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Golden Eagle, a closer look
Aloha!
7/28/09 - As promised, here's a closer look at another neighborhood-type Chinese restaurant, Golden Eagle. Located on the Young St. side of the small shopping center housing Kozo Sushi, and right across the street from Stadium Park on S. King St., this is another great, very casual Chinese restaurant with a wide variety of foods, including some specialties you may be very surprised to find. You'll see...
Can't very well see the sign, but that's the store on the corner of the building:
In typical form for a place like this, it's very casual inside and out, with simple booths, cafeteria-style chairs, classroom-style vinyl tiles, and paper menu item signs pasted all over the place. This is the kind of environment where you find lunch hours filled with construction workers and lots of working people in general, all hungry for tasty, generous portions at great prices, and with a variety that puts plate lunch houses and other normally inexpensive meals to shame!
Though I've been here before, it's been a while, and the biggest reason I re-visited in the first place was that a friend of mine had been raving about the soup noodles here, whether in the form of saimin, wonton mein, or whatever else - it really doesn't matter, as all of the soup noodles come with the same broth, and the broth is what my friend is so crazy about. He said it was made from boiling fish bones, and made the perfect cold-buster. I had to try it for myself.
Funny thing, but when I inquired of our kind waitress regarding the matter, she had no idea what I was talking about. And she seemed very informed of the happening's of the restaurant, too, perhaps even being one of the owner's, and not some part-timer trying to get through college. She kindly explained that the broth they use comes primarily from pork, and secondarily from chicken, but there's no fish to speak of. Hmmm... What to do?
I decided to go ahead and order the dish anyway, and here's what it looked like:
A straight saimin, it was, with generous portions of won bok cabbage, choi sum, green onion, and char siu pork. And how'd it taste? Well, completely puzzling, to tell you the truth. Puzzling, because I was wondering what my friend could possibly be speaking of! I mean, it wasn't bad or anything, just something completely similiar to any normal bowl of Chinese-style saimin anywhere on the island, and that fish taste? Like I said, completely puzzling!
Furthermore, we found the broth a little too light for our tastes, and worst of all, the noodles were disturbingly starchy and bland. It's the one thing on our table we couldn't finish, even though we only ordered a small bowl.
Eeeh, no worries, though - it all ascends up-ward from here, with great dishes like this:
You've probably seen this dish a time or two before, ey? It's called honey walnut shrimp, and is something just about every Chinese restaurant has on their menu these days. As you can tell from the pic, this one was done very well, with a light, crispy coating that wasn't over-done, preserving the taste and texture of the sweet, succulent shrimp inside. I don't know what it is, but the combination of perfectly fried and battered shrimp with honey-toasted walnuts is just an insanely perfect match-up. The mayo was also well-applied, in just the right portions to send this dish off the charts!
Moving right along, I know we looked into minute chicken cake noodles last time, but here we go again, with the same dish. The two were similiar on some terms, with a familiar cake noodle and blackened morsels of highly flavorful, shoyu-based, boneless chicken pieces. The differences were that Golden Eagle used unchoi (yay!) instead of choi sum, and the sauce, though delicious, was a bit on the thinner side, and not as dark, thick, and powerful as Duck Yun.
Looks pretty darn good, no?
But as I said earlier, there are several dishes here that can get quite interesting, namely things like salt 'n pepper shishamo (smelt fish), usually associated with Japanese dining, along with beef tripe in black bean sauce, pigs feet, and shark's fin soup. Doesn't come close to Cafe Oriente in Downtown regarding exotic dishes, but it does have a few to speak of.
How 'bout this next dish:
Ooops, sorry, not quite the picture I was looking for! But it gets pretty close:
Nope, that ain't no chicken wings, lemme tell ya! And for all those people out there who tell you that frog legs taste like chicken? Well, yeah... I guess if you were to single-out any other one animal that everyone can understand and relate to, I guess it'd be chicken, but don't let anyone tell you that it tastes exactly like chicken. The meat, first of all, is slightly denser, with an almost silky-firm, more transluscent quality that seems to fuse together cornish game hen or quail with that of crustacean, or at least sting ray or skate. And it does carry a slightly wild, untame taste - nothing overpowering or anything, but just kinda barely noticeable. Who knows, maybe I was just looking too deeply into it. Can't say for sure. But then again, I'm pretty sure that these are frozen legs from somewhere in Asia, so I wonder how the fresh stuff tastes?
Dang, I wish I naturally loved wilder cuisine such as the ilk above! I dunno, the more I sample these kinds of things, the more I see common threads running through them all. Out-of-the-mainstream meats do carry a strange similiarity that produces similiar results on my personal taste-buds, whether they be deer, wild boar, or frog legs - they're all kinda similiar to something or other, but never quite the same, and always, always, come with a slight to highly-offensive gamey-wildness that I never really find appealing outside of the personal satisfaction of knowing you did it. Same thing happened with snails at Sabrina's, although Doug B. seems to think I would love the version at Chai's Bistro at the Aloha Tower. Aaah, I'm just a wimp, is all!
But getting back to the restaurant, there's only a few exotic stuff on the menu, with most of it looking very much like you'll see anywhere, with great dishes like shrimp fried rice, stuffed tofu, chicken lobster noodles, steamed fillet of fish, roast duck, cashew chicken, sizzling squid bbq, and steaming hot pot's like black mushroom w/vegetable, fish ball w/tofu, and bat chun tofu casseroles, along with much, much more.
The kind waitress/hostess usually there is very laid-back and friendly, with a witty and good-natured tongue sure to keep you smiling. Outside of the $14.99 frog legs, $32.99 whole Peking duck, and $49.99 shark's fin soup, most individual entrees run from $6-$10 each, so that's right around the range you'd expect. For a wide range of items, and great Chinese food at great prices, Golden Eagle is definitely worth checking out.
And with that, take care, and Aloha till next time!
Aku
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Comments:
Jeff J (7/30/09) - Hey Aku, been a while! Just wanted to say I found your Kermit the frog pic hilarious. Thanks for always keeping humor in with your great postings on the food. Keep up the good work!
Aku (7/30/09) - Hey, thanks a lot man, good to hear stuff like that! I'll keep doing my best!
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