In Torrance, Seashore Chinese Restaurant serves almost all of the traditional Chinese dishes. Although its next-door neighbor is a pet shop, the restaurant works to impress. When walking in, the first thing that might catch your eye is all of the fish tanks along the back wall, or the posters of the different dishes that are served. Either way, you are greeted with a smile and escorted to one of the many tables. While browsing the menu filled with English and Chinese characters, you can hear other customers chatting with their servers in Mandarin.
You know you are at a fancier restaurant, like this one, when the chopsticks are plastic, not disposable wood. Once you get comfortable at your table, a plate of lettuce with Chinese croutons is placed before you. The lettuce is soaked in a vinegar-sugar combination that prepares your palette for the salty food to come. Seashore Chinese does have a lunch special, 11am-3-pm everyday. You can still order many dishes family style, but it also includes soup and rice. This menu option offers to have hot and sour soup. Hot and sour soup is a Chinese basic, almost any restaurant that is considered to be Chinese must have it on their menu. Chinese Seashore took the usual soup with tofu, mushrooms, and green onion, and added beef. This is very rare to have in this Chinese delicacy. Besides the meat, the soup tasted hot and sour, as usual. If you have allergies or a stuffed up nose, this soup will help clear it all out.
Another common dish for Chinese restaurants to have is Kung Pao chicken. Throughout all of the regions of China, there are many different types of styles and ways to prepare this dish. They usually have one common similarity: heat. Kung Pao chicken is originally from the Sichuan province in China, which is well known for burning your taste buds off because of spice. While others have toned down the dish, Seashore Chinese didn’t give any kick to it at all. Instead of bringing the heat, the chicken, peanuts, green pepper, watercress, and onion were stir-fried, like any other normal chicken dish. The chicken also felt a little chewy, but the taste was savory. Overall, the dish was disappointing because of the lack of its adherence to tradition.
With hearing the first crunch of the pan-fried green beans, not only will your mom be happy that you’re eating your vegetables, but your stomach will be satisfied. The long green beans are stir fried with minced and spiced beef, leaving a savory taste in your mouth. This dish can usually come out slimy, or really oily, but this was not the case here. Each green bean was another bite of full vegetable, with a taste of meat.
I also ordered the basic, egg fried rice. I have eaten a lot of fried rice at different restaurants, and I have become very picky about how I like it prepared. It seemed as though the rice seemed to be missing something, and I had to stop myself from adding more soy sauce to it. There was a lack of oil, so it was mostly sticky rice clumped together, not the usual fried rice.
Right out of the kitchen, the lemon chicken is piping hot, making it unable to eat until about five minutes after served. I realized that all the dishes seemed to be served warm, but they didn’t hold the heat and became cold quickly. Chicken is fried and then sliced, then blanketed with the sweet lemon sauce. After eating a few slices, I concluded that this tastes a lot like any fried food at a state fair. It was very, very, sweet. With batter they used to fry the chicken and the sauce, became an overload of sweetness. Going against the usual salty Chinese food, this was too much for me.
One of the best dishes I had at Chinese Seashore was the vegetable spring rolls. Each roll was crispy, crunchy, and flakey. Dipping them into the sweet and sour dipping sauce, balanced the sweet and salty combination of the food.
If you like Chow Mein, you might want to try to order the Chow Fun. It is the same concept of Chow Mein: green onion, noodles, bean sprouts, onions, beef, chicken, shrimp, but they add fried rice into the mixture. All of the ingredients are stir fried together to make a dish that is savory, warm, and fulfilling. Chow Fun has the combination of all of the basic ingredients, but they come together to make an abundance of fun for your stomach.
Along with your check, your happy server brings a desert that is common in China, but not America. You can say that it is the Chinese version of jello salad. Mango gelatin is served in a plastic cup, and cow’s milk is poured over the top, soaking into the gelatin. Although the taste is refreshing and good, many have a problem with the texture. It is too tough to slurp, but too thin to actually chew. I usually end up swallowing the bites whole to avoid the slimy liquid.
Seashore Chinese has a balance of traditional Chinese food and their own twists on some dishes. The pricing can vary, depending on if you order seafood or not.
5137 Calle Mayor
Torrance, CA 90505
11am-10pm
