We are on the final stretch and some of that "just married" excitement is back with the MSG150 crew. Today's target was the Hing Loon Seafood Restaurant, a cozy corner spot that was new to all of us. We headed out with a large core group and met up with Erin, who joined us from the hill, and Susan Dennis, who was braving her first MSG150 experience.
Address: 628 Maynard Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98104
Cuisine: Chinese: Cantonese
Average rating: 3.4 chopsticks
Lunch date: 5/21/2008 @ 11:49:00
Time taken to be seated: 0 minutes
Time to take order: 5 minutes
Time for food to arrive: 19 minutes
Total lengh of meal: 70 minutes
Chopstix quality: Cheap Plastic
Do they use MSG?: Will leave out if asked.
Where is the owner/chef from?: Hong Kong
Number of tables: 16
Number of occupied tables: 8 (50%)
Number of business lunch tables: 4 (50%)
Number of "local" tables: 3 (37%)
Healthcode Score: 0
Links: Yelp!, Urbanspoon
Family Style Dishes
- Curry Chicken - $9.25
- Satay Chicken - $9.50
- Satay Beef Chow Fun - $7.95
- 1.5 x Seafood Fried Wonton - $7.95 ($11.92)
- Seafood Eggplant with Szechuan Hot Sauce - $11.95
- Singapore Noodles - $7.95
- Salt and Pepper Chicken - $8.95
- Mongolian Beef - $9.25
- House Special Chow Mein - $9.00
- Pork Ribs with Pepper Salt Noodle in Soup - $5.95
- Kung Pao Chicken - $8.95
Luncher: Emmett
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Your work interest can capture the highest status or prestige.
Rating:
Emmett's Review
Hing Loon's another one of those places whose reputation precedes it. I've heard from various sources that this place has some good seafood. I was excited to try.
Like Ho Ho, this place has tall windows and is very well lit with outside light. Like Tai Tung, they write the specials on sheets of white paper and stick them up on the walls. Unlike Tai Tung, which is kind of sleepy and depressing, this place seems alive with energy. We snagged a massive table that allowed us to all fit.
The twelve dishes we ordered came at a leisurely pace. I for one went for the Salt and Pepper Chicken, which was gobbled down handily in less than a minute. Assholes. Anyways, lots of other good stuff. The Seafood and Eggplant with Szechuan sauce was fresh with lots of flavor. Michael's pork noodle soup, which he struggled with so handily, was brothy goodness. Seafood chow mein was also satisfactory, along with the Mongolian Beef, Sizzling Chicken, Kung Pao. The Seafood Wontons were interesting - fried hard and served with an apple flavored sauce. It kind of tasted like McDonald's Fried Apple Pies, which you kids out there might not remember as they were replaced by crappy Baked Pies in 1992.
Everything delivered was above average, and I found myself gleefully anticipating what came next. The sauces were a little sweet for my taste, but the fare was freshly cooked and high quality. I'll come back.
Luncher: Adam
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: You will receive a small fortune.
Rating:
Adam's Review
I feel like I've walked in to Hing Loon before. Am I experiencing a Fight Club moment? or is Hing Loon (and its food) the same as everywhere else?
All the food was good. Nothing really popped in my head (or mouth) as being special.
Meh. Standard Chinese Food. You won't be disappointed if you go here, but its not going to blow your mind.
Luncher: Geary
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: You will hear good news today.
Rating:
Geary's Review
I was excited for Hing Loon. It has that thrown together look of a place that cares only about its food and customers and skimps on things like matching tables and updated menus. The walls are covered with 8x10 sheets of paper each with a single additional menu item written in black marker. The place is medium sized for the ID and had a good sized crowd. We were lucky there was a large table still open that fit the whole crew. There is no lunch menu, so we decided to go "Family Style". I had chosen a Spicy Szechuan Eggplant & Pork dish from the menu but just before ordering I noticed one of the 8x10s was Seafood Eggplant with Szechuan Hot Sauce and went with it as my addition to the table.
Once we got our order in, the food started arriving pretty quickly and kept arriving for about 30 minutes. There was tons of food, so I'll keep it short. First the highlights: The Singapore Noodles and Salt and Pepper Chicken were my favorites. The Singapore Noodles consisted of thing rice noodles stir fried with shrimp, pork, green peppers, onions, bean sprouts, and mixed with what I assume was Singapore Sauce. The Salt and Pepper Chicken was deep fried chicken bits with salt and jalapeños. Neither were spectacular, but I'd happily eat either again, although a full meal of the fried chicken might be too much. The only real low-light was the Seafood Eggplant. The Eggplant was extra mushy and the "Szechuan Hot Sauce" was too sweet for my taste. The rest was good but nothing outstanding. I had expected more from the Loon.
Luncher: Erin
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Your road will be made smooth for you by good friends.
Rating:
Erin's Review
Hing Loon doesn’t impress much in looks. It’s a medium size square room that looks like a cafeteria. There were many, many special dishes handwritten and posted up on the walls. Some of them looked very interesting and unique.
They have no lunch specials, so we each ordered a dish that looked interesting. We had a lot of food. Of all of the dishes, my favorites were the Seafood Eggplant with Szechuan Sauce, Mongolian Beef, the Seafood Fried Dumplings, and the Satay Chicken which was on a hot plate. Very impressive. All of the food was freshly cooked, and some of the spicy dishes had some good flavor. Overall, the dishes were good but pretty standard. I thought the spicy dishes could have been much hotter; they seemed fairly mild. I would recommend trying the specials from the wall, they seemed to be more interesting than many of the regular Chinese dishes on the menu. It was a little pricy for lunch, as our bill totaled out with tip to $13 each. I thought the service was slow for lunch, it took a while for the server to get to us, and then the dishes took quite a bit of time to wander out.
This is a good Chinese place, but not outstanding in any way. I would try it for dinner rather than lunch. It could be a good place to take Chinese food newbies.
VIP Luncher: Susan Dennis from Susan's Blog
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Your road will be made smooth for you by good friends.
Rating:
Susan Dennis's Review
There were 11 dishes to pick from. My idea of heaven! My dish was one of the first to come out - Fried Seafood Wonton and I thought it was excellent. They were very crispy and light with yummy interiors. I tasted shrimp but also felt the texture of a fish and possibly tiny minces of water chestnuts? They came with a delicious sweet/hot sauce heavy with apples. Different and delicious.
I sampled many of the other 10 dishes. The Salt and Pepper Chicken had a very good crust but I thought the chicken itself was a little tough and dry. The Seafood Eggplant with Szechuan Hot Sauce was really outstanding. I could not place the flavors in the sauce but they were very high on the yum scale. Of all the dishes I tried, the one that I will order next time I am there by myself or when I pop in for take out is the Mongolian Beef. The beef was tender, the sauce was spot on and the adornments - the crispy noodles and onions - were perfectly done.
The one dish I did not get to try but enjoyed watching was the Pork Ribs with Pepper Salt Noodle in Soup. It looked good and smelled good but it started on the opposite end of the table ad by the time it got to me it was gone. But I truly enjoyed watching the group trying to divvy it up without wearing all the noodles. The very sharp waitress finally brought scissors which was about the oddest thing I've ever seen in a restaurant but they worked perfectly. We got a picture of that, didn't we?
As a MSG150 virgin, it's difficult for me to separate the whole experience from the food for chopstick assignation. I think I'm going with 5 sticks for the experience and 4 for the food.
Luncher: Michael
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: You will take a chance in something in the near future except in bed.
Rating:
Michael's Review
With a dozen people at the table and fresh dishes arriving every few minutes this was a very chaotic lunch. Or maybe it was the glass of ice water in my lap that left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Warning to others: be careful how close your beverage gets to that lazy susan!
Hing Loon didn't offer any lunch specials so things got a bit spendy for us. But it was worth it. The spicy eggplant was really good. Spicy and sweet at the same time. The won tons, the fried chicken thingies, and that crazy sizzling platter were my particular favorites.
While I would happily go back for lunch I suspect this place is worth a trip for dinner instead.
Luncher: Al
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Someone will give you something.
Rating:
Al's Review
Salty: good; pricey: bad.
Luncher: Jared
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Fame and fortune is coming your way.
Rating:
Luncher: Wayne
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: You will be invited to a social gathering.
Rating:
Luncher: Joey
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: Someone will give you something.
Rating:
Luncher: Ben
Lunch: Family Style - $13.00Fortune: You are open and honest in your philosophy of love.
Rating:
Hing Loon Seafood Restaurant Photos
Hing Loon Seafood Restaurant
Menu Cover
Wall Menu
More Wall Menu
Yet more...
Pork Ribs with Pepper Salt Noodle in Soup
Seafood Fried Wonton
Cutting Soup
Curry Chicken
Singapore Noodles
Seafood Eggplant with Szechuan Hot Sauce
House Special Chow Mein
Mongolian Beef
Salt and Pepper Fried Chicken
Satay Beef Chow Fun w/ Gravy
Chicken Satay
Kung Pao Chicken
Complementary Hollow Sesame Balls
5 comments:
I was wondering when you would hit Hing Loon, home of the very best salt-and-pepper tofu in Seattle.
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Thank you for the fantastic blog, by the way. It's almost as delicious as the Hing Loon salt-and-pepper tofu!
I, too, am a fan of HL's salt and pepper tofu, and also their salt and pepper fish. Other favorites include their green onion pancakes, pea vines with garlic, fresh-made soy milk, and wontons (just the wontons, soup on the side or even without the soup, dipping the wontons in a mixture of the table condiments: chili black beans, soy sauce, vinegar and white pepper). And their hollow sesame balls are like nothing else I've ever sampled and something I like to order by the dozen to take to parties.
Love this blog!
Great blog - just found it. I was using Hing Loon as a reference to my own taste since I just recently dined there and found it quite good as well. Going there prepared, I ordered the salt-and-pepper tofu as well. Amazing. The noodle dish we had was decent as well, but the tofu really stole the show and will bring us back for more.
Curry Fish Ball with Deep Fried Tofu Hot Pot.
No more needs to be said.
There are new owners. One of the new owners is also the new cook. They've kept at least one person in the kitchen, however, and everything I had today was as delicious as I remember, except for the salt&pepper fish, which was overly "breaded" and the fish was more watery and less flavorful. The dumplings and wontons (soup on the side) were still really good (although the dumplings are now more flavorful than the wontons). The pea vines with garlic might even be better than before (HERESY!). I wish I had thought to order the fresh soy milk. Our little sesame balls are indeed a thing of the past, however. They said they had problems getting the ingredients. That's a huge loss.
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