Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant: How Much Worse Can it Get?
Written: Mar 03 '01 (Updated Mar 03 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Visually impressive building and decor
Cons: Abysmal service, horrible food, expensive prices
The Bottom Line: Hong Kong East Ocean Restaurant in Emeryville is an overpriced Chinese restaurant that offers horrible service for small groups and lackluster food.
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| smiles33's Full Review: California |
Surprisingly, this lonely restaurant at the end of Powell street was packed. For those unfamiliar with the area, Powell is on a "mini-peninsula" so one drives past several docks on either side of the road before arriving at this restaurant.
Leaving about an hour and a half later, Brace33 and I could barely control our anger/disgust after our experience there with the pitiful yet ludicrously expensive food and the abhorrent service.
Note: Epinions doesn’t have this restaurant in its listings and it no longer allows more than one review in category, so I couldn’t place this in the Berkeley subcategory either.
The night started off normally enough. After a few minutes driving down the dark stretch of road extending into the San Francisco Bay, we pulled into the almost full parking lot of East Ocean Seafood Restaurant, an elegant two story building shining like a beacon against the backdrop of the Bay Bridge’s twinkling lights.
This restaurant was on our list of potential wedding banquet sites, as it’s a visually impressive Chinese restaurant with a large capacity. It also has a full panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay, Treasure Island, the Golden Gate, and Bay Bridge. Wouldn't it be lovely for a wedding?
We entered the building and found an appealing dining room with maple columns and subdued jade carpeting and chair cushions. There was a wedding going on in one of the adjoining banquet rooms (we saw the festooned car in the parking lot and heard the clanging of forks against wine glasses) as well as another large party set off from the main dining room. These two large parties may partially explain the horrible dining experience that follows.
Service began with such a high note only to quickly go downhill
After being seated, our waiter came over and removed our chopsticks from their paper sleeves and then poured soy sauce in the tiny saucers next to our plates. I took this as a sign that this place would have excellent service. Brace33 also commented that East Ocean probably justifies its prices by offering better than average service. We could not be more wrong.
After our waiter took our order, we saw him a total of 3 times over the next hour and a half. He was doting on the table of 8 next to us, replacing plates after every few courses, re-filling the teapot, and hovering attentively. But when it came to service for Brace33 and me, he perfunctorily laid the plates down and disappeared. Sometimes he didn’t even deliver our dishes, instead relying on a “junior waiter” to bring the food from the kitchen.
He looked busy, but not so much that he was in over his head. The problem is that he concentrated on the large table and completely ignored us. We never got a change of plates despite having a few chicken bones. We weren’t served rice until half an hour after the chicken and vegetables had arrived. We weren’t given a refill of tea. We weren’t given any glasses of ice water. And we sat for a full half hour waiting for our last dish of noodles to arrive.
I only managed to flag him down after an hour to get some glasses of ice water and at the end of the meal when he delivered the bill.
Looking around, I noticed that most of the patrons were dining in large groups of 6 or more. Perhaps they received better service? In any event, something brings people here. Based on tonight's experience, I think this place is similar to Skate's on the Bay, another popular touristy restaurant that has the same impressive view of the San Francisco Bay.
How can Chinese food be THIS bad?
Since we had a late dinner at 7, we were quite hungry. So, right after being seated, we immediately asked for an order of fried calamari ($10). On my one previous visit here, I had tried this appetizer and found it delicious. The Chinese version has got a salty kick to it (some sort of seasoned salt, I believe) and is topped with green onions.
It arrived promptly, and we set about devouring it. While warm when it was first delivered, the dish was quite satisfying, but about halfway through, after it had cooled somewhat, I noticed the dish lost quite a lot of its pizzazz. Cold calamari is chewy and tasted more like a rubber band.
Since we were considering this restaurant as a possible wedding banquet site, we decided to choose a few items from the wedding banquet menus. Starting at $318 and rising to $1080 per table of 10 people, the menus all sound absolutely delicious! We liked the one that included Peking Duck, Imperial Braised Lobster, and Hand Roasted Chicken.
However, since we had lobster twice already from our recent visits to Hong Kong Flower Lounge (see that review for more detail), we decided to go with the Hand Roasted Chicken, the Fresh Green Vegetables with Sun-dried Scallop Sauce (which is a little different from the Garden Vegetable with Crab Meat Topping on the wedding banquet menu), and Braised Soft Noodles with Scallop and Enoki mushrooms (which is also different from the Braised Egg Noodles on the wedding banquet menu).
About 15 minutes after we ordered, the half of a hand roasted chicken ($14) was delivered. The crispy brown skin looked tempting and the portion was rather large for only half a chicken. Brace33 also remarked that the restaurant was better at presentation than most Chinese places. But my first bite revealed a decent, though not particularly impressive taste. It wasn’t a dry chicken, but it wasn’t particularly moist or succulent, either. I wasn’t too surprised, since this restaurant does specialize in seafood.
But shockingly, I also discovered the chicken was at almost room temperature. Now, I’ve never sent an order back to a chef (who knows what they do in the kitchen with an order that’s been returned!), but I wanted to send this back. I don’t know how long it had lingered on the counter, cooling down. But Brace33 didn’t note any problems and my next piece was warmer. So I just continued to eat it, sans rice (which didn’t show up for half an hour, as I mentioned earlier).
The Fresh Green Vegetables with Sun-dried Scallop Sauce ($12) arrived at the same time as the chicken. Can I tell you how surprised I was to see broccoli with a soupy sauce and straw mushrooms? For $12? Now, I know Dried Scallops are a delicacy, but they tasted rather ho-hum and didn’t add much flavor to the sauce, which tasted like regular oyster sauce. The dried scallops basically added some texture, since they were chewy shreds on top of the fairly crunchy broccoli.
After poking around and trying some of the food, we then sat for the next twenty minutes waiting for our rice and noodles. In the meantime, we watched our waiter cook some prawns tableside for the neighboring table of 8. We also saw him change their plates TWICE as well as opening a bottle of wine for them. A floor manager (in a black suit) also dropped by that table a few times, so I wonder if these were some bigwigs compared to our small party of 2.
Finally, some junior waiter came out with our food and laid down a plate with a pitiful-looking pile of brown noodles with a handful of enoki mushrooms. This $14 dish, misleadingly named Braised Soft Noodles with Scallop and Enoki mushrooms, looked like someone poured some soy sauce over noodles and threw in the enoki mushrooms as an afterthought. It also tasted that way, too, as we didn’t even see shreds of dried scallop this time. We felt obliged to at least try it, and were thoroughly disappointed by both the horrid taste and the cold temperature. I cooked better noodles than this when I was a middle school student!
A second junior waiter came by and dropped off two bowls of cold, dry rice after the noodles. I thought I should take a least one bite of rice, if only to get rid of the soy sauce taste of the noodles. Sadly, I regret having done so, as I’ve never tasted worse rice than this. My 2-day-old rice tastes better, yet they still had the nerve to charge us $1 per bowl.
The last word
Our waiter appeared for the fourth and final time with a $61 bill (for those calculating, Brace33 had a $3 glass of Tsing Tao beer as well). Brace33 was not going to leave a tip at all, but I convinced him to leave a little since we couldn’t blame the waiter for the kitchen’s poor food and the long wait. He ended up writing on the bill “BAD service, horrible food” and said if there had been more room, he would’ve added, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
I was in such a disgusted mood, I didn’t even want to see the rest of the facility. The second floor may be a large banquet room, but we never saw it. East Ocean may be nice on the surface, but the poor service and abysmal food render this restaurant a total loss. We've already vowed never to return.
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Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant
3199 Powell St.
Emeryville, CA 94608
Tel: (510) 655-3388
Recommended:
No
Best Suited For: Couples
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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