Illumination
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean it's worth doing.
Hm... more later.
San Diego Food #1 : China Max
I've recently had the opportunity to visit a lot of restaurants -- Chinese and otherwise -- in San Diego. So that my newly acquired spikes in body fat, cholesterol, blood pressure, and liver enzymes won't go to complete waste, I figured I'd write up a few reviews.
China Max -- Chinese food (Cantonese, I think)
4698 Convoy Street
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 650-3333
http://www.chinamaxsandiego.com
Yelp entry
Get the crab. I don't know what it's actually called.
I call it delicious.
I was there a couple days ago, at about 9:30pm. The place was empty but for one other table, and they seemed like they were having a good time. The place started filling up at around 10pm, which was just weird, but the background hum of conversation was a nice addition.
The decor wasn't very memorable. If you've been to any Chinese restaurant in the U.S. that's nice-but-not-fancy, you've already seen the place. There's a patio area for outside seating, but it didn't look any better or worse than sitting inside.
The server was friendly in that kind of backhanded Chinese waitress way. Businesslike but not snappish, and politely pleasant and civil. I suspect, as with many Chinese places, her nice needle tips left or right depending on how Chinese you are.
In my case, I'm Chinese but don't speak it well, and Carrie... well, let's just say sometimes I worry that people will think she arrived on my doorstep in a shipping crate from China with a big red ribbon tied around it.
So that probably helped.
Anyway, she wanted crab, so we got a crab. Neither of us knew how they cooked it; we just picked a nice (live) one out of the tank and asked them to cook it. I think I heard Carrie ask for their specialty.
It came out on a steaming platter, chopped into manageable sections and quick-fried with green onions, shallots, chili, ginger, garlic, and some other unidentified stuff. I've seen crab that looked similar on the Travel Channel (Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations when he went to Hong Kong), and it was called "Typhoon Shelter Crab."
I'd made the mistake of ordering a second dish -- clams in black bean sauce -- which was decent, but just couldn't hold a candle to that crab. Honestly, whenever I was picking at the clams I just felt like I was wasting time.
We had to order rice separately (I can never get used to that in a Chinese joint), and it turns out that the little bits and pieces of miscellany on the crab plate are fucking delicious with white rice.
I've heard this place does some of the best dim sum in San Diego (they do it a la carte, rather than on actual carts), so I'll be back for some of that business.
The live seafood is always sold at "market price" ... our 2.5-pound crab cost us about $30, and the clam dish was about $13. Lobster was going at $20/lb.