**** Golden City has closed
After our last visit to Noble Chef, the Missus and I decided that we needed to get out there and do the “roast duck rotation”. It had been a year-and-a-half since I’d last dined in at Golden City and it had been been even longer for the Missus.
We arrived right at 5pm and the restaurant was empty.
Though the place soon started filling up. Of course we got the half roast duck ($17.95)….but, just for a change of pace, we decided to order items we hadn’t tried before.
As for the Roast Duck. Well, it was not very good.
As you can tell by the color this was quite bland. The skin was rubbery, this was a very meaty duck, but the flesh was dry and too chewy. One of the worst versions we’ve had in recent memory.
We also ordered the Dry Bean Curd with Fish Fillet Clay Pot ($19.95). We fully expected this to have a good amount of Yuba – Tofu skin and was quite surprised to see that the dish had more Fried Tofu than anything else.
We also would have preferred nicely velveted fish, instead of battered and fried, then sauce fillets. This made the texture somewhat gluey. The flavor of the sauce was fine, not overly salty.
Our good friend Candice had recommended we try the Dry Scallop, Shrimp, and Chinese Broccoli Fried Rice ($18.95). At first glance, the rice didn’t seem evenly coated.
But this was surprisingly good. Very savory tones; the shrimp perfectly cooked, tender and sweet. We were kind of interested to see what was going on with gailan in fried rice; but it was just the stems sliced thinly cross-wise. A nice, fragrant dish.
I was kind of surprised that the Missus ordered the Fried Capelin with Spicy Salt ($18.95).
I think that perhaps I misguided Her when I mentioned that Capelin was in the smelt family. She expected small, crisp, savory fish. These were quite large and assertive in flavor. The Missus wasn’t able to deal with the oily-fishiness of the capelin. I was ok with eating this fried “bait”. The dried chilies and garlic did help a bit.
Well, perhaps our exploration of dishes we’d never tried at Golden City didn’t go quite as planned. And that duck was not very good at all.
In terms of price; our meal was quite a bit cheaper than Noble Chef. But, I think if and when we return to Golden City we’ll be sticking to old favorites, like the Kwai Fei Ji.
Golden City Restaurant
5375 Kearny Villa Rd.
San Diego, CA 92123
Current Hours:
Sun – Tues, Thurs 11am – 830pm
Fri – Sat 11am – 9pm
Closed on Wednesdays
These dumplings were fairly hefty in size. The wrapper of these steamed jiaozi was on the thicker side, chewy, and too brittle.
My first thought when the bowl hit the table? What the heck is broccoli doing in this soup? The beef looked tough, but was adequately tender. The broth had a good amount of anise flavor and apparently even a more hefty amount of msg as I kept on chugging water after my meal. The soup was on the thinner side, needed more richness and beef flavor. The noodles were on the mushy side for my taste as well.
I was interested to see if things had changed much. So, like before, the Hu Tieu was in the bottom of the dish, where the savory-mildly salty and sweet sauce resides. There have been times when the hu tieu was over cooked and mushy. But gladly, this was not one of those days has the noodles had some good al dente pull to them.
