Gold Mountain

These photos are worth ten million words. Words we couldn't utter with our mouths full. A million thanks to KK our host--a smashing success!

My favorites? Hard to say, but the stuffed chicken, lobster, and noodles are right up there.

Cold platter: jelly fish, sliced five-spice beef, pork slices, cha sao (bbq pork), marinated chicken, and suckling pig. I liked the slices of beef and pork best. The chicken and cha sao were fine as usual, and the jelly fish was a little sub par. Not cruncy enough, and it hadn't soaked up enough marinating liquid flavor. The suckling pig was highly controversial. I loved the thick layer of crunchy skin and dense layer of fat. Some thought the fat was disgusting. Too bad for them.

Wintermelon soup in a wintermelon bowl. For special occassions, some restaurants carve intricate drawings and lucky phrases onto the melon for you. No one was getting married tonight, so a plain melon sufficed. The soup had crab meat, shrimp, chunks of duck, scallops, chicken, and maybe more. The soup itself was probably a chicken/seafood/pork blend, with some Chinese medicinal herbs as well. The only bad thing about the soup was cucumber, which tasted grassy and unnecessary. I think they just added it for color.

when it's time to serve the soup, pieces of the melon are carved out of the sides of the "tureen" and placed in each bowl of soup. Chinese people love their soups, and wintermelon soup is a national favorite. Gold Mountain's broth is clear, flavorful, and soothing, and the ingredients are carefully cut up into bite sized pieces. Someone commented that this would be something she would want if she were sick. Food for the soul.

Twin Main lobsters in ginger scallion sauce: heavy on the rice wine and vinegar, this dish hit the spot for me. I'll always love Pacific lobster more than Maine lobster, but any shellfish in a gingery gooey sauce is fine by me. This was intensely flavored, not too salty, and came steamy hot but not overcooked.

Salt and pepper crab: I have to admit, this was masterful. The way the coating clung to each piece of crab and stayed crispy throughout the meal was incredible. The batter was light and crispy enough to eat by itself, and the salt and pepper flavors were just right. The generous amount of garlic and red pepers was great. Still, at least for tonight, I liked the lobster more. And I'm usually a Dungeness crab gal.

De-boned chicken stuffed with sticky rice: the chicken I'd been waiting for! The chicken masters basically take a chicken and skin it all in one piece, leaving the gones in the legs and wings intact. They then stuff it with glutinous rice and deep fry the whole thing. It's incredible. Crunchy chicken (like a good fried chicken) on the outside, sticky rice with meat, vegetables, and mushrooms on the inside. I regret not nabbing more than one piece of this. It's so good. Why don't they serve it more!?

Yo chai with whole garlic cloves: looked good, smelled good, tasted pretty good too. It's nice to get some greens halfway through the meal.

Steamed fish with sliced green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, and ginger: classic Chinese preparation of steamed fish. Someone tell me what kind of fish this is, please? There were two of them, and they were both fatty as all get out.

Peking duck: this is just a crowd pleaser. Everyone likes duck with hoisin wrapped in a soft steamy bun of bread. This wasn't the most skillfully prepared, delicate, or "authentic" Peking duck, but neither are the Peking ducks at the vast majority of restaurants in SF. The skin was crisp, the duck was moist, the bread was soft. That's enough for me. It was delicious.

Liang mien huang: this is one of my favorite kinds of noodles. The noodles are deep fried into a disc. When it's time to serve, a gooey sauce (tonight's was seafood, but it can be pork, beef, fowl, etc.) is poured over it. The noodles that absorb the sauce become very soft and soak up the flavor of the sauce, and the noodles that stay dry are crunchy. The trick is to get a portion that has the crunchy:soft ratio that you personally prefer, and to keep the dry pieces dry until you want to eat them. The seafood in this dish was really great. Big fresh pieces of seafood cooked until just done. The noodle's supposed to be the filler at the end of a Chinese banquet, but this was one of my favorite things.

Coconut pudding: cool and refreshing, and very dense. We had no room for dessert elsewhere after this.

All in all, a very successful banquet! I gotta hand it to Gold Mountain: they keep the hot food HOT. Look at how hard it was for me to take pictures with all that steam! I admit it: I let the need to eat the food while it was hot get in the way of taking beautiful pictures. But hey, I'll always have the beautiful memories!

And to you sneaky Asians (you know who you are): a big sloppy wet kiss to you all!!