Category: Chinese Restaurants

*** An updated post on China Chef has closed

I recently received an Email from BruceT who mentioned a new Sichuan style restaurant located on Mira Mesa Boulevard. In the Email Bruce mentions cold Sichuan dishes….which meant a visit post haste.

As you approach the restaurant you arrive at the proverbial "fork in the road". Go toward the left, and you'll arrive at a rather generic Chinese Fast Food style restaurant, to the right you'll arrive at "Heavenly Kitchen Sichuan Dishes…." Hard choice, huh?

As we entered we saw the cold appetizers…this indeed looked like our destination. All the usual suspects from the thinly sliced Pig Ear to Fu Qi Fei Pien were in view.

The restaurant itself is fairly small with just a few tables.

As we looked over then menu, we noticed a few strangely familiar dishes like Spicy Fish Slices with Golden Mushroom, and Cumin Flavored Lamb. So while I selected a few appetizers, the Missus had a conversation with our Server. It seems that one of the new Owners is one of the former Chefs from Dede's on Convoy, thus the familiar dishes. According to the waitress he is originally from Chonqing, and this version of China Chef has been open since the end of August.

Here's our 3 appetizer plate(3 appetizers – $5.45):

The pickled greens and soybeans had a strange overly bitter flavor, and left an oily film on in my mouth, the marinated bamboo shoots looked really good, but were bland except for the flavor of sesame oil. The Fu Qi Fei Pien was not bad, but was lacking in Sichuan peppercorns, and the pieces were not cut into uniform slices, still it wasn't too bad.

Since we've eaten at Dede's we decided to try some different dishes, and started with the Chinese Bacon(Howie – it's your La Rou Chao La dish) with Spicy Green Pepper($7.95):

Slices of cured Pork Belly is stir fried with Leeks and dried red chilies. As expected the dish was on the salty side, though not as greasy as I thought it would be. The dish was surprisingly spicy, a very much "in your face" spicy.

Rice Crust with Chicken($8.95):

Not a good rendition of this classic dish, the sauce was on the watery side, and the usual deep chicken flavor was lacking.

Shrimp with Dry Red Pepper($9.45):

First off, we were impressed with all the good sized shrimp, which were not shelled, just lightly battered and fried, than stir-fried with scorched dried red chilies – think salt and pepper prawns(without the pepper) stir-fried with dried chilies. I've had several versions of this classic Chongqing Chili dish, and found this one to be a very one dimensional spicy, lacking the "buzz" of Sichuan Pepper, and the back of throat slow burn. The usual slight sweetness of these type of dishes was also missing. It was very spicy, though. Not a bad dish.

We found the dishes at China Chef to be more on the rustic side, and a bit one-dimensional. Sort of like Dede's with more heat.  I may be back in the future to try out a few other dishes, the potential is there. At least you can now take care of your Sichuan craving without driving down to Convoy. You'll find the prices at China Chef to be quite reasonable (from  $5.95-$12.95) as well.

China Chef Restaurant
9225 Mira Mesa Blvd #110
San Diego, CA 92126

Open Tues-Thurs 11am – 930pm
     Fri-Sat 11am – 10pm
     Sun 11am – 930pm
     Closed Mondays

Thanks for the recommendation Bruce T!

**** Golden City has closed

After a satisfying meal at the “new” Golden City(and quite a bit of leftovers as well), we decided that one good turn deserved another. This time we decided on 2 items that were “kept” from the old menu, and 1 new item that caught our fancy.

We started with an old favorite the Peking Duck, 2 courses, at eighteen bucks, pretty much a bargain. To our surprise, instead of  the slices of duck skin lying on shrimp chips, surrounded by “buns”, Golden City now does their Peking Duck “cart style”.

The Young Man wheeled our friend out on His own little cart and made short work of Him. After trimming off most of the skin, Mr Duck was taken to the back room and worked over.

Though I found the duck to be better flavored than the version from the Old Golden City, most of the rich subcutaneous fat had rendered off, and thereby losing some of the richness I enjoy. The Missus, not a fan of duck fat, thought these were very good. The duck was served with shredded Scallions and Hoisin Sauce. Only one small complaint; the scallions apparently had been lying around; they were tough, dry, and tasteless.

A steamer insert of buns was brought to the table, steaming hot. I thought these were much too thick and large for the petite slices of duck. Overall, not the highest quality duck, but a bargain at eighteen bucks. And let’s not forget the chopped duck in lettuce cups, the second course.

I daresay the Missus enjoys this more than the duck skin. Duck is stir fried with Scallions and Jicama, creating a great contrast in textures. The taste is a rich sweetness, to go along with hints of 5 spice.

One of my favorite dishes is Kwai Fei Chicken, a cold chicken dish(half chicken $8.95):

This version was much different than what I’m used too; first off, instead of the usual pale white color, the skin of the chicken was a light brown. The chicken also had a very nice 5 spice, wine, and soy flavor. I really didn’t need the minced ginger-scallion oil for flavoring at all. The chicken was cooked perfectly, no hint of blood dripping from the bones, and the meat was moist and tender.

The most satisfying dish of the evening was the Chaozhou Beef Stew ($12.95):

A Chiuchow version of the standard Beef Brisket with Turnip Hot Pot. The soup was brought to our table in a stainless steel hot pot, with flammable gel in the chamber below. Unfortunately, the Server forgot to light the gel, no big deal. The light broth was full of flavor, and much more complex than its color would indicate. The meat was a very flavorful brisket, the cut of meat also included the fat cap and the connective tissue, which could be somewhat off-putting to some, but not for us. Buried under then meat were matchstick sized slices of radish(daikon), along with preserved vegetable, which added to the flavor of the broth. All of this topped off with basil, cilantro, and scallions.

Man that was good!

It seems that the new version of Golden City serves up some pretty good food. I’m hoping that they can keep it up, and give us another option for Chinese Food in the Clairemont area.

Golden City Restaurant
5375 Kearny Villa Rd.
San Diego, CA 92123

Open Daily 11am – Midnight

We recently did a revisit post on 12/17/06, it can be found here.

**** Golden City has closed

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

Updates can be found here and here.