We watched a HK movie on Friday night and of course one of the scenes (insignificant one, but of course the one I remembered best) shows this old man buying egg tarts for this old lady. I've never been one to be crazy about egg tarts, but that all changed a few years back when I travelled to HK and had THE MOST AMAZING egg tart that still has me salivating till today. That scene set me ablaze on my Yelp app, searching for Cantonese style egg tarts. Many dim sum restaurants came up, which included Sam Woo BBQ. Despite having lived in OC for several years, I've only been to Sam Woo less than 5 times. Somehow I've always associated it with a perpetually crowded and expensive place (I hate waiting for food when I'm hungry). However, the pictures of Wanton Mee were too good to pass, so we decided to head there for dinner the next day.
Being the greedy peeps we are, and perhaps also because we only had a "just nice enough" portion for brunch, we were hungry at 5pm. I figured this was a good time to go since we'll probably beat the dinner crowd, people who get hungry at regular times. When you get to this Sam Woo location, you will notice it splits into 2, the "Seafood" section and the "BBQ" section. The Seafood section will serve more banquet style food while the BBQ section has their signature Cantonese BBQ dishes and more homestyle cooking. True enough, we were able to get seats immediately. It didn't take us long to decide what we wanted - Beef Hor Fun and Roast Duck + Wanton Noodle Soup.
Our food came pretty quickly, I slurped the wanton soup happily. While it was delicious, I can't help but think with much certainty there's MSG in it. I added the pickled green chili to the noodles and ate happily. For $7.95, you get a big bowl of noodles, 4 succulent wanton with whole shrimp and some ground pork and about 4 generous slices of roast duck. This dish was definitely a winner. We later discovered you can tell them to omit MSG for your dishes, will keep that in mind for the next time.
Next was the beef hor fun. When the server brought it to our table, I was immediately captivated by the wok hei. Wok hei is the trademark smokiness of good Chinese dishes brought upon by cooking dishes over a great heat. I had high expectations of this dish which probably contributed to the disappointment even more. While the sliced beef was tender, it severely lacked ANY taste. The noodles were also just ok. Don't know how you can get this dish wrong when the only seasoning you would need would be soy sauce and perhaps some white pepper. At $7.95, this was a dud.
Despite having a hit and a miss, I'm certain we'll revisit this place soon, I'm already planning my next order, which will include Chinese ham fried rice...mmm..can't wait!
15333 Culver Drive Ste 720
Irvine, CA 92604
(949) 262 - 0888 (BBQ)
(949) 262 - 0688 (Seafood)
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