Restaurant: China Gourmet [1, 2]
Location: 2842 St Vincent St, Philadelphia, PA 19149. (215) 941-1898
Date: November 23, 2022
Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese
Rating: Pretty decent Cantonese
As part of the traditional ThanksGavin progression of meals we go out on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and this year we returned to China Gourmet, which we’d visited on Friday night the year before.
Cantonese banquet hall — Philly style.
Fairly typical interior that is pretty much straight out of the SGV. It sure was quiet on this wed night.
The menu. Clearly they do a lot of takeout.
Peanuts on the table.
Vegetarian Spring Rolls. Nice and crispy.
Hot and Sour Soup. Not a bad version with a good texture. A bit goopy (corn starch). Could have used slightly more white pepper and black vinegar. They had red vinegar on the table but that was too sweet.
Shrimp with lobster sauce. The goopy lobster sauce was actually pretty tasty and the shrimp texture was great. There weren’t ENOUGH shrimp, but hey.
Lobster with ginger and scallion. This was two tiny lobsters. The meat was succulent and the sauce very silky so a nice version of the wet lobster type.
Whole flounder steamed with soy and scallions. Very light moist fish with lots of meat. Quite nice.
See all that meat?
“Peking duck.” Cantonese Roast Duck with the buns but still quite nice (and quite fatty). Not that crispy but delicious.
Stir-fried snow pea leaves with garlic. Very solid garlic green.
Steamed broccoli.
Stir fried mushrooms with tofu and snap peas. The tofu was delectably soft and the veggies firm and delicious. Very nice dish.
Sliced Pork with Okra. I haven’t had this exact combo but this was a very nice pork dish with tender and flavorful meat and crunchy veggies.
Cumin lamb. This certainly wan’t the typical cumin lamb — in fact I could barely taste any cumin. The meat was very tender with some good “moutony” flavor.
Plain Lo Mein.
Veggie Fried Rice. A bit too charred for my taste.
Fruit.
Really a pretty good place, on par with a medium level SGV Cantonese. Not the best ever, but not Chinese American either (at least the way I ordered). Everyone enjoyed it too so my “something for everyone” ordering seemed to have worked out.
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