14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Hong Kong Restaurant
due for a spring cleaning
Review and photos by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
O
n Astoria’s northeast edge,
the decades old Hong Kong
Restaurant has settled into
a bland bargain where portion is
prized über alles.
Essentially, they deliver two
insipid meals for the price of one
decent one. Which is to say: your
to-go box will be teeming.
Whether or not you’ll want
those leftovers — or even the first
go-round — is another question. In
searching for developed flavors and
freshness at Hong Kong Restaurant I
came up empty-handed.
What I found instead were tow-
ering, tasteless heaps, like a sesame
chicken that was woefully short on
actual chicken. (Most of the fried
fare was two-thirds or three-quarters
oily, artery-clogging dough encasing
a smidgen of meat.)
I crossed paths with vegetables
— cabbage, bamboo chutes, water
chestnuts and the like — that were
all but crispy water.
I squinted and sniffed at seafoods,
wondering whether they’d spent
more time in the ocean or the freezer.
To be sure: This exhausted strain
of Americanized Chinese food is
hardly exclusive to Hong Kong
Restaurant. It is, I reckon, more a
reflection of American comforts and
palates than anything worldly.
As Jiayang Fan wrote in a recent
issue of The New Yorker: “By now,
most Americans recognize that
Westernized basics like chop suey
and General Tso’s are compromised
simulacra of authentic Chinese
food.”
Hong Kong Restaurant has plied
HONG KONG
RESTAURANT
Rating:
2813 Marine Drive
Astoria, Ore.
97103
503-325-5344
Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. everday
Price: $ – teeming portions for
around $10
Service: Patient, quick
Vegetarian / Vegan Options:
Dull vegetables
Drinks: Full bar
KEY TO STAR RATING SYSTEM
Below average
Average
Good
Excellent
Best in region
Special No. 1: General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, chicken with pea pods and vegetables, pork fried rice
this model for decades. It is due, at
the very least, for some extensive
spring cleaning.
The first to be tossed is the squid.
Part of the Three Delicacies (at
$11.95, the most expensive single
item on the menu) the geometrically
machined squid tubes were rubbery
as a tire and tasted like an aquarium
smells.
Throw out the General Tso’s
sauce, too. Smacking of corn syrup
and little else, it was too sugary to
eat with dinner. It made more sense
as a dessert jelly to dip fortune
cookies in (but even then only in
moderation).
And while there could be hope of
overhauling the dull, lightly garlic-y
oil that coated everything I had
that wasn’t fried (such as the Three
Delicacies and Chicken w/ Pea Pods
& Vegetables), it might be better
to just chuck it and start over. The
sauce was muting, hardly elevating.
It made everything taste gray.
While we’re cleaning, the menu
also needs a good scrubbing. Loads
of choices stem from too few
ingredients. For the most part it
comes down to fried, oil-slicked or
both. For the dozens upon dozens
of choices, there are few disparate
flavors.
Servers offered little more direc-
tion. “Everything is good,” goes the
refrain. When pressed, recommenda-
tions were so tepid I had to wonder:
Maybe there really aren’t any stand-
outs, specialties or hidden gems.
Two different servers did call the
Beef w/ Broccoli ($8.50) “popular.”
The beef was thin and chewy. The
broccoli’s essence was cooked out.
Everything was smothered by that
indeterminate oil, melding and min-
imizing everything into a same-y,
desaturated mush — another shade
of gray.
I suppose the Wonton Soup
($6.50/small) is the dish I’d order
again if I had to. It had the same
overcast flavor, but at least it was
wrought with the least offensive
ratios of oil and dough to meat.
Everything at Hong Kong
Restaurant comes out fast, suggest-
Wonton Soup
ing rather than cooked to order, that
a good deal of it is sitting, waiting
to be warmed, finished or dunked in
the fryer.
All of this is a huge bummer.
More authentic and vibrant Chi-
nese food in the region would be so
welcome. So, too, would be more
Americanized Chinese that at least
offers a modicum of concern for
health and/or flavor, where the kitch-
en is engaged.
And while the argument “it’s
really cheap” may be tempting, let’s
remember: Offering food at bar-
gain-basement prices isn’t necessari-
ly an act of compassion. Nor is it one
that necessarily has our best interests
at heart. CW