the random oracle

刚记海鲜 (Gangji Seafood Restaurant) was our lunch stop during my visit this past weekend to my Dad’s brother’s family. My dad’s family took me here when I told them that I didn’t eat meat. When we arrived the staff showed us to a private dining room (as is often the case when you have a large-ish party here), but as I sat down my cousin’s husband told me that we should go down to order.

I hadn’t noticed on our way in that a large part of the first floor was essentially an aquarium: there were bins and tanks filled with fish, crabs, shrimp, and all sorts of things that I couldn’t recognize. (I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures, I might go back again at some point and I’ll definitely take shots then.)

The most interesting two dishes that we had were scallops with garlic and rice vermicelli (蒜蓉扇贝) and the razor clams (蛏子).  I’ve always liked scallops and I’ve always liked garlic, but I’ve never had anything quite like the scallops here.  The garlic was fried but not too much, just to the point where it gets a bit sweet, and formed a nice complement to the meaty, juicier taste of the scallops.  The razor clams I thought were actually snails until I looked them up online; turns out they’re long-ish clams that have tentacles that made me think they were snails’ antennae.  Their texture was also kind of snail-like, but their taste was more subtle and didn’t have that distinctive snailiness.