Review: Wong’s King Seafood
Here is another in my endless string of confessions to you, my 90,000 closest friends: I used to hate Portland Chinese. I have a lot of Asian friends. When it comes to food, they know I’m always up for Thai or Japanese, but when they’d suggest Chinese, I always seemed to be busy that night. The problem was I’d had good Chinese in L.A., San Francisco, and Vancouver BC. Compared to those cities, Portland’s best restaurants usually turned out gelatinous, greasy slop. Then I started hearing rumors of a new place named Wong’s King Seafood. Interest piqued, I stopped by one evening and have never looked back.
This is what Cantonese cooking is all about. The entrance doors in the mini mall don’t prepare you for what is coming. The dining room is huge, modern, and spotlessly clean – on the way out a companion set a to-go container on a counter. As soon as he picked it up, someone rushed over and began polishing the top. One wall is taken up by large well-maintained fish tanks full of crabs and lobsters. Servers push carts laden with dim sum in every direction. Crisp white tablecloths set off the 60 or so tables; the larger ones have a Lazy Susan in the middle to make sharing easy. You’ll feel like you are in a Chinese banquet hall; the room seats over 200. The wait staff is smartly attired, and always quick to respond, though you may have to wave to get their attention now and then. There is something about the whole scene that almost feels military in precision.
A few things to consider: even though Wong’s is huge, it packs with customers. There is frequently a 45 minute wait. Many Asians tend to like eating late, so get there early if possible. You can also go for lunch and will usually be seated fairly quickly. Since you can order off the incredibly cheap lunch menu, plus the dim sum carts and the dinner menu, lunch is a great time to go. One thing to keep in mind, this is not Szechuan food. If you are expecting spicy, you may not find it here. Instead look for the more subtle layers of flavor that are the foundations of Cantonese food. Of course you can always add some of the hot sauces that are on every table. Best of all, the prices are quite reasonable. Even most entrees are only around $16.00.
We’ll start with dim sum, a Cantonese term, literally translated as dot heart or order heart, meaning order to one’s heart’s content. At this point in my life, I’ve had my fair share of dim sum in San Francisco and Vancouver BC. While not quite as good as the great places in BC, this is by far, the best I have had in the Northwest. The variety is large, the carts actually have fresh dishes (I watched them refresh one cart just because the items had been on it too long), the staff is very knowledgeable and doesn’t hesitate to help you with your selections. It is fun peeking into all the tantalizing steamers as they pull off lid after lid, giving you a quick glance inside. If you ask about something that is not on their cart, the staff will send the right one to your table. Prices range from $2.00-$5.00. Everything I had was good, though you have to allow for variance in individual taste. I loved the gow: shrimp, pork, or red bean dumplings in light wrappings full of fragrance. More winners include the vivid steamed pork buns, sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, and the delicately flavored potstickers (though they can be a bit doughy at times).
Moving on, try the congee porridge popular in many parts of Asia, with flavorful bits of pork, rice noodles simply stuffed with shrimp, han sui gok; pork in sweet sticky rice that has been thrown into the deep fryer, or the similar wu gok with taro instead of pork. Still hungry? The char siu bao, BBQ pork buns and onions, or red bean buns may be just what you need. The carts just keep coming and coming. If you find yourself totally lost, and unable to understand what the servers pushing the carts are saying, ask to see the dim sum menu. It is full of pictures and little descriptions, which can help the layman find his way through the process. If you are feeling really brave, try the chicken paws. You’ll get a whole plate of little feet, which taste exactly like I would expect – not my favorite dish.
At the end, there is a cart full of sweet red bean buns, wonderful sweet tofu, mango pudding, sesame seed balls… just point and you’ll be surprised.
Lunch specials are inexpensive; for $6.00 you get a good egg-drop soup. This is followed by a large plate with a selection of items. Start with the egg roll. The crisp layers crackle when you bite into them. Light little crab puffs follow that actually taste like crab, the best I’ve had in Portland. The accompanying plum sauce has great depth of flavors. A huge mound of fried rice is as good as it looks, moist and packed with different items. Unfortunately, the mains are not nearly as delicious as they used to be. The first few times I came here, the Northern China Mongolian beef was the best I’d had in ages; layers upon layers of flavor, and a depth I never thought I’d find in Portland Chinese. The same was true for the gong bao (kung pao) chicken from the western regions. Now that has all changed. These dishes, in a word, suck; they are so bad I couldn’t get any of the lunch specials down; they tasted overwhelmingly of vinegar and were terribly unbalanced. It’s too bad, because the lunch plates are a bargain, but I’d do the dim sum instead.
Entrees are wide-ranging, but from my experience, don’t try the run of the mill stuff. The cooks seem to pay more attention to seafood and more exotic items. The dinner menu is 20 pages long with lots of pictures of the different dishes. Reading it makes you feel like you have traveled to a new world. I’ve never seen such a good selection of soups, some of them hard to find in restaurants anywhere. Try the house special won ton soup for something better than you’ll be expecting. Of course seafood is a big feature here and Wong’s manages it better than anything else. The shark fin soup bursts with flavor; all the seafood soups are loaded with fish.
Chinese spareribs are a feast, the meat practically falling off the bone, leaving you begging for more. They cook chicken and duck really well, giving them a great crispy skin that crackles when you bite into it. Unfortunately, unless you get them with a sauce, the meat itself can be a bit bland. Firepots of stock are delivered steaming to your table, waiting to be plied to your liking with thinly sliced meats and crispy fresh vegetables. Under Chef Wong’s hands, even dishes like barbequed duck rise to new heights. Nothing oily here; the skin is crisp and bursts with flavor.
As I said, seafood is your best bet. The abalone is tender and silky, taking me back to diving for them when I was a kid. Here it is served several ways, but my favorite so far is thinly sliced with mushrooms. Scallops with XO sauce are perfectly cooked, juicy and flavorful; the same can be said for the salty-spicy prawns. The salt-and-pepper squid is perfectly cooked – crunchy and lightly seasoned with coarse salt and flakes of hot pepper.
Wong’s King may be a bit out of the way at 87th and Division, but if you have a craving for good Cantonese cooking, it is worth the drive from anywhere in the Portland area. We no longer have to be ashamed and change the subject when an out of town guest suggests Chinese. I’m not going to sit here and tell you everything they serve is fantastic – the food definitely misses the mark at times, especially if you stray away from dim sum. I will say it is the best of its type in Portland, and gives Vancouver BC a run for its money.
- Phone: (503) 788-8883
- Address: 8733 SE Divison st., Portland OR. 97266 (86th & Division). Google Map
- Hours: 10:30am-11:00pm daily. Fri-Sat: 10:30am-Midnight. Dim sum until 3 pm.
- Website: WongsKing.com
Food DudeComments
19 Responses to “Review: Wong’s King Seafood”Leave a Reply
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Unfortunately, this is still far and away the best Chinese restaurant in the Portland area, and all the way down to the Bay Area.
I have never tried the entrees that FoodDude tried, ie., Mongolian beef or kung pao chicken at this restaurant. I don’t really consider them the sine qua non of a Chinese restuarant, especially one that specializes in Cantonese or Shanghainese cuisines.
It’s a little bit like criticizing a French chef for making a poor paella. Northern Chinese cuisine and Cantonese cuisine are very different. Unfortunately for a Chinese restaurant to survive in most places in the US, they have to be generalists, offering the hoary stir fried rice and dishes from different cuisines in order to placate the American public.
Food Dude,
I must apologize. Your post regarding Wong’s King piqued my interest and I went back. This is what I ordered: Peking duck, King’s Spareribs, Pepper Salted Cod, Mongolian beef, King’s Mushroom with tender greens.
The duck was excellent. the Salted Cod was battered in a very light batter– you could taste the fish, but not very salty. I am not sure if that is a bad thing. The spareribs were a little bland but tender. The mushrooms were good. And the Mongolian beef. It was weird. You were right. I’ve never tasted a Mongolian beef dish where the vinegar taste was so strong.
I wanted you to be wrong so that Portland wouldn’t be relegated back to a backwaters again in regards to Chinese food. Now I’m not so sure it’s not the case…..
Twitter: pdxfooddude
says:
Thanks for the update FoodGroupie. I didn’t want to see it go downhill either, but I have to be honest. Hopefully it’s just a phase; and maybe this will be a wakeup call.
I know this is an oldish review, but in the year or so that I’ve been regularly going there, the only problem is its consistency. Last night I had wonderfully thin and fatty pan fried pork shoulder meat with scallions and onions, delicious cod, and melt-in-your mouth egg tofu stuffed with pork paste (I make a habit of trying new dishes whenever I can resist the temptation of the tried-and-true). The eggplant that paired with the cod in the hot pot, however, was mushy. Again, just consistency – sometimes you’ll get a dish that seemed to get ignored somewhere from the kitchen to your table. With so much to offer, however, its easy to overlook. I’d give it a higher rating, but that’s just me (and perhaps due to the dearth of quality local Chinese).
I agree with jono, and as a san francisco transplant (I know, I know, boo hoo), I have been bummed for 7 years about the void of even average chinese food in portland. UNTIL I found Sungari in the pearl. You wanna talk eggplant? Oh my. I get takeout there at least twice a week now. Thus, my car smells like a restaurant delivery vehicle.
Evidently we ordered the wrong thing
Both were so bad we refused “to-go” boxes
Cant remember what one item was but the other was a fried rice with shrimp and chicken. It was seriously gross with this thick gloppy cornstarchy GEW all over the top. It looked like VOMIT
Definitely not rushing back there any time soon
Here’s a big vote on the positive side for this restaurant. Despite some of the reviews here we took a chance and took our out of town guests there last week and had six or seven of the entrees. While my wife and I are not that knowledgable re. Chinese food our guests were. She’s a native of Nanning and moved to the US last year with her American husband who has spent many years in that part of the world and is fluent in the language. Their opinion was that this place was first-rate – as good as any of the Chinese restaurants they been to on the west coast and darned near as good as the best restaurants in her hometown. I’ve known this guy for over three decades and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just shining me on – they were both quite enthusiastic about the place. From my non-foodie perspective the service was excellent, the vegetables fresh and all was quite tasty. We’ll go back.
You might take another look–I’ve noticed the quality of their dim sum has gone up quite a bit the last six months. Maybe someone new is cooking.
Twitter: pdxfooddude
says:
Thanks Marya, I’ll check it out.
Had dim sum there on New Years Day and it was as good as it ever was. Excellent shumai, good ha gau and other dumplings (taro, glutinous rice, fried shrimp), delicious roast pork, and other stuff. Great service (constant water and tea refills, empty plates/baskets cleared) too. It’s the best I have had in town by far.
Twitter: pdxfooddude
says:
Thanks Jill, I’m going to give it a try over the weekend. I’d love it if the dim sum was as good as when it first opened!
If you’re in the mood to check another variation on Portland Chinese food, do yourself a favor and check out Chinese Delicacy – located on SE 82nd, just north of Duke. The venue is like a pint-size Wong’s King – with Chinese television running in the background. I get take-out here at least once a week and have never been dissapointed. Yummy steamed pot stickers, Hot Garlic Scallops, Mongolian Beef, Happy Family and Delicacy Fried Rice are our staples, but there are a wealth of options to be had.
I just moved down here from the Emerald City where you can find great deals on Asian food in the Int’l District.
I’d heard about Wong’s King and looked forward to trying it. I went there with 2 friends and was sorely disappointed.
I was shocked by the prices on the menu. “Even most entrees are only around $16.00.” $16 is too much! I am used to paying $10 or less per dish.
My friend ordered honey walnut shrimp, her favorite. The amount of food was paltry.
Twitter: pdxfooddude
says:
I really only recommend it for dim sum at this point
I agree, Wong’s King is best for dim sum. Try Yummy Yummy on SE 82nd for a great all around Chinese food experience.
I ate there with my wife about a month ago, and it was really bad. Been there many times, but it appears it has deteriorated recently.
I don’t like this place. Been there three times on the urging of a Chinese-American friend, but have been unimpressed. The ostentatious displays of shark’s fin and VO brandy may be authentically Hong Kong, but I think they’re tacky. The food flavors seem bland and the textures seem uniform compared to the Bay Area Chinese places I used to frequent, and the fancy dining room did not make up for the noise and chaos of the serving area. I much prefer Sungari downtown for higher-end Chinese food and Chinatown in Beaverton for good dim sum, served by a friendly and less-stressed staff.
Not the same kind of Chinese, but we like Fu Jin over on Hawthorne (about 3500 SE) a LOT better than this place, and it’s a LOT cheaper. Their crisy eggplant (they will add meat if you wish…I have it with BBQ pork slices) is superb. My wife loves their lemon chicken.
For Pot Stickers we like Stickers in Sellwood best, and they have what we think is the best won-ton soup in town….also a LOT cheper than Wong’s King…
Having been to Hong Kong and enjoyed the great banquet houses there, Wong King is a short trip back to wonderful memories of Dim Sum. I find the carts and the staff on par with any of the great restaurants in New York and San Francisco. If standard Americanized chinese cuisine is what you like this is not your kind of place.