carrots on a Szechwan spicy garlic sauce, to lemon chicken, which consists of tender chicken deep-fried and then seasoned with lemon juice and lemon slices.

There are almost as many beef entrees and at least nine different seafood and pork choices available. And King Wah doesn't forget about vegetarians. Among the selections available is egg foo young, black mushrooms with sugar peas, and fresh vegetables with bean curd.

Both the moo shu pork ($6.25) and the Mongolian beef ($5.95) come on platters piled so high you can have several helpings before you make a dent in them.

Egg lovers won't want to pass up the moo shu dish - a combination of flavored egg sauteed with shredded beef, pork or chicken and vegetables served with four crepe-like Mandarin pancakes. And the Mongolian beef, a generous mound of sliced beef sauteed with green onions and hot peppers and served on a bed of white rice , is the most popular dish in the house. (It washes down nicely with one of their imported Chinese beers.)

For a real family treat, try the Peking duck dinner for eight. The meal requires a two-day notice and costs $129 - a real bargain considering that it comes complete with Peking duck, a chef's special cold dish, three kinds of seafood soup, pot stickers, princess prawns, Szechwan beef, sliced scallops with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, mushrooms, broccoli and sugar peas, yu shang chicken and sweet and sour pork. For dessert, your choice of sweet glazed bananas or apples is served.

Lien Yu, who took over the restaurant in 1980, says he counts on lots of business to make up for King Wah's large portions and reasonable prices. He also prefers to spend advertising dollars on food and let his customers spread the word.

"It's strictly word of mouth and it has taken us a while to build up to where we are," he says. "But people do tell their friends about us and they come back."