East Ocean Chinese & Seafood – Albuquerque, New Mexico

In 2022, Freddie Wong posted a TikTok video that went viral on several social media platforms. In the video, Wong, purports to find the most “authentic” Chinese food by utilizing restaurant review website Yelp in a unique way.  “The easiest way to find authentic Chinese food, assuming you’re living in a major metropolitan area, is to go on Yelp and to look for restaurants with three-and-a-half stars,” declared Wong in his TikTok video, which garnered an astonishing 7.2 million views in only two days. “Exactly three and a half, not three, not four. Three-and-a-half stars is a sweet spot for authentic Chinese food.”

Again, the assumption is based on living in a major metropolitan area where there are a preponderance of “authentic” Chinese restaurants.  In cities such as Albuquerque, few restaurants even offer a traditional Chinese menu (if you ask for it).  Among those is East Ocean which coincidentally or not is rated  exactly three-and-a-half stars on Yelp.  A Duke City mainstay for more than thirty years, East Ocean has a huge following that includes  George Thorning, my friend and colleague at the University of New Mexico.   Though he did experience a bit of consternation when the restaurant changed ownership a few years ago, he still frequents the Carlisle restaurant.   He’s not the only one who loves East Ocean.  It’s been rated one of Albuquerque’s ten best Chinese restaurants by several online sources.

“Authentic”or worse “real Chinese” are  loaded words.  They are discrimatory and unrealistic.  To some extent, that’s also true of the term “tradition.”  Those terms imply that Chinese food has to conform to a set of standard dishes and flavors determined at an arbitrary time and place (e.g., China).  There’s no latitude given foods that evolve over time or the introduction of new ingredients.  Chinese foods invented in America are often belittled (expecially by pretentious critics) as not being authentically Chinese even though they may have been invented by Chinese immigrants.  For some of us who long ago tired of sweet and sour sauced everything, “traditional” Chinese foods offer a welcome difference.

East Ocean does have a “traditional” Chinese menu.  It lists 24 items, some of which you’ll never find at Panda Express or at most Duke City Chinese restaurants .  Examples are fish stomach soup, ginger onion crab and salted fish fried rice.  If nothing on this traditional Chinese menu strikes your fancy, the large menu lists other categories: appetizers, soup, noodles, egg foo young, fried rice, chicken and duck, beef, pork, vegetables, seafood, sizzling platters, combination dinner, house/happy dinners, lunchon menu.

You’ve undoubtedly been sitting in a Chinese restaurant when a server rushes past you carrying a “sizzling” dish?   Enticing aromas emanate from the hot food and sauce as they hiss and spit, creating a smoke trail that draws the rapt attention of all guests.   The secret to sizzling foods is that you cook the foods separately on a heated skillet on a gas flame than add the ingredients and sauces at the last minute.  It’s the reason the server is hurrying – to get it to the table before the sizzling stops.  East Ocean offers eight sizzling dishes, everything from sizzling chicken to sizzling garlic with seafood.

Rather than one of the appetizers, my Kim and I ordered sizzling orange sauce spare ribs.Though we’ve had orange chicken and orange pork a plenty, sizzling orange sauce spare ribs is something neither or us had ever experienced.  The orange sauce is very much like the orange sauce with which we’re familiar, but the spare ribs have a lot more umami than pork or chicken.  In essence, the spare ribs had a meatiness that counterbalanced the sweetness of the orange sauce.  Most of the spare ribs are boneless, but where we did find bones it was easy to eat around them.  This was an excellent starter.

My Kim isn’t quite as adventurous as her gastronomic husband, but she does draw the limit at sweet and sour dishes.  Among her favorites are pork lo mein sans vegetables.  She loves the tangle of Chinese egg noodles, a mountain of thin noodles with barbecue pork. A good smoke ring is as prominent in Chinese barbecue as it is in American barbecue.  It signifies the meats are prepared “low and slow”–slowly smoked in low heat to render those meats moist and tender (in the interest of full disclosure, the smoke ring in Chinese barbecue is often the result of food coloring).  Chinese barbecue (char siu) is actually very popular throughout Asia.  Instead of on a smoker, Chinese barbecue utilizes a technique in which strips of marinated meat on forked skewers are roasted in an oven or open fire.

Not one to ever shy away from something I’ve never before ordered, I eschewed the multi-page menu to zero in on a new item on the “traditional” menu.  Beef hot pot sounds innocuous enough, but my description might just tell you why others shy away from “traditional” Chinese items.  The beef hot pot lists only two items: Napa cabbage and scallions and the “beef” includes as much fat as beef.  If you have an aversion to the texture or flavor of beef fat, you’re not likely to enjoy this dish.  A wonderful five spice powder-based sauce gives the beef a fabulous flavor and enticing aroma, but the fat did me in after half a plateful.

If you’re an aficionado of the fruits of the sea, you’ll be happy to see all the thirty seafood items on the menu.  Squid, shrimp, crab, lobster and scallops are prepared in a number of ways, all ostensibly delicious.  East Ocean may be three point five on Yelp’s book, but it’s a perfect ten for those of us who  love “traditional” Chinese food even if we don’t fully understand that concept.

East Ocean Chinese & Seafood
3601 Carlisle Blvd., N.E.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 889-9315
Website | Facebook Page
LATEST VISIT: 31 March 2024
# OF VISITS: 1
RATING: N/R
COST: $$-$$$
BEST BET: Sizzling Orange Sauce Spare Ribs, Pork Lo Mein, Beef Hot Pot
REVIEW #1283