Silver Ark - Revisited

*** Silver Ark has closed and is now Siam Nara Restauant

We first visited Silver Ark several weeks past, and arrived at the end of Dim Sum service, since I thought the service was quite good, and the food showed some promise; I used the photos from that visit as the "Guess the Dim Sum" post. So in order to see if the promise was fulfilled we arrived at 11am on a recent weekend morning.

The smaller than it looks dining area was about two-thirds full.

Because of space and staff limitations, there are only two carts circulating through the dining area at any given moment, though the Servers will take orders for specific dishes.

We started with the dish we found so promising on our previous visit. The porridge with pork and preserved egg:

And what we had thought about the really great bowl of Jook we had on our last visit was true. Though there was a very generous amount of preserved egg, and strips of pork, rather than ground pork, the porridge was not as rich and full of flavor. I guess having it simmer for several hours really made the difference. It was still pretty good.

The Wu Gok(Deep Fried Taro Balls):

These had way too much taro, and not enough pork, which threw the flavor off. Just okay.

Shrimp and Scallop Dumpling:

By far the best Dim Sum dish of the day. Lot's of shrimp flavor. The only downside was that the wrappers were too thick making the skin tough and dry.

The Stuffed Bean Curd Skin:

These were overcooked, the bean curd skin were tough, and almost crunchy in places. Terrible.

Shrimp and Chive Har Gow:

We both enjoyed the good chive flavor, and the shrimp was pretty good. These dumplings suffered from the same ailment as the Shrimp and Scallop dumpling, the wrappers were too thick and dry.

We had also ordered Cheong Fun with Dried Shrimp, and as our meal was ending it arrived.

This was a very strange dish. I don't know what the reason was for pan-frying the Cheong Fun was. Perhaps it was sitting around? But pan frying the Cheong Fun ruined the dish, the noodle had a crust, and the interior had melted and were molten. Pan frying had also changed the flavor, and not for the good. In addition a little dish of Hoisin was provided instead of the usual sweet soy. I dunno, but this ain't what I ordered.

Still the price was right. All this came out to $20. Not bad.

Here's a little postscipt. We were in the area again recently and dropped by for a recent late afternoon "snack".

We started with the Thousand Year Egg and Fish Fillet w/Cilantro soup($9.99):

The broth was was quite good and rich, though the soup was short on preserved egg, and the fish fillet were on the tough side. It felt like the fish was a bit on the older side.

With some apprehension I ordered a Half Roast Duck($9.99).  I say some apprehension, because I had seen the ducks hanging in the take out area, and they looked a bit on the dry-scrawny side.

What we got was a quite generous serving of roast duck. And the first thing the Missus did was check under the duck. Restaurants sometimes use beans to "prop-up" the slices of duck, to make the serving look larger. Well no beans here. The duck was meaty and tender, and the skin a perfect crunchy lacquer. The meat was a bit short on flavor. But a dip into the "duck juice" on the plate(not the horrible sweet-sour duck sauce provided) corrected the flavor short coming. By no means the best roast duck I've ever had, but pretty good. I'd have it again.

In the end, our initial impression stands. Silver Ark, is a notch below the better Hong Kong style restaurants in San Diego. Still not a bad choice.

Silver Ark
8993 Mira Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92126

Comments

[Passionate Eater]

Crispy fun definitely sounds curious (and not "right") to me. I'm glad that the duck was able to redeem the not-so-fun fun dish. Also, I notice that in all of your dim sum posts, you and the Missus always order the deep-fried taro balls. Is that a favorite of your's or the Missus?

[dietchilicheesefries]

hey, you didn't order onion rings again...

[RONW]

Kirk, what is meant by "Hong Kong" style restaurant?

[Chubbypanda]

Kirk,

Looks like that restaurant is a bit of a hit or miss proposition. I'd try another place

I really love the great food locations in San Diego. It's one of my favorite places to go on business, and I always check your blog to see if I'll be passing near any of the restaurants you write about. Keep up the great work.

If you have a spare minute later on, I'd be greatful if you could give me some feedback on my new food blog. I'm a newbie to the whole food blogging scene, so I'm looking to learn as much as I can.

Good eating!

- Chubbypanda

[Rachel]

wow I, like you , can't believe how a porrige so full of ingredients can be so flat in flavour.... and the texture looks like it has been boiling for a while. Maybe it is one of those restaurants that has a plain pot boiling and adds the ingredients according to what sort of porrige the customer has ordered.

I have seen cheong fun fried at some places but its not very common. It is far more common to fry lo bak koh (white radish cake).

Hehe love how the missus checked for "props" I dislike how restaurants do that. In fact Clare once ordered a "Mt fujiyama sashimi special" only to find it looked like a mountain only because the ice under the sashimi was shaped like one and ther was only slices of sashimi only one layer thick over the ice "moutain"

[Liza]

Kirk,

It looks like I was at Silver Ark on the same day you were - you can see me and my friends at a big table in one of your pictures! Perhaps I should demand royalties for the posting of a picture of the back of my head . . . :)

We also ordered the cheong fun that day, but it was not fried. The menu listed two types - pan-fried and regular, which really confused me. The "normal" cheong fun had the typical sweet soy sauce instead of hoisin. It was decent. Overall, though, I still prefer the dim sum at China Max.

[clayfu]

hey kirk:
the cheong fun that is pan fried is a completely different style dish than i bet you were expecting. It always comes with hosein sauce never with the sweet soy sauce. In LA its usually pan fried in the same cart as the veggies.

If you want the normal cheong fun with shrimp just tell them the steamed ones with fish.

Crispy on the outside and melted on the inside is the way the pan fried one is supposed to taste =) Personally i have no interest in it haha

[elmomonster]

that soup with the cilantro and the preserved egg looked awesome! i've never seen the likes of it anywhere before. is it a real chinese dish, or is it a strictly this restaurant's creation?

[Chubbypanda]

Elmo,

It's a standard Cantonese dish. There are a few restuarants in Irvine that serve excellent renditions; Sam Woo on Irvine Center Drive & Culver, Red Onion Cafe on Jeffrey & Walnut, New Shanghai on Jeffrey & Walnut, & China Garden on Jeffrey & Walnut. Ask for "Pork and Preserved Egg Congee" or "Pi Dan Shou Rou Zhou" in Mandarin.

- Chubbypanda

[Amy]

We had dim sum here in Kansas City at Bo Ling's and tried the pan fried cheong fun. I didn't care for it, either, Kirk, but my mother loved the different textures. To me, it just tasted flabby and overcooked and the hoisin is too strong and sweet. I'll stick with the steamed ones from now on.

[wine]

Very interesting looking foods I might add.

[Kathy]

Ooooh, FOUR har gow and dumplings to an order? Now that's something I haven't seen in a while!:)

[Passionate Eater]

Kirk, yoso-wonderful! I just spent 1hr+ surfing on your archives, and I am so encouraged by you. My favorite archive section of Mmm-Yoso!! has to be the "Cooking" archive. ("Yuma" comes in a close second, just because I love Arizona.) I miss it when you and the Missus cook, and the Boyz watch with their tongues (and tails) wagging. It was fun to read how your Mom used to prepare Vienna Sausages again, and also, it was fun to see the handsome Brazilian waiter again too! I have to read your archives more often!!

[Kirk]

Hi PE - Yes, Wu Gok is one of the "baseline" Dim Sum items for the Missus. Thanks for the kind words....you're trying to get me to post more about what I've been cooking, huh? LOL! I'll have something interesting, and hopefully entertaining this weekend.

Hi DCCF - We kept looking for them, but they didn't have any on the carts.... Hey wouldn't it be a gas to have Dim Sum Fast Food...carts of burgers and buns, and stuff...whooops, too much cough medicine tonight!

Hi RONW - About the same thing as Guangdong/Cantonese, though Hong Kong style is a bit more upscale, and depends much more on freshness of the ingredients, than various sauces.

Hi CP - Actually the food is not bad by San Diego standards - it would be a whole 'nother story if this was LA.

Hi Rachel - I've never ever seen pan fried Cheong Fun - that's a new one on me! Mt Fujiyama special? Good thing there wasn't lava(or some similar facsimile) under that fish...... ;o)

Hi Amy - Flabby, now that's a good word to describe it.

Hi Wine - Thanks, and welcome!

Hi Kathy - Wow, you picked up on something I missed! You're right, all the Har Gow and dumplings had at least 4 to an order, most places have maybe 4 Shrimp Har Gow, but only 3 of the more "exotic" steamed dumplings. Sharp, very sharp!

[EJ]

Kirk, I wonder if you have visited Lucky Star by 54th and University? And if so, did you sample their dim sum?
Their Chinese-Mexican-American buffet (in a separate part of the building) is now closed. It didn't last long.
Lots of people go there for the seafood, but dim sum is always busy.

[Kirk]

Hi EJ - We used to eat there once in a while, and service got worse and worse, until this:

http://mmm-yoso.typepad.com/mmmyoso/2005/10/lucky_star_rest.html

[EJ]

I am so sorry to hear about that incident. I don't know what is going on with that place. They have new faces working every time I go, so I wonder if the same chaos is going on in the kitchen also.
When they first opened, the variety of dim sum was amazing-we found something new to us every time we went. I don't see that virtuosity any more.
Too bad, because it is walking distance from my house.

[Kirk]

Hi EJ - Let me be very clear....I'm not a restautrant reviewer. But what you get is my experience at that restaurant. And my from perspective, that restaurant doesn't care about their customers. So sad....I even took my In-Laws there once.....I haven't walked out of a restauarant since...and only one before!

[CharSiuBao]

for dimsum i like the pan-fried cheong fun a tiny bit better than the steamed. especially when it's all crispy on the outside. yumm.....

[Kirk]

Hi CSB - I must say, I was really thrown off by it.