I'm with Charlie--there's nothing like fressing with the hounds. I'd say that Great Eastern isn't worth a trip from another county just for the food, but everything was decent at minimum, very good at best, and it was clean and pleasant with attentive service.
The deep-fried items were a pleasure. The oil tasted really fresh. The fillings were pretty muted in flavor, but the astonishing crunch of the bean curd skin roll and the greaseless frizz of the taro made them fun to eat. And the mochi balls stayed tasty even when cold, which almost never happens.
The steamed and pan-fried dumplings were also well-executed while indifferently seasoned, with the exception of the Zhiu Zhou dumplings, whose filling was complex and zippy with pork and dried shrimp, chili, cilantro, peanuts, maybe garlic chives(?), shiitakes, and something white and crunchy. I think these were my favorite thing on the table.
I feel like I'm damning with faint praise here, but again the most distinguishing feature of the meats was how they lacked anything negative. Both kinds of spareribs, the short ribs, and the duck tasted very fresh, not at all gristly, properly cooked--good quality meat. But again, of limited savoriness. The standout here was the beef. These were exquisite, tiny bites of pure salty beefy short ribs that wouldn't have been out of place on a tasting menu anywhere in town.
We really ordered a stupefying amount of food. It completely filled the lazy susan in the center of our large table. We were spread out and it was hard to carry on a conversation, so we just set about making a big dent in the bounty. Would the individual items have had more of an impact if they hadn't all arrived in a ten-minute span? Maybe. Would it have mattered to our overall enjoyment? I don't know. It was a thoroughly great afternoon, all of us enjoying it exactly for what it was.
And now I can say I've eaten duck tongues.
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