Golden City Late Night

Golden City
5375 Kearny Villa Rd
San Diego, CA 92123

I have been wanting to try Golden City for either their lunch or late night special for a while now.  Normally, Golden City’s food prices are on the high side.  But during lunch hours and after 9 at night, Golden City offers a discounted menu, with most dishes priced around $7-9.  You can view the menu on their website.  I finally had an opportunity to try their late night menu recently.

When we arrived for dinner, I was surprised about how busy the place still was.  More busy than Emerald or Shanghai City on the nights when I tried their late night specials.  My group was pretty hungry, so we ordered several dishes.

The pictures I took don’t really do the food justice.  It’s hard to take good photos when there is poor light and a hungry crowd.  First, we ordered a seafood tofu claypot.

This was one of my favorite dishes of the night.  Even though the price was discounted, the quantity was still pretty big, with lots of fish, shrimp, and squid inside the clay pot.  The tofu was tender.  The dish was made just right.

We also ordered a stir fried on-choy dish.  There was a lot of steam when I was snapping this picture.

This dish was slightly disappointing.  They barely cut the vegetable, other than making a cut at the stems.  It made it hard to eat.  Every time I took a chopstick full of this dish, it was like eating spaghetti, with the long strands of on-choy.  I would have liked this dish better if they had cut it properly, to more bite-sized portions.

We also ordered fish fillet with black bean sauce, one of Boyfriend’s favorite dishes.

This dish tasted pretty good, though slightly on the salty side.

We ordered a Yang Chow Fried rice.

This dish was disappointing.  Very bland and flavorless.  I wold have thought fried rice should be an easy dish for Golden City to make.

Fried pork intestines.

Every place I’ve tried fried pork intestines seems to make it a bit differently.  Golden City serves it pure; just fried intestines cut into stripes.  It was quite pretty.  I wondered if it would be too bland to just eat the intestines by itself, or whether it would be too oily, but I enjoyed it.

Fried pork with spicy salt.

This dish looked pretty from the outset.  Lots of golden fried pieces of pork.  Unfortunately, the batter was way too thick and there was barely any meat.  In fact, Little Sister bit into pieces that were pure fat and no meat at all.

Fried noodle with XO sauce.

I didn’t particularly liked this dish, but Little Sister and Little Brother liked it.  It was a very simple dish, all noodles and sauce.  The noodles are rolled up rice noodle.  I’m not sure why it is called fried noodle.

At the end of the meal, we were given dessert! I love getting free dessert.  It was tapioca with taro, one of my favorites.

All in all, the meal was pretty enjoyable.  There were some disappointments, but there are so many dishes on the late night menu, that I’m sure I’ll find other dishes I enjoy.  I was particularly impressed with the service.  Most chinese restaurants are not known for their service.  Adding in the factor that we were eating the discounted menu, and I wasn’t expecting much.  But our waters were refilled, our leftovers were packed for us, our dessert was given to us without asking, and our check was given to us promptly.