Seafood Village - San Gabriel Valley

mmm-yoso!!! is Kirk's foodblog. Nice guy that he is, he lets some others like Cathy, Vicky, and even ed (from Yuma) post here sometimes. Today we magically go back to last summer when ed and Tina finish their culinary roadtrip with a stop in San Gabriel Valley.

Before leaving Monterey, Tina and I had begun the day with some pastries and lattes at Patisserie Parker-Lusseau by the post office, so by the time we rolled into the San Gabriel Valley more than five hours later we were hungry.  Really hungry.

After locating a reasonable room for the evening, we headed out for an evening of Chiu Chow dining at the Seafood Village location in Temple City. This location (the original is in Rowland Heights) is larger, has more parking, is less crowded,  and well, it was closer to our room. And did I mention we were Hungry?:
We parked in the giant lot behind the restaurant and entered the restaurant by its back entrance.  At this time, slightly before 6 p.m., we were one of the few groups of customers in the spacious main dining room:
While we were looking over the menu, a small bowl of boiled peanuts accompanied by mildly pickled vegetables were placed on the table.  Although not mind-blowing, these helped keep our hunger in check until real food started arriving:
That evening we had brought our own wine, a bottle of 2007 Roussane from Tablas Creek Winery (which had ridden down to SGV in an ice chest in my car).  Tablas Creek is my favorite winery in the Paso Robles area, and to my palate at least, this bottle was the tastiest white wine I had encountered on my trip:
The restaurant charged a modest five dollar corkage fee and provided the stemware.

The seasonal vegetable that evening was pea greens ($12.99).  They were wonderfully fresh and perfectly prepared.  There was none of the toughness or stringiness that sometimes ruins this dish:
We also ordered baked oysters with XO sauce ($10.99). It arrived with eight breaded oysters on top of slices of a somewhat crunchy stirfried vegetable:
My first oyster was slightly disappointing because I was expecting more crunch from the breading -- having already forgotten that the oysters were "baked."  However, the more of this dish that I ate, the more I liked it.  This preparation really focused on the taste of the shellfish. And the oysters were perfectly cooked, moist and full of wonderful funky oyster flavor.

The crunch in the dish was instead a product of the accompanying veggie.  At first, I was puzzled by that crunchy vegetable as it seemed to resemble no vegetable that I had ever had in a stirfry, and yet it was very tasty. "What's this vegetable?" I asked Tina.

As soon as she said that it tasted like cucumber, I realized she was right and remembered that Kirk had recently posted a stirfried cucumber recipe. I felt only slightly embarrassed that I had missed the identification of such a common vegetable.

Our main dish that evening was the house special crab ($4.99 a pound -- $14.97 total):
When reading about this restaurant at various places on the Internet, everyone said that this was the signature dish at the place. Still, at first it seemed odd to be eating crab that had been breaded and deep-fried in its shell .  "Why bread shell?"  I wondered.

As soon as we started eating the crab, any puzzlement I felt completely disappeared.  This was really good crab (and the breading was pretty tasty as well).  Flavors of garlic and mild chilies were predominant.  The breading was good enough that I sucked some of it off of crab shell.  The greatest part of the dish, however, was the succulent, moist, tender, and flavorful crab inside the shell:
And I realized then that the breading serves to keep the hot oil away from the crab meat, which was not greasy at all.  This was so good it will be hard to drive through the San Gabriel Valley in the future without stopping in and eating it again.

Overall, Tina and I were delighted and impressed.  We had tasted seafood and vegetables different than anything we can get back home.  The wine proved to be an excellent match with the cuisine, having enough body and structure to stand up to the flavorful preparations.  The service was not as superb as at Sea Harbour, but it was more than adequate, and our total for the evening was $50, not including tip, about half of what we had paid at Sea Harbour.  Thanks, Kirk, for the recommendation -- it was spot on!

Seafood Village, 9669 Las Tunas, Temple City, CA, 626-286-2299

Comments

[janfrederick]

What I like about your posts is your attention to detail. The text leading into the picture of the oysters described "a somewhat crunchy stirfried vegetable" even though when you wrote it you knew it was cucumber. But you allowed the reader to enjoy the surprise of learning what it "with you" with the side story about figuring it out.

These may be simple posts about meals, but stuff like this really makes the posts stand out from other blogs (perhaps I should read more blogs?)

And dang I'm hungry!

[bill]

The seafood plates looks simple yet delicious. I agree some seafood should have that distinctive seafoodiness otherwise what's the point and then again some shouldn't be allowed on the table at all ;-)
Geesh you can't have it. LOL

[angela]

oman, i love this place! everytime i head home from college, my mom takes me here for the crab and oyster dishes you just posted. =) good stuff~

[ed (from Yuma)]

Thanks jan. I try to tell a story when I post - though sometimes the story is just that a certain place cooks this type of food.

The seafood was good, bill, and it was the flavor of the oysters themselves that made that dish good.

Glad you like the place, angela. It's good to know that I located the good stuff.

[Andy Sze]

Ed, just fyi,

the Rowland Heights location is not the original location. The original location is either the one in MP or the SG location, but I believe it to be the MP location. The RH location opened much after the other two locations. For whatever reason, the RH location has a different name, in Chinese. It is 潮樓 (chiu lau; in Yale romanization), meaning "Chiuchow Palace". The other two locations are called 避風塘 (bei fung tong), meaning "Typhoon Shelter". I am uncertain if there is an actual Typhoon Shelter restaurant in HK, but the nonetheless the name is a kickback to the Typhoon Shelter crab in HK and the actual typhoon shelters themselves.

[ed (from Yuma)]

Andy, thanks for all the info. That'll teach me to rely on a quick Internet search (You mean everything on the Internet isn't true?)