Silver Seafood; friendly, but...?

I wanted to try this for years since it was glowingly reviewed by so many on CH. Then later, reports appeared about a slump. Even later, hints that maybe it had bounced back.

I'm not expert here, but for what it's worth, we went there for an early dinner/late lunch recently and had great service and...pleasant food.

It was cold that day (hard to imagine lately that we had a few days of actual Chicago-autumn cold weather). So we sampled the hot and sour soup and one that was on special.

I have at least had h & s soup at a number of other places, and this one seemed on the mild side all around - not that intense of a broth, not that sour, but fine.

The special soup we ordered after asking our waiter to translate the specials on the wall. He happily, and in quite broken English, went through every item, and after some prodding, what was in them. The soup we ordered had dried seafood (abalone, a white fish, scallop) and dried longans that had been steamed for 4 hours to make them soft, all served in a mild broth. Interesting, but nothing that made me want to order it again. I can imagine a history behind dried seafood items - the need to store it for long periods perhaps (?) because of seasonality or transport (?), but these rehydrated versions had little of the interest that their fresh cousins have to my tastebuds.

While we were waiting for our food, the manager came up and talked to us about the dish, telling us the name, translated, meant The Monk Jumped Over the Wall, the story being that a monk, not allowed to eat meat, smelled this cooking and was so overcome by the aroma that he leapt over a wall to sample some.

We also split a dish that included octopus, scallops, shrimp and bok choy in "x.o. sauce," which we liked, but again were not overwhelmed with. The seafood was not particularly outstanding in terms of flavor, but had been cooked appropriately (meaning not overcooked).

So, these were only 3 dishes, really, and we did enjoy them. The staff there were very friendly and willing to help us out with ideas, translations, etc. But nothing struck me as being an amazing seafood dish. What have others ordered there that stood out? I wouldn't mind going back and trying a second time.

We haven't been there since the pre-slump rumor days, so I'm not going to remember everything, but the salt & pepper squid/cuttlefish was always a stand-out. (Though it was dissed in the various slump reports, along with everything else.)

At least 1 or 2 of the roasted duck treatments were terrific. There are at least 3 or 4 to choose from. Alas, I cannot remember the exact titles of the ones we had.

The "hollow vegetable" in garlic sauce is an absolute must. (This has been identified byothers as water spinach. I forget its transliterated name.)

There was also a form of ribs, utterly unlike chinese or barbeque that we very much enjoyed. Apparently deep-fried, hot and glistening and very salty.

At this point, memory fades, but there were at least 2 or 3 other dishes over a half dozen visits that were very delicious.

Did you order from the large menu or the smaller one? The large one appears to be devoted to a comprehensive list of Chinese/Am. dishes which they execute in absolutely competent generic style. The yummy stuff is all concentrated on the smaller menu. At least this was the case last spring.

We did order from the smaller menu, except for the special. I'll try to remember your recommendations next time I go there.