Hey everyone,
Just thought I found an interesting place in San Francisco Chinatown. Usually Cafe Broadway is your typical good lunch spot for congee, wonton noodles, and other tasty carb-overload dishes. On occasion when eating lunch, I’ve noticed that there were some big tables reserved that had some fantastic looking seafood dishes (saw steamed razor clams with vermicelli, golden-yolk fried dungeness crab, and black bean steamed oysters). A bit odd at this type of place, especially with no displayed seafood menu anywhere, but curiosity overcame me and our family decided to try out a seafood dinner here.
Giving a quick call, it appears that they are willing to accommodate seafood cuisine if given a heads up, typically a day or so, but even as late as 4 pm (for courtesy sake, I’d try earlier). From what I can gather and speculate, the seafood is purchased from the nearby Chinatown fish markets (hence why an early call is suggested). There are no visible fish tanks seen in the restaurants.
Big surprise for our reservation though, they had mantis shrimp! I’ve only seen them once recently in the bay area (at Tai Yuan restaurant in Daly City and we only found that out after we were eating dinner and overhearing a server announce that fact to another table…). Asking the server about the mantis shrimp, they claim that they were flown in from around South East Asia and that’s about all I could find out (same info as Tai Yuan’s server). In any case, we decided to reserve that along with steamed fish and a dungeness crab and ordering whatever veggies they had when we arrived.
Starting off the dinner and unsure of a protein source, the waitress suggested a deep fried squab.
Usually, I don’t expect to eat squab from Chinatown, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not overcooked and fairly juicy, I was pretty happy with it overall.
Following that, we order mantis shrimp maggi-style.
Very well done, more of a wet style than a dry style. But the mantis shrimp weren’t overcooked and I am simply reminded of a few bites in Hong Kong (actually the plasticy plates we were eating out of reminded me of dai pai dongs)
Also since we got a little (very) greedy, we decided to try salt and pepper mantis shrimp.
Salt and pepper style was done fairly well, with little grease and a good amount of spice. These things were pretty tasty, though my preference is still with the maggi-style.
Over indulging per usual, we went gung-ho and gone for steamed crab as well.
Expecting vermicelli but getting some flat rice noodles was a treat. Went well with the garlic and the crab juices.
Following that, we went with some clear broth beef stew.
Not the most beautiful dish to view, but the taste was pretty spot on. The peppery broth gave the dish a nice kick, while the beef stew was not too tough and the radish absorbed the broth fairly well.
Lastly, finished the seafood feast with a simple steamed black bass.
The fish was not overcooked, and the ginger and scallions brought out the flavors nicely. Not my favorite fish to eat, but steamed well.
We ordered ong-choy with fermented tofu (not pictured) and that was on the saltier end, but still nicely done.
Honestly, I’m fairly surprised at this meal. I Did not imagine finding a well cooked seafood dinner (especially the rarely seen mantis shrimp!) in Chinatown. Very big props, though at our saturday dinner, there were only two waiters with a fairly smallish crowd. As we were preparing to leave, a small table next to us brought out some Hennessy and were enjoying their soon to be feast (they ordered the mantis shrimp as well). I’m sure they were regulars and knew what to order.
Has anyone seen mantis shrimp around the bay? Would love to try it at other places.
