Good Eat Seafood Restaurant

Restaurant: Good Eat Seafood Restaurant
Cuisine: Chinese/Dim Sum
Last visited: December 30, 2010
Location: Richmond, BC (Richmond Central)
Address: 8111 Leslie Road
Price Range: $10 or less (dim sum), $10-20 (lunch/dinner)

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 4
Service: 3
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 3.5
Additional comments:

• Popular for dim sum
• Awful parking
• Dim sum/lunch/dinner
• Busy for dim sum
• Cheap eats
• Budget friendly
• Quick/casual/no fuss
• Live seafood tanks
• $2.50 dim sum
• Good variety
• Good for groups
• English menu for dim sum
• Cash only

**Recommendations: Steamed Pork Dumpling with Roe, Steamed Rice Roll with Sesame, any of their rice roll options, Braised Duck in Plum Sauce

A place that can live up to its name. Good Eat Seafood Restaurant really does have Good Eat(s)! A good surprise it was and surprised I was! It’s not really a hole in the wall, but it’s definitely nothing fancy. It goes by unnoticed, but it’s a pretty decent find offering dim sum, lunch, and dinner. It’s quick, simple service, very casual atmosphere, and no fuss home made dim sum. It appears relatively clean and it’s pretty busy as well. What more could you ask for? Cheap prices? Done!

I’m usually not a fan of cheap dim sum because more often than not I’m disappointed by the missing or frozen seafood and overwhelming grease. But finally, a place where the dim sum is good and cheap!

Besides 888 the Chinese seem to find 2.50 lucky as well. There’s already $2.50 dim sum at Po King Restaurant in Burnaby (notorious for poor or “po” service) and $2.50 dim sum at Dai Tung Chinese Restaurant in Vancouver, but I find it a bit greasy. In Richmond there is HKYK Seafood Hot Pot Restaurant which I never hear good things about it and Lucky Fortune Seafood Restaurant which is actually supposed to be pretty good. Both offer $2.50 dim sum as well. However I have been introduced to Good Eat Seafood Restaurant where the service is not bad, but “efficient” or “standard” for Chinese restaurants, and the food isn’t greasy or frozen for the most part (they even have live seafood tanks). To top things off they too offer 30+ dim sum items at $2.50 and the larger dim sum items don’t go higher than $5.95.

The con is that it’s probably the worst parking lot, if I can even call it that, that I have ever experienced in Richmond. I know! How much worse can it get?! The parking is very limited and you literally box people in and pray that they don’t call your license plate number on their loudspeaker halfway through enjoying your dim sum to go move your car. I’m serious! They do that! But at least it’s free parking!

I didn’t do the ordering this time, so there were a lot of things that were relatively new to me too, which is always good… but there are a few things with ingredients that don’t really suit my tastes. A few of the dishes are just old school traditional Asian dishes that older generations like… thank god the people I ate with don’t use the internet…

On the table:

**Steamed Rice Roll with Sesame – 6/6

• $2.50
• I generally love this dish, but these were amazing here! Definitely a must try!
• They’re fresh in house and made upon order.
• They’re super delicate thin sheets of soft and slippery rice rolls made of rice flour and tapioca flour. The ones here stand out because they’re incredibly soft and almost creamy with a melt in your mouth quality. They still have a slight elasticity, which is good as well.
• It’s one of the best ones I’ve had at a dim sum restaurant in Richmond.
• Sweetened soy sauce is poured over top before eating it and it comes with a side of Hoisin and sesame sauce for dipping, which I love.
• It’s nutty, sweet and savoury and a great vegetarian dish.

Pan Fried White Radish Cake – 4/6

• $2.50
• These were fresh and also made in house.
• It had a nice and crispy exterior and then a creamy, moist and soft middle.
• There were actually chunks of diced radish in it rather than 100% shredded or pureed so you could actually bite into juicy pieces of radish. It’s actually not really a bad thing because that means they’re using lots of radish rather than all flour.
• It’s made with a non-spicy Chinese radish (daikon) so it has a mild flavour and then you bite into bits of salty Chinese sausage, which I’m not a huge fan of, but it tastes good in this dish. Radish/Turnip cake is good with Hoisin sauce and chili sauce for dipping too.
• Although the radish cake was good, and even better in texture, I would have preferred the addition of Chinese mushrooms and dried shrimp in the mixture for more flavour.

**Steamed Pork Dumpling with Roe – 5/6

• $2.50
• These were very good as well! I’ve had tons of shao mai before and these were particularly delicious here! So for what they were they were excellent!
• It was large chunks of prawns rolled with tender juicy chunks of pork that gave a nice crunch and meaty seafood flavour. Nothing was overcooked and it had nice pieces of Shiitake mushrooms to add a little sweetness to the savoury meatball.
• The dumpling skin was thin and it was all very juicy, despite the photo looking a bit oily.

Steamed Chicken Claws – n/a

• $2.50
• I still can’t do this. I really really have an issue with feet and the thought of eating them makes me want to puke.
• On the other hand I can eat cod sperm see here, bugs see here, live octopus see here, and raw cow’s intestine see here. What do they all have in common? I was out of town! (I’m more adventurous when I travel)
• From the people who did eat it and do like it they said it was quite good – 3/6.

Sticky Rice and Diced Pork Wrapped with Lotus Leaves – 2.5/6

• $2.50
• It’s seriously a bargain at $2.50 for 2.

• I really should have took a picture of it open, but I didn’t want to hack away at it.
• The rice was moist and chewy and nice and sticky. It could have used a bit more sauce but it was still flavourful and stuffed with a decent amount of ground pork, Chinese sausage and some Shiitake mushrooms. They even included the salted egg yolk, which is my favourite part.
• Not the best sticky rice, but decent and for $2.50 it’s fine.

Steamed Rice Roll with Pork Liver – 2/6

• $2.50
• I’m biased because I’m not a fan of pork liver slices, I would rather have it in pate form. The rice roll skin itself was very good though.
• The pork liver was a bit tough and dense, so a bit overcooked.
• I don’t usually come across this on a dim sum menu, and if I were to order a rice roll I usually stick to the prawns, mushroom or BBQ pork options. However Top Gun J & C does offer unique versions with Scallops & Black Wood Ear Mushroom Rice Rolls and Pea Tips and Geoduck Rice Rolls.

Baked Preserved Egg Cake – 1.5/6

• $2.50
• I’m biased. I’m not a fan of Asian desserts, and this one doesn’t even sound like a dessert, but it’s considered one.
• It’s a mini pie made of buttery crumbly tender pastry stuffed with creamy pickled pink ginger puree and a preserved egg or “Thousand Year Old Egg”. I love that egg, but I rather have it in congee or alone. The pickled ginger and egg is commonly served as an appetizer in Asia as well.
• This “pie” tastes like a buttery sweet and savoury pastry with a creamy paste like filling and then a slight jelly texture from the “white” part of the egg.
• It’s savoury from the egg, sweet from the pastry and ginger, with a slightly pickled taste and warm ginger spice to follow. It’s not spicy, but there is heat. The ginger is candied as well so there is sweetness from that too.
• It’s quite rich and it’s not that sweet since it’s made with savoury ingredients, but the flavour is definitely acquired.
• This is actually made very well here – 4/6, but I’m just not a fan of it.

How unappetizing is this photo? It looks like a baby hand with third degree burns crawling out of a pile of bones…

Steamed Spareribs & Chicken Claws on Rice in Pot – 3/6

• $4.95
• One of their larger dim sum items, but still cheap. It was standard, but good, despite my description and photos.
• The rice was cooked perfectly and the spareribs were marinated well with a little heat to them. Needless to say I didn’t try the feet, or “claws”… creepy.
• There was a decent amount of meat, but I’m never a fan of the quality or spare ribs they use. It’s the standard cheap cut with the chewy meat that almost all dim sum restaurants use. If they didn’t use it it almost looses its authenticity in a way.
• It comes with sweetened soy sauce to pour over top before serving.

Deep Fried Fish with Soy Sauce – 3.5/6

• $4.95
• Another larger dim sum dish, but still worth it.
• I loved the flavour of this, but I enjoyed the Deep Fried Black Cod with Special Garlic at Empire Chinese Cuisine Restaurant more.
• It was a bit over fried so the texture of the fish was a bit like chicken.
• The flavour was there and it had lots of crispy garlic and sauteed shallots in a savoury and sweet soy sauce with cilantro, but it still needed more sauce since it was a bit dry to begin with.
• Rainflower Restaurant does a tres excellent version of this dish using prawns – Pan-fried prawn with basil.

Sauteed Balsam Pear with Chicken Gizzards – 4/6 (if you like the dish), 1/6 (if you’re a virgin/not really a fan of the ingredients), 1.5/6 (for me)

• $5.95
• This is a very strong flavoured dish.
• If you don’t know what a “Balsam Pear” is, you would probably hate this dish. It’s actually commonly known as bitter melon. It’s not sweet, but bitter and its qualities are similar to a vegetable melon rather than a fruit melon. However with “age” the flavour is supposed to be sweet… for example older generation Asians find it tastes sweet especially when matched with the right ingredients.
• The bitter melon is stir fried with chicken gizzards, spicy pickled Chinese radish, green peppers and black bean sauce, which in a way does make the melon a bit sweeter. It’s a really odd “fruit”, and I still don’t like it… yet.
• It’s generally a savoury dish, and it does taste better if you eat the bitter melon and spicy pickled radish at once. They balance each other out since the bitter melon is very bitter and the spicy pickled Chinese radish is quite sour with a spicy bite. I would prefer them to use a red bell pepper, although not as authentic, but the green bell pepper isn’t sweet enough to contrast the other flavours.
• The black bean sauce helps by adding a sharp and pungent salty bite which the dish needs to overcome so many strong flavours.
• The vegetables also break through the stronger gamier flavours of the chicken gizzards as well. The dish did skimp on the chicken gizzards a bit though.

**Braised Duck in Plum Sauce – 4/6

• $14.80
• This is the famous and signature dish here. It’s more of a dinner dish, but they do offer it for lunch. It’s filling, great with rice and enough for 4-6 people.
• It’s disappointing because they used to serve it with taro root instead of regular potatoes, but they changed the recipe. The potatoes are stewed to the point of being ultra creamy, so they still tasted good.
• Duck and taro root is a delicious combination and so much better in my opinion. They both have a sweetness and meatiness that go together very well.
• The duck is braised and served in a pool of  savoury, tangy, and sweet plum sauce, but it’s predominantly tangy. It’s also very oily and quite rich, so the tang is nice. It’s a very thick and gummy gravy, but it is quite delicious.

• The duck itself was a whole duck, but it was quite boney and there weren’t many good pieces. The duck was also super fatty, but the meat was very tender and soft and almost like confit. The texture is similar to a duck confit or pulled pork, but it’s not preserved first.
• I’m not a fan of duck skin that isn’t crispy so I really didn’t like the skin on this. It was the epitome of fat I hate, the chewy gelatinous fatty fat that has no flavour and a bumpy skin. Ew. The meat and sauce is an A, but the skin a F.
• I actually had a duck and prune dish in France that reminded me of this. There are no visible plums or prunes in this Asian version though, the plums used are actually a dried salted Asian plum that is very sour and salty. It’s used in the base for the sauce and also used for a lot of black bean spare rib dishes as well, so if you like that dish you’ll probably like this one.
• Overall this is a very solid meat and potatoes dish that is suitable for dinner and bigger groups. I would highly recommend ordering a side of steamed veggies though… and rice! There’s so much sauce you don’t want to waste it.

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