As you enter the dining room, your first clue to this restaurant's specialty is the four fish tanks full of future culinary delights: Seafood. Yet among this huge variety of ocean-inspired items, you’ll find your favorite Cantonese-style chicken, beef, pork and vegetable dishes. But the menu doesn't stop there ...
There are also some delicacies here that you won't find at your run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant -- including shark's fin and bird's nest soups, lobster and crab entrees, duck specialties … and clay pots.
In fact, it is the clay pots that keep us coming back to this six-year-old restaurant. We especially like the Mixed Meat with Bean Curd Pot ($7.95), a subtly flavored Chinese stew of a little of everything: shrimp, scallops, tofu, pork, chicken, shiitake mushrooms and broasted garlic cloves. It comes to your table bubbling hot off the stove in a ceramic casserole dish, thus the name "clay pot."
The fish dishes we've had are fresh tasting and perfectly cooked. The Rock Cod Fillet with Black Bean Sauce ($7.95) is savory without being overly spicy, combining choice chunks of fish with green and red bell peppers and onions.
This is a casual, family-friendly place. If you're lucky enough to arrive on a night when owner, David Chu, is on hand -- your children just might go home with balloon animals!
Indeed, Chu and his staff take pains to make you feel like you've come to their home for dinner. Photos of family and friends adorn the walls along with thank-you notes and letters of congratulations from grateful customers. Somehow, they've succeeded in turning this brightly-lit, generic eating space into something warm and inviting.
