Since the "New" Golden City opened back in September, I made the restaurant a little "side project" of mine. The intent was to see how the "New and improved" compared to the original restaurant, where we were pretty regular customers. I must admit; my excitement took control, and I was the first customer when the doors opened on Sept 26th, 2005. At that time, I thought that doing a series of posts on a particular restaurant and watching how the food developed would be interesting, sort of a "life cycle" of a restaurant thing. Little did I know how true to life this life cycle thing would become. My second post covered the late night specials. And it seemed like the food was not as good as the original. The third post covered a dinner and a lunch where I had the exact same dish as I ate on opening day.
Unfortunately, Golden City could never carve out it’s niche on the Chinese restaurant front in San Diego, and in July of this year, the restaurant changed hands. And so awhile back, the Missus and I decided to pay a visit to the "new" Golden City.
Well, the signs looked the same, and the interior was basically the same; maybe a bit more "freshened up", and posters of various Chinese dishes lined the walls. In what was another change, the tanks in the rear of the restaurant were full of crab and lobster, quite an ambitious sign.
We found that the menu was very similar to the previous Golden City, except for some strategically placed dishes. We also recognized our server; he used to work at China Max, we thought that a good sign. After all, who would leave China Max for a new restaurant, unless the prospect seemed positive.
The Missus seemed smitten with a few of the items on the posters, so we placed our order.
Since I was recovering from a cold, we started with a soup; Shredded Duck w/Chinese Chive soup (large $12.95):
The soup arrived piping hot, much to the approval of the Missus; She has a thing about soup being really hot. The broth had a wonderful color, and the texture was a perfect velvety texture. Unfortunately, everything else about the soup came up short; the flavor was terribly unbalanced, you could taste nothing but chives, unless you bit into a piece of duck. The chive flavor overwhelmed everything in the soup, even white pepper couldn’t damper the tastes of chives…and I love chives…except when there’s duck involved!
The Sizzling Lamb Chops($15.96) was my choice:
The one thing that stood out about this dish, was how tender the lamb chops were. The chops were melt in your mouth tender, and I do mean melt in your mouth tender. I could have done with a more rich lamb flavor, but the Missus enjoyed the sweet-soy flavor. We’ve had the Lamb Chops with Black Pepper Sauce several times at China Max, and they have never been as tender as these. The presentation, and flavoring at China Max may be a bit more sophisticated, but the flavors(overdone peppercorn, with no sweet overtones) are not as pleasing to us as these Lamb Chops.
In a surprise pick, the Missus went with the Steamed Crab over Rice. By surprise, I mean that the Missus is pretty picky about crab; having grown up in QingDao, She is used to fresh and flavorful seafood; be it crab or crawfish(yes, crawfish). She still doesn’t understand the purpose of drawn butter with seafood, other than to disguise a lack of flavor. I think that when we were told that the new Owners were originally from Hong Kong, and that the cooking "Crew"(that was the choice of words) were from LA, She felt emboldened. Soon enough our dish arrived (Crab at Market price $12/lb – 2lb crab, plus $6 prep and rice = total $30):
We had seen our Server (His name is Alan, for those who knew the Servers at China Max) wrestle out the crab from the tank. It was delivered in a Lotus Leaf lined steamer insert; the crab had been steamed on a bed of rice that had been mixed with various Chinese Herbs, Egg, and fish eggs, so that the flavor of the crab had permeated the rice. We both thought the crab had been slightly over steamed, but the Missus still thought it was quite good, though very messy. Golden City needs to invest in some crackers and other implements. I had a few pieces of crab(in deference to the Missus who really does enjoy it more than I), and destroyed the crab flavored rice, which was so rich, so flavorful, and so filling. For us, on this evening, well worth the price. Little did we know, we’d be back within a week.
Some notes: Golden City has maintained the Lunch and Late Night menu, though it sounded as if it may be changed in the future.
Part 2 coming up…….
Golden City Restaurant
5375 Kearny Villa Rd.
San Diego, CA 92123
Open Daily 11am – Midnight