14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Fill your craving for Americanized Chinese food at Great Wall
Review and photos by
MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
GREAT WALL
RESTAURANT &
LOUNGE
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
T
The parking lot of Gearhart’s
Great Wall is often bulging. At
the same time, the restaurant can
appear rather barren, its brightly lit
booths mostly empty. Patrons —
mostly locals — pass time in the
lounge.
But unlike Seaside’s West Lake
Chinese Restaurant, where the
bar clientele come primarily to
socialize, drink and gamble, it’s
not unheard of to find folks eating
at the Great Wall. (I reviewed West
Lake back in April.)
Still, there are a host of similar-
ities. Both restaurants offer a very
Americanized version of Chinese
cuisine — reliant mostly on the deep
fryer and wok — and decades-old
design inspiration. But the Great
Wall exceeds West Lake in almost
every regard. It’s clean, cozy and
well taken care of and, most impor-
tantly, imminently more edible.
On my trips to Great Wall, I too
was drawn to the cozier and more
lively lounge. Without windows,
it resembles something like a
basement game room. Despite the
booths, the teeming bar, the paper
lanterns and Chinese ephemera, it
felt to me very civilian — the kind
of place people gather to watch
a football game and speak freely.
Some of that is due to the locals and
their regular comfort with the place.
But some too is owed to the design.
The menu is as nearly all
Americanized Chinese restaurants
are: needlessly stuffed. Choosing
is difficult not because there are
so many options, but because
they’re all so similar. (The usage
of relatively incremental Chinese
nomenclature doesn’t help either.)
The overwhelming majority of
the menu breaks down into three
choices: protein, sauce and veg-
gies. If you’d like, there’s a fourth
choice: starch. In other words: rice,
noodles or pancakes. Indeed, when
multiple servers can’t tell you
what’s best or most popular it’s a
The Fried Scallop appetizer was a lit-
tle salty, but good with the accom-
panying spicy mustard
problem — the menu’s.
There are the customary appetiz-
ers, most of which are breaded and
fried — shrimp, calamari, scallops,
crab — as well pot stickers, egg
rolls, egg drop, sweet and sour
soup and so on. What there isn’t is
anything of much authenticity or
adventure. You’ve got your General
Tso’s, Orange, and Sweet and Sour
chicken, but little — if any — re-
gional specialties that people in
China actually eat.
I began with the Fried Scallop
appetizer. As the menu is presented
in the singular — it reads “scal-
lop” — and because scallops are
expensive, I asked the server if it
was just one single, exquisite piece.
She suggested it was. When the
Fried Scallop ($10) arrived — at
the same time as my main course,
unfortunately — there were many,
some eight roundish little puff balls.
Atop a useless bed of cabbage they
were encrusted in a light batter and
dusted with a hailstorm of salt. As
the excess couldn’t be shook or
dabbed off I began ripping off the
sparkling tops and enjoying little
crunchy, fleshy pods. While they
weren’t the most exquisite, fresh
bursts of ocean, they were worth
eating — especially after a dunk in
the sinus-clearing spicy mustard.
The Ma La Shrimp ($16.95)
presented a simple preparation that
makes up a significant cross-section
of Great Wall’s menu — the shrimp
were lightly cooked, tossed along
with veggies in a simple, oily sauce
(in this case, garlic), and served
with a side of white rice. The mix of
The No. 5 combination features broccoli beef, pork fried rice, sweet and sour
pork, and an egg roll.
veggies included a few slices of bell
pepper, onion, the errant machined
carrot, cabbage and loads of bam-
boo shoots. Of the veggie mix, most
were crisp and watery — more tex-
ture than taste. Again, totally fine,
though rather spendy, all told.
The veggies didn’t quite live up
to the menu’s billing: ”Known for
our fresh ingredients.” They surely
seemed more likely frozen. (While
I cannot attest to Great Wall’s
history, I spoke with a friend who’s
been eating there for many years.
Without prompting she said the
quality of vegetables has declined
in recent years.)
The same mix — cabbage,
onion, carrots and all those bamboo
shoots — accompanied the Curry
Chicken ($13). I felt a keen sense of
deja vu, only the shrimp had been
swapped for chicken and the garlic
sauce for curry. Or, rather, curry-li-
te. Otherwise, the sauces had sim-
ilar viscosity and passivity — the
flavor was mild, more a suggestion
than assertion. While it didn’t make
my tastebuds do the cha-cha, I was
heartened that the dish was at least
rather healthy. (That said, I didn’t
bother with the white rice, and I
wished Great Wall offered brown.)
I also tried the Sweet and Sour
Soup ($3.95, small), which was on
the savory side. It more resembled
a beefy, peppery, celery gravy
that I can’t imagine why anyone
would want to spoon up. The Egg
Drop was at least warm, slurpy
and stoked at least some sense of
familiarity.
On another trip I had one of the
combinations. There are eight on
the menu plus a section where you
can make your own. Mine, the No.
5 ($15), came with broccoli beef,
pork fried rice, sweet and sour
pork, and an egg roll. The brocco-
li beef perked me up — the thin
cuts of beef were supple, and the
long-trunked broccoli somewhat
more lifelike than the roughage on
my previous plates. The sweet and
sour pork, with the sweet vio-
let-hued edge, was appropriately
cooked, still soft and juicy. The egg
roll was more than just crust. The
pork fried rice, though, was a ruse.
While I wasn’t ready to get my
microscope out, there were almost
no visible additions of pork, no veg-
gies. It was just a salted, seasoned
rice — as if stirred around in the
bare minimum of pork vapors.
But, rice — and price — aside,
the dish delivered a tad more than
I expected of a rote combo. On the
Rating:
4340 U.S. Highway 101,
Gearhart
PHONE: 503-738-4108
HOURS: 11:30 a.m. to 9:30
p.m. Tuesday through Friday;
noon to 9:30 p.m. Saturday
and Sunday
PRICE: $$ – Some dishes are
a few dollars more than you’d
think
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN
OPTIONS: Tofu available,
veggies a little lacking
SERVICE: Hamstrung by the
dense menu
DRINKS: Full bar, coffee, soda
KEY TO STAR RATING SYSTEM
Poor
Below average
Good
Excellent
Best in region
other hand, it’s still a rote combo.
And there are hardly any avenues of
the menu that offer deeper immer-
sion. I thought of New Garden,
the third Chinese restaurant in the
Seaside-Gearhart area (which I
reviewed back in February). New
Garden, too, is primarily Ameri-
canized fare. But there are some
gems to find, like the transfixing
(and nicely priced) Eggplant with
Hot Garlic Sauce. It seemed to me
there was little of such distinction at
Great Wall. That said, I can see why
folks would want to hang out there
— and maybe even have a bite from
time to time.
My final fortune cookie shared
the following advice, something
Great Wall too might heed: “Need
some adventure or enjoyment?
Take a vacation.”