Ocean Chinese Restaurant & Continental Midtown

Ocean Chinese Restaurant:

My first impression of this newly opened restaurant on 8th Avenue between 69th & 70th street was, “Wow, very original” (note the sarcasm). The sign screamed tacky and the name was just lame. It was “Chinese Restaurant” on the left side and then space, space, space, “Ocean” in the middle. I decided to do it favor and refer to it was “Ocean Chinese Restaurant” so it could sound slightly more appealing.

From my first paragraph, you can probably tell that I am not a fan of this place. My mom insisted on trying it out after a recommendation from her friend, so we decided to go.

First of all, there’s no AC there–hence the reason why they had fans in the corner, blowing at your faces so the napkins around your plates can fly into your food.

Second, the lay out of the restaurant was a total fail. They had this little archway at the entrance was a little too far in, so it reminded me of those hallways in aquariums where you walk under a tank and it’s this round hallway where you can see the fishes swim around you. Only there weren’t any fishes in this one–just concrete. The walls on this archway was also very thick, so it looked awkward. The restaurant itself was not too big–from the entrance way it seemed rather shallow, but they had another room with more tables. However, because of the lack of space in the restaurant, they had this table right next to the entrance–between a wall and the archway wall–totally screaming claustrophobia.I really don’t understand why they couldn’t go and just break through the giant wall separating the two walls–it’d make the restaurant feel bigger, that’s for sure. Anyway, to add to the mess, they had this giant table (which they happily sat us at) between the register and the bathroom. Wow, awesome! I’ve always wanted to eat at a table where I could see the bathroom and listen to the commotions at the register of impatient patrons who weren’t able to get a table!To add to that, they also had chairs lining right behind out table, next to the bathroom, for people who were waiting to get seated to wait. WTH?! Yeah, okay, cause it’s totally not awkward to eat with people who WAITING to get seated sitting behind you, WATCHING you eat. They had no waiting area, so at one point, all the patrons who were waiting to be seated were literally SURROUNDING my table. Oh you know, no big deal, it’s just body heat and awkwardness on top of a lacking of AC.

I was willing to give this restaurant another try as long as the service and the food was good. However, this restaurant didn’t seem to want another chance from me. The food was just plain bad. The dishes were small and served very unappealingly. We ordered Lamb chops, duck, Choi Sum, Toa Jeem, Walnut Shrimp, and some soup. The lamb chops were dry and the sauce was so sticky, it clung to my teeth like there was no tomorrow. The choi sum just never even made to my table, but I will discuss that in the next paragraph. The toa jeem was overly chewy. The walnut shrimp was fried badly, and the sauce was distributed so unevenly, after the initial three pieces, the rest of the dish didn’t even have the sauce. The duck was the ONLY dish that was tolerable.

The service. Oh god, i think the better phrase is the LACKING of service. The waiters were all inexperienced, as with the boss. She was so overwhelmed and flustered at times that I just wanted to tell her to sit back and to either CRANK UP THE NONEXISTENT AC or GO AND GET SOME AC FOR THE DAMN RESTAURANT! I am so mean. Anyway, the waiters would often forget our requests or take FOREVER for it. Seriously, does it really take fifteen minutes to bring out two bowls of rice? It’s not like you have that many customers since there was limited seating. On top of that, when my mom ordered the soup, she specifically asked how much it was. The waiter was like, Oh, you only have 6 people–a small one should suffice–It’s about ten dollars. When the bill came, they charged us 20. My mom asked and the waiter was like, Oh, we switched it to a big one for you. My mom started to ask him why did he do that and not tell us about it on the spot cause she sure as heck wouldn’t have ordered it if it was 20$, and the waiter just completely ignored her and started talking to someone else! But no, that’s not all! Ofcourse not! The choi sum! My mom asked him what veggies they had, and he recommended her the Choi Sum, tossed with some garlic, so we ordered it. He didn’t write it, so when my mom asked about it, this other waiter was like, Oh you didn’t order! We don’t even have it down for you. Yeah, okay, tough luck getting us to come again. The icing on the cake was at the end. Since it was my aunt’s birthday, we bought her a cake and brought it to the restaurant. When the waiter came to ask us if we were ready for the check, we told him we had a cake. Two other waiters came by later and took turns clearing our table and giving us our check, but our cake never came. After waiting another 15 minutes, the guy finally came out with the cake and just placed it on our table–bag and all, and left–he didn’t even bother asking us if we needed help cutting the cake or even taking the cake out of the box for us. He just brought it over to us and put it on the table and walked away. We ended up taking the cake home and cutting it at home where we had AC and some air to breathe in without ten-twenty people standing around us staring at us eat.

So yeah, LESSON TO EVERYONE OUT THERE. don’t eat here.

Continental Midtown

The first time I went to Continental Midtown was for my birthday. I was stuck in Philly for my 21st, so some college friends came to the city to take me out. It has a very relaxing and interesting interior. They have the coolest chandelier/hanging lights I’ve ever seen–I love it! They also have basket seats on the second floor where it’s basically hanging baskets where you can sit, but it’s only for parties of two, so I didn’t get to try for my birthday. It’s mainly a restaurant for people who aren’t TOO hungry cause it’s mainly Tapas and everything is meant to be shared.

The restaurant is called Continental because it offers an array of dishes from different cultures–such as Japanese, Thai, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, etc. However, its authenticity is very questionable. Nonetheless, the food it has to offer is refreshing and quite tasty, compared to what I’ve been eating recently. Ofcourse, it’s  pretty pricey as well for a place that only offers appetizers, ranging from $5-$24 per dish.

I decided to go to Continental again today with Henry because we were hungry and we didn’t really know what we wanted. This time, I ordered the Lobster Mac and Cheese cause I heard it was really good. Henry ordered the Jumbo Lump Crabcakes and the Thai Curry Lobster. The first dish to arrived the Jumbo Lump Crabcakes–it was really good–not as good as the restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel Bridge where there were literally JUMBO lumps of crab meat, but this crabcake was filled with ONLY crab meat as well–which is pretty rare. I’m usually disappointed by crabcakes when I eat out, but not this time. My Lobster Mac and Cheese came next and it was delicious as well–instead of using the typical elbow macaroni, Continental used risotto, which was a nice touch because then it didn’t seem too overwhelming when eating. However, since it WAS mac and cheese, I started getting sick of it after a couple of bites. I think it would’ve been better if this was on the appetizer list instead of “entree-appetizer” list. Henry’s Thai Curry Lobster, in my opinion was not good and should’ve been on the “entree-appetizer” list instead of the appetizer list because it was obviously not share-able. But yeah, it was not that good. It was bland but spicy so I basically tasted nothing, but still suffered the effects of eating spicy food. I felt cheated.

We weren’t full after the meal, so we ordered desserts. We had the Blonde Bombshell and this “smores” dessert, whose name i fail to remember. The Blonde Bombshell was basically a Blondie with ice cream and whip cream. It tasted a LOT better than the first time I had it, but for the 2.5″ blondie we got at $5, it felt pricey. The “smores” one that Henry picked was only so so in my opinion. It was made to look like super mini (2″) ice cream cones, but instead of ice cream, it had marshmallows inside the waffle cone, and it was covered in chocolate–not really worth $4 for the three pieces we got.

Overall, it’s a very interesting dining experience, and I would recommend small groups of friends to hit up on a Friday or Saturday night after a week of work. 🙂 (No parties more than 4 though, or else you really can’t hear each other)

Morimoto

So I had the opportunity to finally visit the Iron Chef, Morimoto’s restaurant this past weekend, in Philly. I heard he used to work there daily back in 2002, and his creations always sounded and looked DELICIOUS on the show, so I was beyond excited to finally get a chance to try it. This was Henry’s way to consoling me after I realized that I was not going to be able to make it back to New York in time for restaurant week this summer. “It’s not even that great of a deal,” he claims–though I beg to differ…just slightly. The greatest part of restaurant week is being able to go to restaurants I normally would not go to, with “It’s restaurant week!” as my sole excuse. It’s like my excuse for going to expensive restaurants.

Anyway, so Morimoto. One word? DISAPPOINTING! Geez. We made reservations for dinner at 5 because all other times were completely booked. When we went there, we drove past the restaurant twice without even seeing it because it was overshadowed by the dreary construction site right next to it. Walking into the restaurant, I immediately noticed the chic and modern vibe that the interior design gave off. There wasn’t really anything inside that made it seem like an Asian restaurant other than the chopsticks on the place settings. Nonetheless, it was a very pretty restaurant.

However, I must talk about the bathroom. It was in the basement, and it was essentially a shared bathroom between the two genders since you could essentially see into the other gender’s bathroom through the mirrors and through the set up. Though very pretty and Asian looking with its choice of materials, it was kinda scary because it was dark and the lights were dim. In addition, the doors on the stalls were SUPER heavy. 😦

I had recently turned 21, so I wanted a chance to finally get carded, thus I ordered an alcoholic beverage–the Lychee Cosmopolitan. It smelled and looked DELICIOUS, it tasted like the nastiest cough syrup that I had ever had to drink, only it was 10x more expensive. I finished it–I wasn’t about to waste $12 on one sip of nastiness, no sir! On top of that, they didn’t even ask me for my ID…i even purposely dressed like a little girl too T_T

The prices on the menu wasn’t as horrible as Bobby Van’s steakhouse (which I WILL be reviewing as well another time), but it was still pretty pricey compared to what I normally go out to.

Appetizers:

Henry ordered the Iron Chef’s Chicken Noodle Soup. I know–wth?! Chicken noodle soup at a Japanese restaurant?! It tasted like a lot of MSG, but at least the chicken was really good–yes, it actually had chicken! The noodles were ramen noodles, which I thought was okay as well. I ordered the Rock Shrimp Tempura because I read online that it was very BIG and delicious, and I really enjoyed the one from Omiya, so I was expecting something great from Morimoto. How very wrong I was. Sure, the plate was ENORMOUS for an appetizer, i couldn’t finish it–Henry couldn’t either. However, it was also very disappointing. The shrimp was fried to a very nice texture–better than Omiya, but the taste was subpar. It was like a sweet and sour but spicy sauce—the kind you have in the Americanized Chinese take out food, only instead of chicken, you have shrimp. It was disappointing for the $18 we spent on it.

Entree:

Originally, I wanted the “Duck Duck Duck” because it sounded delicious, but I remembered hearing about how fresh the fish was, so I ended up ordering one piece of salmon sashimi a la carte, a tuna roll, and a soft shell crab roll (aka, spider roll). The salmon was very fresh–I’ll give Morimoto that. The tuna on the other hand, tasted like Omiya’s–only it was 4x more expensive. The soft shell crab roll had too much stuff in it, so it took away from the crab, not to mention it wasn’t deep fried well, so it made it very hard to eat/chew. In addition, the presentation of the dish was not that impressive either. Henry ordered this seafood entree that came with sticky rice. He said the sticky rice was alright–I was so full, or rather, my stomach hurt so much that I couldn’t even try it. Yes, I got a stomach-ache after eating at Morimoto. It might have been the alcohol, it might have been the food, or it could’ve been a combination of both, but that stomach-ache only added to my horrible experience at Morimoto. Anyway, back to Henry’s dish. It looked and smelled great, it tasted disgusting. There was WAY too much lemon in the soup base, which soaked EVERYTHING, so everything was sour. This didn’t mix well with the taste of scallop and mushroom–heck, it didn’t even taste good with the soup.

So overall, Morimoto was very NOT worth the money we spent there. The bill racked up to about $110 for the two of us, and neither of us left happy.

My stomach-ache didn’t go away until I woke up the next day.

Changing Surroundings

陌生感，害怕，紧张。。。这些都是一个人在成长当中都会感觉的吗？难道不变就不会大？

变。。。可以是一种很好的事，也可是一种很坏的事。。。好与不好之间就在乎你想不想变。 如果你是想变，那无论那个变是多麻烦多坏，你都不会介意， 可是如果你不想任何东西变，那无论是多好多美丽，你都会好讨厌。

可是。。。变也是种很奇妙的事。。。有时候，就算你不想变，也躲不了

Tomorrow marks the big day when i’ll be moving from New York to Philly. To be honest, i’m not too thrilled about it–sure, working at a big company would look really good on my resume, be really good for after graduation, and provide me with experience i can’t find elsewhere–but in exchange, i’ll have to give up being home with my family–with the people i havent seen for the past six-seven months. It’s a big sacrifice on my part considering how summer was usually the time i looked forward to in order to spend more time with the ones i love. Sure, i could always go home on weekends cause it’d be convenient, but i dont think i’ll ever get used to going home to an empty apartment and surviving on my own cooking–on a happier note, maybe my cooking will FINALLY improve since i’ll have to cook for myself.

Perhaps this would be like a mock trial of how it’d be after graduating if i end up working full time in Philly. It’d suck—that’s for sure. The current negotiations with the studio condo i placed a bid on earlier this year is still on going. According to the agent, it’s looking pretty good. If everything goes through then i’d be a heck lot poorer, but i’ll be able to expand my job search to another city.

But…i guess this is how are changes are–you sacrifice A in order for B to happen…but what if i’m afraid of change? What if i’m too comfortable in my comfort zone to step out into what others call the ‘real’ world?