Seafood Cove

8547 Westminster Ave
Garden Grove, CA 92844
(714) 895-7964

After sampling a few of the restaurants in and around Disneyland, it was nice to get out and try a different style of restaurant in the Orange county area. I talked with some friends while was down there, and my good friend (I'll call her Thu) recommended Seafood Cove in Garden Grove.
I was a bit leery of recent recommendations (see my review of Song Long), but I trust her, since she has lived there all her life.

There was no wait and we were seated immediately. After perusing the menu, we settled on a fixed family still meal. Be warned in Asian cuisine, family style involves lots of dishes coming at you, so prepared to see lots of food.

The first course was sour soup. No, not hot and sour soup, but sour soup. It is an distinctly Vietnamese, and I must say I usually.....hate it! Why? Well, my mother in law orders this all the time. Usually there are some variant, often you see it serve with fish, or shrimp. My main complaint about this dish is that the flavor lacks depth. You only taste sour, and that's it. Now imagine drinking a bowl of sour liquid. Not very appetizing is it. Well, the sour soup served at Seafood Cove, just changed my overall impression of this dish. I actually liked it. There is the sourness, but this soup actually has some flavor depth. There is an underlying rich broth, that you can taste. They also made it more spicy than the usual sour soup I usually try. The spiciness hits you in the back of your throat and gives it a bit of lingering hotness. My only dislike was the fact that they used imitation crab meat.


The next dish was a cubed steak. It was seared and cut into tiny cubes, like little bits of heaven. This dish shows why Seafood Cove differs from other Asian restaurant. There is the usually soy and salty flavors that you usually taste, but then there was another underlying flavor. And that flavor was....butter. Yes, butter in Asian cooking. I found that by adding butter to the dish, it added another dimension, that I just never tasted before. I liked the newness, though my wife complained the meat was a bit tough.


The pea shoots came out next. It is a dish you often see at many Chinese restaurant. It tasted fresh, and was not over cooked. There were bits of fried garlic through out. This tasted like others I had, so Seafood Cove did not do anything new here.


My friend that had eaten there before suggested they had a dish that was similar to the Dry Fried Chicken (see Sang Tung review). He did not remember what it was at the time, though afterward he said it was the kung pao squid. We asked the server, and she said it was the kung pao chicken. It was okay, but it was not on the same level as Dry Fried Chicken. It was sweet and a bit spicy, but it lacked the crispy texture of Dry Fried Chicken.



Part of the set menu was the crispy flounder. This is also another dish that you find in most Chinese restaurant. This was prepared nicely, with two sauces. There was the usual sweetened soy sauce and there was a new red sauce, which I don't usually see. I didn't care for the red sauce too much, it was tangy with a bit of hotness. The fish itself was fine, with flaky flesh and crisp skin.


My wife particularly liked the crab. It was the common dungeness crab you often find everywhere. It had a oyster sauce based, but once again, there was the hidden layer of butter flavor underneath. It definitely made the sauce more rich than what it was. I liked the fact that they chopped the crab into more friendly bite size pieces. It made of easier eating, since crab is usually a bit hard to handle to eat properly.


We also tried another familiar dish which is the salt and peppery shrimp. This is a dish where they coat the shrimp in batter and then deep fry it. After which they pan fry it with onion, salt and peppers. It was pretty tasty, but after you've eaten it a million times it can be a bit underwhelming.


Lastly, we ended our meal with a typical Chinese dessert, tapioca. This tapioca was pretty good. It was not too sweet and it was actually quite fragrant. I would've have eaten more, but I already had so much food that day.


Service was okay, though a couple of times, the language barrier prevented me from getting what I really wanted. There was another dessert at another table, but my server could not understand what I was talking about.

Final Thoughts: Something new in Chinese cuisine.

Food: 4 stars
Service: 2 1/2 stars
Price: Average
Overall: 3 1/2 stars

Buca Di Beppo

925 Blossom Hill Rd #1529

San Jose, CA

95123

(408)226-1444

We went to Buca Di Beppo in Oakridge mall in San Jose, for goodbye party for our Co-worker (We'll miss you Nikki). If you never been to a Buca, its an Italian family style restaurant with large portions. They do offer smaller portions now, but it's a better deal to go with a large group of people. Inside the restaurant, the art decor is a bit overstated. There is large collections of photographs of Italians and Italian culture thrown up against the walls in no particular rhyme or reason. There were about 14 of us, so we had a pretty decent size party. We were seated promptly, though there were some stragglers arriving later. The restaurant was pretty pack with almost all tables taken.

After waiting for some time, our waiter finally came and took our order. We ordered decided to start with fried calamari, bruschetta, prosciutto stuffed mushrooms, and apple gorgonzola salad.

The fried calamari was excellent. It was crispy but not overly done. Calamari tends to get chewy if you over cook them and these were not. It had a side of tomato dipping sauce with crushed red peppers that complemented well with the calamari.

The apple gorgonzola salad was great as well. It was crisp and the sweetness of the apples balance well with the lite vinaigrette. The salad was accented with dried cranberries and gorgonzola cheese that provide both nice texture and flavor.

The bruschetta was okay, it had a nice crunchy texture and was overflowing with tomatoes. However I thought that balance between bread and tomatoes was not maintain. In the end we ended up with mainly scattered tomatoes at the bottom of our dish.

I didn't get to try the prosciutto stuffed mushrooms. I had wish our server had told us there were only 5 mushroom per single order. You would think that seeing how many people we had at our table we would've gotten a warning of the small portions. Usually Buca is pretty generous with their portions, but not this time

After the appetizers, we ordered four main entrees, baked ravioli with meat sauce, shrimp fra diavolo, chianti braised short ribs, and linguine frutti di mare.

The baked ravioli with meat sauce was okay at best. It was cheesed filled with a heavy meat sauce around it. I found the cheese to be a bit land and the meat sauce a bit overpowering. I think the ravioli was a bit oversized and that's why the balance of flavor could not be maintain.

*note: I had to delete the ravioli picture because it was not clear.

The braised short ribs was excellent. They were both soft and tender, infact you could cut it with a fork. Since it was braised in chianti, the beef had the robust flavor that you would expect. The sauce was made from the braising liquid and was both rich and flavorful. Definitely a must try if you never had it before.

The Shrimp Fra diavolo, was extremely good. The spicy rosa sauce tasted like rich creamy pizza sauce. The shrimp was well prepared and not over cooked. This dish was so popular that you can see from the picture that most of it was gone before it reached me.

Lastly, the linguine frutti di mare, my usual stand by favorite failed me this time. We had to wait extremely long for this dish. By the time it came out, I found it a bit over seasoned. The sauce was too salt and too briny. Some times Buca would have a seasonal baked linguine frutti di mare with light white wine sauce instead the tomato sauce. I like that version than the one we got that night.

The service was quite poor that night. It was no fault of our waitress, she did the best she could. Unfortunately she was overwhelmed with no help from the other staff. Too often we were left to ourselves. My friend even complained to the management but to no avail.

Final Thoughts: Good place for family style Italian meals.

Food: 3 1/2 stars

Service : 1 star

Price: Average to decent, depends on how many people dine with you.

Overall: 3 stars