Rarely do I get the opportunity to sample restaurants' special menus in advance. To do that would entail explaining why I need a preview, and that would blow my cover, and the restaurant's staff would try to be nice to me, and the chef would have to put something perfect on the table, and that would make for a totally false experience. Overdose on seafood at the Garden
I don't want that. The truth is ever so much more interesting.
Down times mean more restaurants are offering time extensions on "specials," so that Chinese New Year menus at East & West Garden in Restaurant Row will be available through the end of April, and a family dinner special will be available through 1998's end.
This is great news for all who have sacrificed to work any semblance of a life. At East & West Garden, you can speak to your friends and family again - without involving the phone company - and you can eat your fill for a reasonable sum, and without a moment's thought. The restaurant has done the thinking for you, and this is quite handy at the end of the day.
The $78 meal for six has Peking duck, scallop soup, a cold-cut platter, pepper-salt crab, lobster, sauteed seafood, steamed fish, steamed oysters and dessert.The 10-person banquet menu runs $168 and offers scallop soup, a cold-cut platter, Peking duck, chicken and ham with vegetables, lobster or crab with ginger and onion sauce, pot roast pork with taro, pepper-salt shrimp, stir-fried duck meat, black mushrooms with twin vegetables, rice and dessert.
I sampled the family special, which you'll have ample time to try if you're so inclined. The dinner is said to serve four to six for $49.50, but I think six would be a stretch, unless two in your party are small children, The menu would feed four adults with normal appetites comfortably, and even then, most would likely welcome a second lobster.
For this meal, you have to like seafood. The menu is supposed to start with winter melon soup, but the restaurant substituted a mild egg flower and crab meat soup, which was fine by me. I had two bowlfuls.
Next came the lobster, a 1-pounder dressed in a cream sauce light enough for the flavor of the shellfish to come through. It seemed meager since I know I can polish off a lobster solo. It would have made more sense to deliver the lobster at the end of the meal, when most appetites tend to be somewhat sated.
A portion of Dungeness crab with ginger and onion was more generous, though a lot more messy. By this time I was beginning to think the meal too sinful, but any guilt was alleviated by the thought that I had ordered none of this. I was merely going with the flow, a victim of seafood overload. It was liberating. I could blame someone else for the calories and cholesterol.
Rounding out the menu was flounder steamed with shoyu and topped with slivers of ginger and green onion; pepper and salt shrimp; Chinese broccoli with the snappy, crisp texture of asparagus, stir-fried with dried flounder; steamed rice and tapioca in condensed milk.
It was quite an extravagant experience for four that ended up costing the same as a pasta dinner for two at pricier restaurants.
East & West Garden: Restaurant RowHours: 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 9:30 p.m. daily
Prices: Lunch about $4 to $8 per person; dinner about $10 to $15 per person
Call: 521-3688
Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews run on Thursdays. Reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Bulletin. Star ratings are based on comparisons of similar restaurants:
To recommend a restaurant, write: The Weekly Eater, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. Or send e-mail to features@starbulletin.com-- excellent;
