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| - I came here on a Sunday after noon around 4pm, lured in by the delicious looking crayfish in the storefront poster boasting authentic dishes from Shanxi China. The place was quiet for a Sunday early dinner time, and the waitor looked inexperienced. He forgot to give us a part of the menu that included the seafood platters that we were hoping to order and it wasn't until we inquired in person that he brought the other half of the menu.
Overall the food tastes authentic. We ordered the cold and spicy glass noodle dish as well as their cold chicken noodle. Both were great. The seasoning in the dishes was pretty authentic in my opinion.
Our main interest was the seafood platter. There are three soup base sizes recommended for 2, 4, or 8 people if remember correctly. All three soup bases are spicy, as is the characteristic of cuisine from this part of China. My tolerance for spicy food isn't the highest but even I could enjoy this chinese red chili soup base because there were so many other flavors within the soup that made the seafood delicious. We ordered crayfish, mussels, crabs, and cuttlefish. The soup came with tofu, seaweed, bean sprouts, nappa lettuce. Everything came in a giant crockpot. Most of the seafood was great and enjoyed eating them (try not to wear light colored clothes though, I stained my white blouse like a 5-year old that day).
Crabs were a disappointment unfortunately. I had to drop the rating down because of this. The meat was mushy, not the kind of flaky meat texture you get with fresh crabs. It was clear that this mushy meat texture was a result of freezing and defrosting seafood repeatedly. The mushiness was like that of mashed potato :( not what you want in crab meat.
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