Craving Rice Casserole

Mellie’s Seafood (美麗華海鮮城), 137-81 Northern Boulevard, Flushing 11354 [site]

There are an unexpected gathering on Friday night, and what better way to feed a group of people than to not cook it yourself? So I had a craving for rice casserole, and the closest place around that I wanted to try was Mellie’s Seafood, which just opened up earlier this year. I had no intentions of order Shrimp with Walnuts, but the table across from us ordered it and it looked so good.

I ordered the preserved meat rice casserole, and Tony ordered the chicken with mushroom rice casserole, Helen ordered Singaporean Mei Fun, and Ting+Duckie ordered Fried Udon. I realized there was a lot of starch and meat, but no veggies, so I decided to get the stir fried snow pea leaves. That’s always a favorite of everyone.

Tony’s chicken was a bit on the bland side, and the rice on the bottom wasn’t that crispy. He seemed to think it was okay though. I couldn’t try the mushrooms because I had a mild allergy to it. His rice wasn’t as flavorful as I hoped.

My preserved meat casserole was actually more flavorful than Tony’s. I liked it a lot, but I wished there was more rice and less seasoning. I actually like Yummy Noodles rice casserole more, but it’s all the way in Chinatown in Manhattan.

This was Ting and Duckie’s dish, the Beef Fried Udon. They weren’t really hungry so they shared a dish. It was the first thing that arrived on the table, and the first thing we picked on until I realized that I wanted to take a picture. Heh.

Overall, a pretty decent Cantonese-style seafood restaurant. Nice decor, lots of seating, friendly service and decent food. They also have something rare that most restaurants in Flushing don’t have: free parking. So, it’s probably going to survive. I’ll come back again if I don’t want to go to Manhattan for rice casserole.

Lunar New Year Eve’s Dinner

Guang Zhou Restaurant (廣州酒家), 136-59 37th Avenue, Flushing 11354

So we got lazy for this meal (nobody wanted to cook or clean) and we ate out instead. My mom heard alotta of good reviews about this restaurant, so we decided to go here for the dinner (that and Tung Yi Fung and Gala Manor was all booked up). There was a New Year’s Eve special, but we didn’t ordered any from that menu.

The fish maw with crab meat soup was pretty decent.

Next came our special Snow Pea Leaves with Bamboo. It was pretty good as well.

The Assorted Seafood in Taro Nest was a pretty standard dish that we usually order  at Canton seafood restaurants. It tasted pretty standard too.

The crispy chicken dish was a bit on the salty end. But very crispy. I wouldn’t recommend it if you are trying to lower your sodium intake.

And the final dish was a fresh steamed fish from their tank (just killed for us!). I forgot what type of fish it was, but lotsa bones. The meat was alright.

Verdict: Guang Zhou is your standard Canton seafood restaurant. I’m not too impressed by it, not sure what the hype is about. I guess I wouldn’t mind going there if all the other restaurants are full, but my favs are still Full House for regular Canto seafood and Gala Manor for dim sum (just because they have small tables for small groups so we don’t have to table share).