Rabbi Sazerac brings up some valid points,yet my concern about the potential impact of undeserved negative commentary is unchanged.

I did not see Gypsy Boy's review as particularly negative. In fact, I found his comments to be very even handed and fair:

So I learn that Chinese food is regional. I guess that makes sense. Different parts of the country specialize in different things. Sorta like the good ol’ U S of A, huh? Well, we just discovered one of the regional cuisines of China that has just gone down many notches on our scale of deliciousness. Not that the food wasn’t good. It just wasn’t particularly to our taste.

I write of Silver Seafood. A place that, while it has many adherents and a number of posts, does not seem to have its own dedicated thread. While we weren’t thrilled, we do recognize that this might have had more to do with us than with the place.

Even if someone posts negative comments, who decides if they are "undeserved" or not? Tastes are subjective as this board proves over and over. One LTHr's beloved McRib is another LTHr's worst nightmare. Both opinions are valuable. I think the open dialogue here is healthy and encourages debate. On numerous occasions, I've seen people go back and reevaluate a place they initially looked upon unfavorably, largely due to the discourse on these boards. Sometimes they like it more, sometimes their original opinion remains firm, but I find that LTH encourages people to be more open minded about food. Do we assign a food cop to determine if someone is being unfair? Send people out for palate reeducation if they happen to express an opinion that others disagree with? Personally, I appreciate the diversity of experiences on LTH and, lacking evidence to the contrary, like to think that most people who come to this site do as well.

The effect is further amplified, possibly to an unhealthy extent here at LTH where the active posters represent only the tinyest tip of the lth iceberg and most visitors to the site come to see what those posters have to say, rather than to make a contribution of thier own.

I don't think that a lot of people just stumble upon LTH. As an example, if I were an innocent consumer looking for information on Silver Seafood and I googled it, the results I get are as follows:
1) The Silver Seafood site
2) Yelp
3) Menu Pages
4) Urban Spoon
5) Zagat
6) Center Stage Chicago
7) Chicago Reader
8 ) Time Out Chicago
9) Planet 99
10) Outside In, then Chow Hound, then Savory Cities and on and on and on....In fact, it is not until you reach page 4 that you find ANY LTH results. An uneducated consumer that only reads the headline of a post and is affected by it enough NOT to visit a restaurant is highly unlikely to find this board at all. As for all of those views without response posts? People lurk. I read the boards for a few years and did not begin to post until last year. People watch, they read, they learn, and eventually, they post. It seems a bit condescending to assume that visitors aren't capable of forming their own opinions of a restaurant just because a long time poster happens to feel strongly one way or another. LTH is fantastically awesome and all, but there are a LOT of sources of information out there on the world wide webs, with LTH being one of them.

I do appreciate what you are saying, Kudho, but this former lurker respectfully disagrees.

If you were an "innocent consumer" who stumbled upon LTHForum while looking for information about Silver Seafood, what you'd now find is a 2 page thread that would initially make you think, "Oh cool, there must be lots of good information here." Then you'd open it only to have to wade through an esoteric discussion that - but for a few posts - has very little utility when it comes to helping you figure out whether to eat there or what to order if you do. Unfortunately, this is what happens when people use these threads to criticize someone else's posting style rather than offer useful input about the establishment. Believe me, I have been guilty of this aplenty, but I am trying to remind myself that it almost always ends up detracting from what LTHForum should be about. It is my humble suggestion that further comments about what does or does not make for a good post be taken over to site chat, so we can try to salvage this thread's utility for those who are actually interested in Silver Seafood.

O.K. KennyZ. Point well taken.

With respect to the main subject of this thread:

I appreciate that GypsyBoy was trying to be thoughtful in his carefully composed post and that he had only the best intentions on his visit to SS. I really think that where he went wrong was in the ordering. I mean, vegetable chow fun with a side of broccoli is not going to be an exciting combination anywhere outside of an ashram. I can only assume that the militant vegans forcing him to order these dishes at gunpoint were out of frame when his pictures were taken. As noted in the posts above, there are lots of better and tastier options on the menu, but finding them can be difficult in an unfamiliar Chinese restaurant where there may be hundreds of choices. Been there lots of times myself.

Here's a strategy I can recommend to increase your odds. Look for the banquet or group dinner menus, which, if you're lucky will be in English. Ignore the "dinner for two/three/four" sections which may be aimed at non asians and, even if there's only two of you, focus instead on the menus for groups of eight and up , which are almost always geared for Chinese tastes. There will usually be several different options at various prices, with the more expensive menus featuring more abalone/shark fin/sea cucumber type dishes. What you're searching for are the dishes that show up repeatedly on these menus, across price points. These will often be the true specialties of the house, the dishes people come there for or at least dishes with a broad appeal to native eaters. At Silver Seafood I think you'll find mixed seafood soup with dried scallops, frog legs, crispy skin chicken, clams in black bean sauce, steamed fish, lobster with ginger and onion, spicy salt and pepper squid, walnut shrimp, seafood casserole in XO sauce, steamed oysters, hong sue fish fillet and peapod shoots with garlic among those that show up over and over. Choose from these. Some dishes (like vegetable chow fun and plain broccoli) won't be there at all. There is a reason for this.

There really are some great meals to be had at Silver seafood. I hope GypsyBoy will try it again, and let us know how things turn out.

Golly.

What hath Gypsy Boy wrought? I'm glad I took that time to compose my post carefully; even happier that I tried hard for even-handedness.

In retrospect, I should point out that my initial paragraph was entirely tongue-in-cheek. Apparently it was tongue so deep in cheek that no one realized that I was poking fun at my own ignorance.

That said, I've found this thread enormously interesting and valuable. I won't weigh in here on the general tenor of the thread because I believe Kennyz is right: this runs the risk of losing the point of the thread.

kuhdo wrote:Here's a strategy I can recommend to increase your odds. Look for the banquet or group dinner menus, which, if you're lucky will be in English. Ignore the "dinner for two/three/four" sections which may be aimed at non asians and, even if there's only two of you, focus instead on the menus for groups of eight and up , which are almost always geared for Chinese tastes. There will usually be several different options at various prices, with the more expensive menus featuring more abalone/shark fin/sea cucumber type dishes. What you're searching for are the dishes that show up repeatedly on these menus, across price points. These will often be the true specialties of the house, the dishes people come there for or at least dishes with a broad appeal to native eaters. At Silver Seafood I think you'll find mixed seafood soup with dried scallops, frog legs, crispy skin chicken, clams in black bean sauce, steamed fish, lobster with ginger and onion, spicy salt and pepper squid, walnut shrimp, seafood casserole in XO sauce, steamed oysters, hong sue fish fillet and peapod shoots with garlic among those that show up over and over. Choose from these. Some dishes (like vegetable chow fun and plain broccoli) won't be there at all. There is a reason for this.

This, my dear friend kuhdo, is precisely and exactly what I had hoped to get. There were several initially helpful posts in this regard with people steering me in a helpful direction. And while I understand and appreciate what you have to say--even as I disagree--I would have been better served (and, I like to think, so would anyone new to Silver Seafood and this thread) by the above paragraph. That gives me extremely useful information. We had every intention of returning to Silver Seafood before the great brouhaha. But now we have information that can help us find our way. And who knows, maybe we'll call you and meet for dinner so we can learn about this cuisine.

Oh, one more thing:

kuhdo wrote:I really think that where he went wrong was in the ordering. I mean, vegetable chow fun with a side of broccoli is not going to be an exciting combination anywhere outside of an ashram. I can only assume that the militant vegans forcing him to order these dishes at gunpoint were out of frame when his pictures were taken.

As it happens, the Lovely Dining Companion and I both LIKE vegetables. And we both LIKE broccoli!

On a more serious note, we truly didn't expect to find yet more of it under the house-special and we honestly expected that since the broccoli advertised a garlic sauce and the chow fun didn't, that we would be getting different dishes (different in the sense of flavor). They were different, but the difference was likely too subtle for us to truly appreciate.

Finally: thanks to all who have contributed so far. I genuinely look forward to reading more about Silver Seafood, about what's good, what's not, what and how to order, and so forth. Indeed, this thread has made me consider the possibility of talking to some folks knowledgeable in different cuisines and having them put together a basic--and I mean really basic--introduction to the cuisine for the ignorant: its contours, its principal dishes, how to order in a restaurant serving that kind of food, and so on. A one-page DIY guide to Hong Kong cuisine, to Punjabi cuisine, to Oaxacan, to Polish, and so forth. There are so many choices in the Chicagoland region that no one could possibly be expert in everything. A set of LTH DIY guides could be extraordinarily valuable. (If anyone else finds this idea interesting, please PM me!).

Dave

GypsyBoy:

Glad you found my input helpful. Meeting for dinner at SS sounds like a great idea. Let's set something up soon.

Oh, and one other thing, regarding my ashram/vegan comment it was also... (almost) entirely tongue-in-cheek.

see you soon,
Don

Gypsy Boy wrote:

kuhdo wrote:Here's a strategy I can recommend to increase your odds. Look for the banquet or group dinner menus, which, if you're lucky will be in English. Ignore the "dinner for two/three/four" sections which may be aimed at non asians and, even if there's only two of you, focus instead on the menus for groups of eight and up , which are almost always geared for Chinese tastes. There will usually be several different options at various prices, with the more expensive menus featuring more abalone/shark fin/sea cucumber type dishes. What you're searching for are the dishes that show up repeatedly on these menus, across price points. These will often be the true specialties of the house, the dishes people come there for or at least dishes with a broad appeal to native eaters. At Silver Seafood I think you'll find mixed seafood soup with dried scallops, frog legs, crispy skin chicken, clams in black bean sauce, steamed fish, lobster with ginger and onion, spicy salt and pepper squid, walnut shrimp, seafood casserole in XO sauce, steamed oysters, hong sue fish fillet and peapod shoots with garlic among those that show up over and over. Choose from these. Some dishes (like vegetable chow fun and plain broccoli) won't be there at all. There is a reason for this.

This, my dear friend kuhdo, is precisely and exactly what I had hoped to get.

I greatly appreciate this, too--and it would have prevented an ordering "faux pas" that occured on the night we went with a group of eight about three months ago.

All of us must have been engaged in non-food conversation so voluble that none of us paid any attention to what the others were ordering. (And no one had stepped up to be our "organizer.") As a result, seven of us ordered dishes built around chicken, resulting in less than optimal variety when the food was brought to the table. The nice waitress was perhaps a bit shy, or gave us more credit for knowing what we were doing than she should have, because she didn't say anything while taking the order. (Little did she know that a question like "You do know you all ordered chicken, don't you?" would have been most welcome!) An older woman, who I assume was the proprietess, came over as the dishes were coming out, and said, with a bit of well-deserved sass, "I hope you like chicken."

This is the peril of paying attention to something other than food while in a restaurant.

It is never a good idea to go to a Chinese restaurant with a group and let everyone order individually. While special requests can of course be accomodated somebody needs to make sure the entire order holds together as a meal. I'm assuming that everyone is planning to share all the dishes which is the Chinese style and what is intended. If not, and people are just going to have the single dish they ordered, anothe cuisine would be a better choice.

Gypsy Boy wrote: And who knows, maybe we'll call you and meet for dinner so we can learn about this cuisine.

Dave

Maybe we can plan an outing of LTHers, so we can order even more dishes. The combination of guidance and variety make for a lovely learning experience.

Sounds great to me!

We have always wondered about Silver Seafood ( as a post Green Mill option)...and I agree that the thread title only served to lure us in to read more rather than discouraging us...as a result, could not have been happier with our first visit (a few minor service glitches notwithstanding)....just a wonderful place with fresh, light (not bland) ingredients in all dishes.....

So bottom line is, Silver Seafood will be getting a lot of our $ in the coming years due to the discussion this topic generated....thanks sideways thumb guy!

A group of 12 of us, lead by kuhdo descended on Silver Seafood last night in an attempt to show the less bland side of SS. For the most part it was a success. While SS will never have the out front spice and bold flavor of LSC, Double Li or Katey's it was an excellent example of what good HK seafood could be. The one dish that was really off was my suggestion of Pigeon with ginger and scallion which came in a strikingly different (and not for the better) preparation than I had previously had there... enjoy.

Group Shot



Cold Platter: Jellyfish, Dry Beef, Cuttlefish, Pork, Pickle


The jellyfish and the dry beef were standouts. The jelly fish was the most spicy thing and meal but very fresh. Much less chew than normal

Beverages




Nice, simple cold sake and a wonderfully refreshing Mango-Watermelon drink.

Dry Scallop Soup with Fish Maw



I enjoyed this soup very much. I found it to be a perfect example of a "delicate" and "light" soup that had flavor. There was a hint of smokiness to from the dry scallop and the fish maw were interesting textural notes like a feather light sponge. Others thought it was lacking on flavor but I could make a meal of this (if I were on a diet anyway )

Crispy Skin Chicken





Not the best ever but a solid version for sure. I'd order it again here.

Clams with Black Bean




This was right on target. Mellower than some versions but also with a lower salt content. At many places I only want to eat a few of these even though I love the flavor because of the salt... I could easily have eaten the whole plate but I held myself back so as not to tick off the rest of the group.

Lobster HK Style




Not sure about this one... I only managed to grab a tiny bite left in the front of a claw so I guess it was a hit.

Pea Shoots w/ Garlic & Ong Choy w/ Fermented Beancurd



Both were wonderfully fresh and perfectly prepared. All greens should be this good!


Chinese Sausage (Lap Cheong) Fried Rice



This is not listed in the regular menu but it is listed as a course on the banquet menus. A wise decision by kuhdo to order this. It is a very mild fried rice similar to Yangzhou fried rice and worked very well with the other dishes where as a dark, soy sauce based fried rice would not.

"Pigeon with ginger and onion (scallion)"



I'm using quotations here because this dish bore no resemblance to the last time I ordered it when the preparation was more like a crispy skin chicken with ginger and scallion dipping sauce. This may be the normal preparation but it was, IMHO, a bad one. They hacked the bird, battered it(!), and deep fried it before coating it in a heavy sauce. This is the dark side of HK cooking in that there are some things that are not better fried in batter and coated with a starchy sauce. While this prep works fine with many varieties of fish and shellfish, it does NOT work on fowl... in any way... Not sure why they did this but I felt pretty bad for the bird and attempted to make it up to him/her...


I'm guessing it would have been happier if we had just left it alone (and so would I... sorry all, my bad!)

Flounder Two Ways - "Tender and Crispy Flounder" (I think)




Flounder with the tails fried and the front fillets steamed in sauce. Solid. The tails could have used a bit more crisping but the flavor was right on. The steamed portion was cooked perfectly so that it didn't fall apart in the sauce.

Taro Duck




Interesting combination of pressed duck and mashed potatoes (er,taro... which obviously isn't a potato but carries a similar texture in this dish. The crisp portion on top makes the dish but we seemed to have lost some of ours. Was good with the skin.. .was "eh" without.

Salt 'n Peppa Squid


Good but clearly sat in the kitchen for a few minuets before they got it out. As I'm sure you all know, this dish needs to be screaming hot from the fryer to be killer.

"Rub the lamp and make a wish for exciting food, will ya?"



Post meal scene of destruction.



M.I.A - steamed bass dish that I heard was good but was gone before I could grab a bite

I wish heartily I had been there! It all looks mouthwatering - and full of things I could never convince my husband to order (i.e., fish).

I'd like to hear more about the lobster from someone who managed to snag more than a bite!

I had a great time last night, both with respect to the company and the food. Thanks to Gypsy Boy for getting the whole deal started and for setting this up and to Stagger for his excellent photos and thoughtful post. The food was good though as fairly noted above there were a few dishes slightly off the usual mark. Still, I thought a good meal overall, and enough to make the point about HK food. There were several other dishes I'd liked to have ordered, but enough was enough and things got a little pricier than I would have liked as it wss (my apologies).

One minor correction to the above...the ong choy was in fermented beancurd (not garlic) sauce, and was really good.

kuhdo wrote:There were several other dishes I'd liked to have ordered, but enough was enough and things got a little pricier than I would have liked as it wss (my apologies).

Don,

I'd be interested in the other dishes you would have liked to order.

Seems a really solid meal, good enough that this ~shrug~ on SS will be going back soon.

Enjoy,
Gary

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:I'd like to hear more about the lobster from someone who managed to snag more than a bite!

I had two bites of claw that were pretty good, I don't know how the tail tasted or how the texture was. Again, not a lot of flavor to me, but it wasn't a bad flavor. It was in a brown lobster sauce. I have no idea how much it costs, but I heard it was pricey, and that would prevent me from ordering on my own. It seemed to be cut somewhat randomly.

I think I am still in the Gypsy Boy camp on the blandness of the food, but it was very enjoyable, and there were no leftovers. I too enjoyed the clams, fish cooked two ways, fried chicken (but absolutely, needed dunked in the salt and pepper mixture) and the pea shoots. I thought the food was very authentic in the HK way.

Gary:
Other dishes worth ordering.......
Seafood x.o. sauce casserole
Soft (japanese) tofu with mushroom
Steamed chicken with ginger and onion
Duck with assorted meats
Sizziling Beef tenderloin with black pepper
Sa-da beef sizziling platter (can be hit or miss)
Abalone stir fry with mushroom
Hong sue fish fillet with pork
Pork with bitter melon
Pea shoots with crabmeat
salt and pepper dungeness crab
Salt and pepper pork chop
Smelt can also be very good, depending on supply
walnut shrimp
stir fry conch
Beff chow fun dry style (sub duck meat for beef)

Let me know if you're interested in getting a group together!

“Daddy, daddy, is Hong Kong food bland?”
“Why do you ask, sweetie?”
“Some mean boy at school said it was bland! And he made it sound like a bad thing!”
“Well, Virginia, it’s complicated.”

Indeed. (The estimable Piers Egmont de Hoyden addressed this very issue in The Evolution of Cuisine, From Cambrian to Recent Times (1961). I discovered de Hoyden in this remarkable post by Mike G.) As I found and as I like to think de Hoyden would agree, the answer revolves not only around one’s palate and personal preferences but around one’s choice of adjectives and nouns, as well. One person’s perception of a dish might very well be that it is bland while another might describe the identical dish as delicate or subtly flavored. And both may be true to their reactions to the dish. Of course, reactions and palates notwithstanding, different words have different connotations to different people. “Bland”—to pick an adjective out of the proverbial hat—may imply negative associations to some people and not to others. But I digress.

Was our thirteen course dinner at Silver Seafood bland? Yes, some of it was. Was it enjoyable? Very much so. As has been noted, some dishes were less than edifying, for different reasons. In fairness, some of the dishes I would describe as bland, others might describe using other, less freighted, terms. But for some of the courses, I’ll stick to bland. A few I simply found uninteresting, a number, however, were definitely worth repeating. The lesson I learned from this visit was that Hong Kong food is unlikely to ever be my favorite Chinese regional cuisine. And, in fact, Chinese is never likely to be my favorite “foreign” food, either. But, in the immortal words of someone else, tomorrow is another day.



Dry Beef, Pork, Pickle, Jellyfish, Cuttlefish
We began with a cold appetizer platter featuring a nice selection of items.


A small selection of the above
Jellyfish, for the uninitiated, looks for all the world like slices of onion, slow cooked over a low heat for a long time. I don’t get a lot of flavor except by what of what it’s cooked in; crunchy without being crispy. The cuttlefish looked like small planks of squid but had the perfect bite, just enough resistance (as opposed to the salt and pepper squid, see below). Smokey, delicate, flavor. Delicious. The dried beef and pork looked like slices from a terrine or a chopped sausage. Again, relatively subtle flavor, but quite delicious. I remember commenting that the beef was very beefy. I took another bite and couldn’t find a better way to describe it. I still can’t. Something (help!) made the beef taste very earthy, beefy, in a very pleasing way. I didn’t pick up the flavor of something else and truly have no idea what it was that accented it that way (or perhaps, more likely, it was the cut of beef involved...)



Dry scallops seafood soup
Unreservedly wonderful. Perhaps because I didn’t find it particularly delicate or bland or lightly seasoned. I know others would disagree with my characterization but however defined, the soup was wonderful. A sour tang to it without making it a sour soup, nice depth of flavor, and a great introduction to the meal ahead. The mesh-like slices, I am reliably informed, are fish maw. They lacked much flavor or texture and the dried scallops didn't seem to be in evidence (having, presumably, disintegrated). However it’s done, it’s great. (I have a different name than Stagger based on my reading of the menu, but I might be in error; kuhdo is the expert here.)



Crispy skin chicken (with shrimp chips)
Fried, hacked, juicy, and delicious. Accompanied by small dishes filled with finely ground mixed salt and pepper, it would be hard to dislike this (unless, I suppose, you simply don’t like chicken). The crispy skin, the juicy meat… Not a terribly complex dish nor a dish of many layered flavors, but a perfect example of “less is more.”



Clams with black bean sauce
Unlike Stagger, I (and at least several others sitting near me), found this unexceptional. The dish—a beautiful presentation, by the way—simply didn’t excite or impress me. Perfectly acceptable but no more than that. I wouldn’t refuse it if it were on the table but I wouldn’t order it and wouldn’t recommend it, either. Perhaps it’s a delicate/bland issue, but I don’t think so. Instead, what I disliked about it was that I found the sauce uninteresting. Neither subtle nor presenting a depth of flavors, the sauce simply lacked interest or character and so. Those of us who didn’t actively dislike it agreed, I think, that it was simply nothing special.



Lobster in lobster sauce
There was lobster in them thar shells, you just had to do your own cracking to get at it. The lobster was cooked, hacked into serving size pieces (sort of) and sauced. Enjoyable but for the effort. (I couldn’t find this on the menu though I may have missed it. Encountering the dish for us was the fortuitous result of kuhdo doing the ordering and having a server who knew him!)


Pea shoots with garlic
Excellent and extremely popular dish. Neither especially delicate nor especially strongly flavored, this just married the lovely fresh flavor of the pea shoots with the perfect sauce. If not the first, it was one of the very first dishes to disappear.



Steamed whole fish (bass)
I do not have a strong memory of this dish other than that it was pleasant (I think that’s called damning with faint praise). The fish was cooked well, the sauce/broth pleasant but not something that stuck in my mind, either positively or negatively. I enjoyed it, I believe, but wouldn’t note it as something to be sure to order in the future.



a brief pause to introduce some of our companions: leek, Stagger, kuhdo


[picture not taken]
Ong choy with fermented beancurd
Not as popular overall with the table but a hit with me. I found the ong choy, also known as water spinach, to be a bit more effort to chew but I greatly enjoyed the sauce. It is one thing to read “fermented beancurd” and go, “eeeeeww” but, like fish sauce, it’s an ingredient whose name belies a depth and deliciousness that’s hard to beat.



Chinese sausage (Lap Cheong) fried rice
I liked this just fine but it was also completely ordinary. I have had the same dish elsewhere many times, usually made and tasting about the same. A few places have nailed it but this was pretty much unexceptional. (For what it’s worth, it is listed on the Chinese menu only—not the Chinese-American menu, as is the case with a number of items that we ordered.)



Pigeon with green onion
It’s hard to disagree with Stagger’s description above. It certainly wasn’t a bad dish; there just wasn’t anything to like about it. It was overdone in every way and, if you were lucky enough to find a real bite of meat, you would have been more fortunate than I was. I’d probably agree to give it another shot, though largely out of curiosity. Eminently skip-able in our rendition.


[picture not taken]
Fish two ways
The steamed filet was very good and, I suspect, exemplary of what kuhdo and others refer to when they speak about Hong Kong food being delicately or lightly seasoned. This was precisely that. The fish was steamed perfectly and held together just enough to get to your mouth before dissolving in a nicely complementary sauce. No overpowering flavors, more accents, if you will. The battered, deep-fried bones were, um, uh…. Well, they were, uh… Not to my taste. As instructed, we sucked the little meat that was there (the bones were so delicate than any other approach would have resulted in a mouthful of bones), but all I ended up with was a mouth full of smaller bones, gelatinous bone-holding-together stuff, and skin. Someone’s delicacy perhaps, but not mine. (Another dish I am unable to identify on the menu; the English names are not always sufficient to be certain, but my suspicion is that a description of the dish would enable anyone to order it.)



Deep-fried duck with taro
As I said to kuhdo, Chinese kishke. The outside could have been crisper (and no, I don't know where most of it was; this pic was snapped as it was placed on our table)—which would have added—though my pieces were crispy enough to enjoy the aim of the dish. The duck was just ducky (sorry, couldn’t resist)—which is to say not at all dry (somehow juicy is never a word I associate with duck) and very toothsome. The taro “coating” reminded me, as has been noted, of nothing so much as mashed potatoes but, for something that sounds unappetizing, it was one of my favorites of the evening. The dish was again, lightly seasoned, but it worked entirely. Perhaps this is a dish that is more about texture than flavor. I find, as I experiment with restaurants, cuisines, approaches to cooking, and so forth, that too often we focus on flavor to the exclusion (or at least the relegation) of anything else. Sometimes—as with this taro duck—the tremendous variety of textures within a single dish are a delightful surprise. I can see how even crispier skin would have added to the effect, but I liked it fine the way I had it.



Salt and pepper squid
There is, I find, no matter the cuisine, a range of acceptable for the freshness of squid. Ideally, it is what I would call, for lack of a more accurate descriptor, al dente, a slight resistance to the tooth, a texture that is at once appealing in its firmness and delectable for its nearly immediate acquiescence. The normal range encompasses a lot of presentations and earns anywhere from a B to an A+. I found that this squid was farther down the normal range, about a B+. Not chewy and yet not quite as “acquiescent” as I would have hoped. That said, it was clear that this dish came from the deep fryer only moments before. It, too, fell into the delicately seasoned category. I liked it well enough, but this dish exemplified why Hong Kong cuisine will never be my favorite. A nice counterpoint in an otherwise spicier, more assertive meal, perhaps, but coming at the end of a meal which was largely somewhere in my delicate-to-bland universe, it was sort of the squid that broke the camel’s back. I found myself wanting more: more flavor, more spice, more…something! I could enjoy it on its own terms. I can even see others relishing it with enthusiasm (albeit with even fresher squid). But when following what preceded, it was just a little too little, instead of a little too much.



Two hours later...

Clearly, going to Silver Seafood (or any restaurant) with a large group enables you to taste from a fairly wide sampling of dishes. The Lovely Dining Companion and I overordered and were still quite limited in the number of things we could have. The group’s ordering power allowed us to sample thirteen dishes, a respectable number under any circumstances. And it would have been surprising to me if all nine of us at the table enjoyed all thirteen dishes without exception. We didn’t. Some of us liked things that others wouldn’t touch. And vice versa. But I learned a thing or two about Hong Kong cuisine—and that was my aim. For those who are only now joining this thread, kuhdo’s advice upthread is an excellent, very well-conceived, short paragraph of ordering advice. Keeping his advice in mind, I looked at the back of the menu for the large group pre-set menus and found many of the dishes we ordered there. For this advice alone I am greatly indebted to kuhdo. For his explanations, teaching, and irreplaceable assistance on Saturday night, I am greatly in his debt. We won’t be agreeing on Hong Kong cuisine any time soon—but then, I’ll be more careful about my word choice in the future, too. Although there are dishes that fully (and richly) deserve the epithet “bland”—even at Hong Kong restaurants—the word can mislead and my lesson is to consider what I write more carefully.

I should note that service was bumpy. We were served our cold appetizer fairly quickly. Then, after a slight delay, soup bowls were presented. Between the bowls and the soup, however, was a very, very long wait. Then, as feared and imagined, nine dishes all followed very quickly. Needless to say, a more even spacing would have been easier for everyone (servers included); I have noticed on both visits to Silver Seafood that a very few servers cover a large, busy room. I’m not familiar enough with the restaurant to speculate, but I can and will say that way in which we were served didn’t help. However, we were enjoying the meal and the company enough that the delay was a bump, albeit not entirely minor. Then, as we were winding down from the onslaught, we realized that two dishes were still missing; either the server or the kitchen (or both) had forgotten them. The duck gave every indication of having been made and then allowed to sit in the kitchen, forgotten. The squid came out so hot from the fryer that its delayed appearance can only have resulted from inattention on someone’s part. Still, service was (usually) with a smile and the glitches did not truly detract from a fun time.

Plates of almond cookies, fortune cookies, and sliced oranges completed the meal. Except, sadly, for one diner. Nicole’s fortune cookie:






Thanks to all those who came; it was fun and delicious and I’d even do it again!

I wish I could have made it to this dinner.

You know, some of the most expensive ingredients used in Chinese cooking are tasteless. Take sea cucumber, shark's fin and birds nest. All have no taste by themselves, but are cooked with other ingredients to borrow the flavor. Ironically, these ingredients are more popular in Hong Kong than they are in mainland China...

I have eaten at Silver Seafood 3 times during the last month, after learning about the restaurant from this board. Thank you so much for all the previous reviews. I "tested" the restaurant with my husband first in early June, and then brought a 15 person family party there (the majority of the group were Hong Kong natives) for my second visit. My relatives were so pleasantly surprised that I went back later that week for a third time with a smaller subset of our group. Each time, I selected one of the family set dinners, which are a great deal.

It was so nice to find a restaurant on the North Side serving traditional Cantonese cuisine, and a nice alternative to Sun Wah, due to the roomy dining room. Parking is also convenient with the free adjacent lot. The only minuses were that the restaurant decor is a little dated, the vibe a little quiet (it was never crowded during each of our visits even on Friday/Saturday nights), and the service a little slow (after all the food is out). However, everyone in my family was satisfied with the quality of food and the generous portions. In addition, the menu does not have as much variety as some of the Chicago Chinatown restaurants. Dishes I particularly enjoyed during the three dinners include the ginger onion twin lobster, ginger onion crab, chan giang pork ribs, mixed seafood basket, steamed oysters with black bean sauce, and combination fried rice with chinese sausage.

This restaurant is a great option for those of us on the North Side who want a proper Cantonese dinner and are short on the time to drive all the way down to Chinatown. I disagree with the title of this thread, and would give it two thumbs up as one of the better authentic Chinese options in the Chicago area.