The New Year’s parties, such as they were, are history and this special year with all those zeroes seems to be unfolding just like any other. We already seem to be impervious to any particular attention it should be accorded.
Just in case you’d like to celebrate another kind of New Year, this is the week when Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans celebrate the beginning of their calendar year. It’s a time when families and friends gather for great feasts, often at restaurants. Why not go to one of the best Chinese restaurants in Orange County, and certainly one of the prettiest, and eat some terrific Asian food? If you don’t feel compelled to join the crowds, manage a dining adventure at Seafood World in Westminster in the near future.
Whenever we want to elicit plenty of “oohs” and “aahs” from our guests, this place does the trick; especially when they taste the fresh shellfish dishes for which Seafood World is justly famous. In addition, I appreciate very much the professional and friendly service.
Seafood World is the scene of many elaborate wedding banquets. In fact, it is so in demand, that owner Loc Buu (attorney and former diamond buyer) and his wife Annie (jewelry designer and smiling presence checking on diners) formed a symbiotic business relationship with the Anaheim Marriott hotel because the requests outstripped space availability. To date, approximately 100 wedding banquets have been held in the hotel’s newly redecorated ballrooms. It impressed me one evening to see hundreds of people in one ballrooms, hundreds more in another, all having course after course of Chinese food cooked by Loc’s employees and being served seamlessly by the hotel’s staff. So successful is this relationship that the hotel installed woks in its kitchen for the Seafood World cooks to use.
The restaurant is actually famous on two food fronts. The first is for their huge assortment of Hong Kong style dim sum dishes served from mid-morning through lunch every day. What a feast at a bargain price. Dim sum consists of those little plates of meats, seafood, vegetables and desserts you select at will from the stainless steel carts that are wheeled to your table every few minutes. Most of these dishes contain from three to six pieces of food. No matter what other dishes we choose, we always select the redolent little batons of meat wrapped in a wide rice noodle, sieu mai consisting of ground pork and spices tucked in an open-topped egg noodle wrapper, and chopped shrimp in a half-moon cloak of almost transparent wheat flour dough. Other plates that appear on my table time after time contain miniature steamed pork ribs, baked buns filled with succulent barbecued pork and tiny custard tarts for dessert (the best!). We might even slip one of the plates of sliced duck from a cart, along with crunchy Chinese broccoli drizzled with oyster sauce.
The restaurant’s second claim to fame is its fresh shellfish and seafood dishes, the likes of which are scarce indeed in this county. Begin impressing yourself or your friends with big, meaty crab claws (with most of the shell removed) coated in minced shrimp, then deep-fried. They are slipped into vegetable oil so hot that the outside sears immediately into a crunchy surface with sweet, moist crabmeat inside and no absorption of excess oil. Sometimes, after such an elegant teaser, we order the West Lake minced beef soup or winter melon soup. The beef soup is thick with bits of freshly chopped meat, undertones of cilantro in the long-simmered broth and ribbons of egg white streaming through it. Winter melon soup is a lighter broth with hearty chunks of the almost transparent and mild melon.
Sure to engage the attention of everyone at the table is a platter of lobster (from the live seafood tank) that has been stir-fried in a smoking hot wok with slices of ginger, garlic and chiles and then returned to the shell. The aroma alone is heady. Just as dazzling are the cold lobster salad in a wispy mayonnaise dressing, sans greens, and the cracked crab that has been sauteed with scallions and ginger. Sometimes we have the crab stir-fried with black beans and garlic.
Everyone is used to having fried calamari in Italian restaurants. But you must taste the Chinese version, here sprinkled with salt that has been singed in a dry wok with cracked, mild ho jao peppercorns.
The menu is fat with almost every dish we’ve come to know in Chinese restaurants. There are delicious stews of meat and vegetables, a house chow mein layered with mouth-filling flavors of several meats and vegetables, stir-fried beef or chicken chunks mingled with the sweet citrusy flavor of orange peel and the spicy snap of tiny chile peppers, and fried rice served in lotus leaves. Duck and chicken can be roasted, steamed, or stir-fried with any number of complementing sauces. For vegetable dishes, two of the best are stir-fried long beans (French haricots verts) and shiitake mushrooms with bok choy.
The restaurant is bathed in soft colors. Tables are always nicely napped; furnishings are of carved rosewood. A romantic element emerges in the many white trellises laced with ivy. Life is far too short to ignore the quality that Seafood World is presenting.
Chao publishes Chao’s Dinesty, a food, wine and travel newsletter, in Irvine.
At a glance
SEAFOOD WORLD
Address: 15351 Brookhurst St. (between McFadden and Bolsa avenues), Westminster
Phone: (714) 775-8056
Hours: 9:30 a.m. through dinner daily
Prices: Dim sum approximately $10 to $15 per person; a la carte menu items $6.95 to $12, with seafood at current market price
