My brother is visiting the great and wonderful Bay Area estates.  Dinner last night was at King Wah in Downtown Oakland.  The appetizer was wonton soup.  Unlike most fast-food Chinese restaurant, King Wah offers traditional meals with substance.  The location is rather dirty and dingy, but what do you expect from downtown Oakland?  The inside of the restaurant is average with dark wood paneling and lots of tables and seats for everyone.  You don't go there to soak in the ambience. You go to King Wah to eat.

The service is excellent for a Chinese restaurant.  They even ask you if you can use chopsticks which is a plus!  And, if you go there long enough, apparently, you can bring in some food to be cooked.  I think that was what this guy brought last night.  I believe he brought fish and asked them to cook it. But beware, before bringing your daily stream catch, make sure you are on a first name basis with the cook or owner.  I have only begun to go there and am rather sporadic in my visits. So I don't think I'll be bringing in tri-tip steak and asking them to cook it.

The wonton soup actually had ground beef inside which made it a meal in itself.  No other spice was necessary to complete the served soup.  The presence of BBQ pork was an extra bonus which served to complete the meal in itself idea.  The portions were huge for two people.  I had to stop eating after three bowls so that I can retain my girlish figure and finish the other parts of the meal.

The main meal consisted of shrimp fried rice, claypot oyster and lechon pork, beef with oyster sauce.  The shrimp with fried rice was a tad too salty for me.  Remember though that with my age, you have to watch salt intake so I have cut salt tremendously.  As a result, I can taste the most minute amount of salt and my palette is like velvet.  Pour some spice and the tastebuds register as makahiya being brushed by chiffon.  PErhaps the reason for the salt is the extreme brown color which is registering from the soy sauce ebulliently thrown into the mixture during the wok frying. 

The claypot dish was exceptional as it married in fine fashion oyster and lechon pork (pork that has crispy skin).  The concoction had mushrooms which I did not really care for.  However, the sauce did not make you wonder what pork is doing with oyster.  If you ate the pork separately from the oyster, it was utterly delightful.  And the quality of the oyster was superb.  Somewhere out there, a little Asian boy or girl is chucking oysters to be served in my dinner plate.  You gotta love capitalism.  The lechon pork was cooked excellently.  The skin was crunchy even though it had been soaked in the sauce.  This suggests that the pork was added just a few minutes before it was served.  This also can explain why the sauce did not penetrate the pork as much as I would have expected if the pork was simmering in the claypot for a while.  Someday, some beautiful temptress with long dark tresses will explain to my beauty and sexiness how claypots work.

And last but not the least was beef with oyster sauce.  Very nice indeed with a soft tender exposition of beef and crunchy onions and pepper.  THe onions must have been the yellow kind because the delicate taste had been eliminated by the wok.  The crunchiness of the peppers was a delightful counter to the soft juiciness of the beef.  Somewhere out there, a cow is delighted at my happiness in having partaken of its carcass. It is very difficult to cook pepper and have it retain its crunchiness.

And to top everything off, we of course had diet coke.  Once more, gotta watch that girlish figure.

REtong