Delicious choices from Chinese menu as vast as the sea
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You have to wonder whether Theresa Lam and Tony Mann, the owners of T&T Seafood, worried about regularly filling all 118 seats at their new Edmonds restaurant. After all, the original T&T, still located just a few miles south on Aurora Avenue North in Shoreline, isn't much bigger than a rice bowl.
If so, they needn't have. Most nights, this bright and spacious restaurant, adjacent to the 99 Ranch Market, is as crowded as its tanks of live lobsters, crabs, prawns and tilapia. While takeout patrons beat a path to the service counter in the rear, the dining room fills with a mostly Asian clientele. Several grand circular tables fitted with Lazy Susans allow easy access to the fragrant platters brought bubbling, sizzling or steaming from the kitchen.
Lam presides over the front of the house; Mann runs the kitchen. There, cooks poised over a line of woks employ an arsenal of Asian sauces and spices, turning out some of the best Chinese food to be had north of the Chinatown International District. The food is so fresh and appealingly presented that heads invariably turn as platters are carried through the dining room, borne by servers whose grasp of English may be slight but whose efficiency is prodigious.
Next time, you think, spying a plate of squid peeking from a pile of bright-green Chinese broccoli. Next time, you decide, eyeing a hefty piece of duck with mustard greens poking out of a soup tureen at another table. Definitely next time, you promise yourself, as a couple delicately devour a whole lobster.
And indeed, unless there's lobster on your plate, prices are low enough that you could eat here once a week for a year without going broke or, for that matter, getting bored.
From a list of lunch specials all priced below $5, choose entrees like richly sauced Mongolian beef or thin, deep-fried pork chops glazed with honey. The price includes soup, the vegetable du jour and fried rice. The tea is free and the tab for two amounts to less than you'd pay for parking at a downtown garage or a couple of cocktails anywhere.
A few dollars more buys a generous plate from a long list of "economic dishes" ($6.88 each) that include Chinese mainstays like kung pao chicken or sweet-and-sour pork, and also various preparations using squid, oysters, beef and tofu.
But to really taste what this kitchen can do, turn to the illustrated main menu with more than 100 choices and take a cue from the restaurant's name: Set your sights on seafood.
Start with house specials like crispy prawns with honey walnuts ($10.80), which maintain their crackle even though coated in a mayonnaiselike, orange-scented sauce, or sizzling black cod and vegetables ($9.80). Watch for tiny bones as you savor the soft, rich white fish, bell pepper, onion and whole button mushrooms bathed in a nicely balanced Thai-style chili sauce that's faintly sweet, gently hot.
Salt-and-pepper squid ($6.88) and black cod ($11.80) make irresistible nibbles. Both are battered and deep-fried, then sprinkled with salt, chili peppers, minced scallion and crunchy browned bits of garlic. The squid is toothsome and tender, while the bite-size puffs of silky white cod melt in the mouth like a hot Krispy Kreme.
Scallion, garlic and cilantro add punch to the vinegar-spiked soy sauce that accompanies whole steamed prawns, a treat that's not on the menu but, if you spot them in the live tanks, ask for them. A pound, priced at $12 on our visit, yielded about a dozen succulent crustaceans.
Lobster ($16/pound) and crab ($7.80/pound) are served a number of ways. Whether simply steamed and dressed with butter, smothered in ginger, garlic and scallions, or gussied up in the spicy house special sauce, the shellfish comes to the table cracked into manageable pieces. Still, it's a messy business, and those thoughtfully provided bowls of tea and lemon slices are meant for washing up, not drinking.
Meat is by no means an afterthought. Ginger infuses a bubbling hot pot of tender braised beef and scallions ($7.80). Shredded pork adds dimension to garlicky, wok-seared green beans ($7.80) and enlivens linguinelike noodles tossed with shiitake mushrooms and Chinese chives in a soy-based sauce ($7.80).
It's a challenge and a delight unraveling all the tastes that ripple across the tongue during a meal at T&T: pungent and sweet, salty and sour, musky and briny — the latter encountered in a plate of steamed sea cucumber, abalone, baby bok choy and whole black mushrooms ($18.80). The dish looks like an edible tide pool and tastes like a subtle mingling of earth and ocean, but its range of soft, spongy and gelatinous textures may not have broad appeal.
Nor will cold chicken feet and jellyfish or deep-fried bung unbplit (pig intestines), though they are popular among the Chinese. Still, there is something for everyone on T&T's voluminous menu.
When my 8-year-old learned I went there for lunch without her, she registered a loud protest. After only a few visits, it's already on her list of favorite restaurants — and mine, too.
Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com
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