*** Silver Ark has closed and is now Siam Nara Restauant
We first visited Silver Ark several weeks past, and arrived at the end of Dim Sum service, since I thought the service was quite good, and the food showed some promise; I used the photos from that visit as the "Guess the Dim Sum" post. So in order to see if the promise was fulfilled we arrived at 11am on a recent weekend morning.
The smaller than it looks dining area was about two-thirds full.
Because of space and staff limitations, there are only two carts circulating through the dining area at any given moment, though the Servers will take orders for specific dishes.
We started with the dish we found so promising on our previous visit. The porridge with pork and preserved egg:
And what we had thought about the really great bowl of Jook we had on our last visit was true. Though there was a very generous amount of preserved egg, and strips of pork, rather than ground pork, the porridge was not as rich and full of flavor. I guess having it simmer for several hours really made the difference. It was still pretty good.
The Wu Gok(Deep Fried Taro Balls):
These had way too much taro, and not enough pork, which threw the flavor off. Just okay.
Shrimp and Scallop Dumpling:
By far the best Dim Sum dish of the day. Lot's of shrimp flavor. The only downside was that the wrappers were too thick making the skin tough and dry.
The Stuffed Bean Curd Skin:
These were overcooked, the bean curd skin were tough, and almost crunchy in places. Terrible.
Shrimp and Chive Har Gow:
We both enjoyed the good chive flavor, and the shrimp was pretty good. These dumplings suffered from the same ailment as the Shrimp and Scallop dumpling, the wrappers were too thick and dry.
We had also ordered Cheong Fun with Dried Shrimp, and as our meal was ending it arrived.
This was a very strange dish. I don't know what the reason was for pan-frying the Cheong Fun was. Perhaps it was sitting around? But pan frying the Cheong Fun ruined the dish, the noodle had a crust, and the interior had melted and were molten. Pan frying had also changed the flavor, and not for the good. In addition a little dish of Hoisin was provided instead of the usual sweet soy. I dunno, but this ain't what I ordered.
Still the price was right. All this came out to $20. Not bad.
Here's a little postscipt. We were in the area again recently and dropped by for a recent late afternoon "snack".
We started with the Thousand Year Egg and Fish Fillet w/Cilantro soup($9.99):
The broth was was quite good and rich, though the soup was short on preserved egg, and the fish fillet were on the tough side. It felt like the fish was a bit on the older side.
With some apprehension I ordered a Half Roast Duck($9.99). I say some apprehension, because I had seen the ducks hanging in the take out area, and they looked a bit on the dry-scrawny side.
What we got was a quite generous serving of roast duck. And the first thing the Missus did was check under the duck. Restaurants sometimes use beans to "prop-up" the slices of duck, to make the serving look larger. Well no beans here. The duck was meaty and tender, and the skin a perfect crunchy lacquer. The meat was a bit short on flavor. But a dip into the "duck juice" on the plate(not the horrible sweet-sour duck sauce provided) corrected the flavor short coming. By no means the best roast duck I've ever had, but pretty good. I'd have it again.
In the end, our initial impression stands. Silver Ark, is a notch below the better Hong Kong style restaurants in San Diego. Still not a bad choice.
Silver Ark
8993 Mira Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92126