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Lee Hou Restaurant – A Successful Foray into Cheap Eatin’ By James Ho A general rule that almost universally applies to postsecondary students is the preternatural interest in getting a good deal, especially a good deal on food. In order to better serve the needs of our constituency, here’s a tip: when you boldly wish to expand your horizons outside the Sunset by availing yourself of the Muni (or a car), hop on over to Lee Hou Restaurant in the Richmond district, where there is cheap eating to be had. My wife and I “discovered” Lee Hou one Wednesday night at 8 o’clock while waiting to be seated at Burma Superstar. Faced with an hour wait time (on a Wednesday!), we put ourselves on the waitlist to be called by cell phone and proceeded to shuffle around the neighborhood, bored and hungry. When we couldn’t take it any longer, so we stopped into Lee Hou, one of many Chinese restaurants on Clement Street, and were pleasantly surprised by the food quality, especially the quality/price ratio. We started off by having an old standard, Westlake beef soup, which was served hot and with the proper texture and seasoning. Next, we tried surf clams in two ways; one steamed with vegetables, and another as part of a chow fun. The chefs did a pretty good job with both this somewhat exotic seafood as well as with keeping the greasiness down on the chow fun without skimping on flavor. We also tried something a bit more expensive, a delicacy referred to as Snow Pea’s leaves. Generally these veggies cannot be bought at the market because supposedly the entirety of the crop is reserved for restaurants! At $14, it was comparable in price to other restaurants, and tasted quite fresh and delicious. One poor selection we made was steamed chicken with black mushrooms. Meant to be sort of an appetizer, it came out too dry and was difficult to navigate because of the jagged bone edges as a result of the coarse cutting. As we finished our meal, we got the call from Burma Superstar – our table was ready! With our bellies full with food and laughing at the perfect comedic timing, we politely declined a second dinner. Since that night, we have gone back on several occasions to Lee Hou for dim sum. Like the dinner menu, one can find a variety of inexpensive, tasty dishes. Ranging from $1.40 for staples such as turnip cake, dumplings and BBQ pork buns, up to $2.80 for stuffed eggplant and deep fried bean curd rolls, everything comes out hot, fresh and not as greasy as many dim sum eateries tend to be. For two famished people, we could spend less than $15, be completely full by the time we left, and have a little something left over for dinner. They serve dim sum all day, and it is ordered off a card, not al a carte. The chrysanthemum tea was deliciously strong. For those of you who like congee, we were split on whether to recommend it. Traditionally, congee retains the rice grain in its whole form; at Lee Hou the rice had a consistency more like gruel, although it was quite flavorful despite its appearance. Along with Ocean Restaurant about five blocks westward, these are our two favorite sit-down dim sum locations. For those without the aid of translators, Lee Hou offers explicitly described menus translated into English. For those with large parties, they offer a second floor and several banquet options. In the interest of full disclosure, an arbitrary meta-analysis (also known as “browsing”) undertaken of other reviews of Lee Hou have expressed disdain towards various aspects of the dining experience, especially the service and reports of “bland-tasting food.” While the waiters were very slow in giving us take-home boxes so we could joyfully depart, we had no complaints of the food quality. Believe me, having recently come back from central Michigan where there is a serious dearth of good Chinese cuisine, the food quality scale in the Bay Area is skewed far to the right. As veteran gastronomes, the food at Lee Hou meets our standard of quality. Lee Hou Restaurant James Ho is a first-year medical student. | ||
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