Restaurant: Din Ho

(Here it is. It's Labor Day and I'm not going to edit it. I wrote it sometime last week. Enjoy!)

As promised, Din Ho was pretty good (although not the best Chinese I've ever had, which was at Grand Sichuan NY in Manhattan). Yesterday I went onto various message boards that discussed Din Ho's offerings and wrote down everything everyone recommended. I did this because I tend to do poorly at Asian restaurants-I get flustered and accidentally order the American decoy items like General Tso's Chicken. I was bound and determined not to do so last night. Anyway, we get to the restaurant (eight of us), and I pass around the list. It is then decided that we'll just order everything on it.

So, we got:
Sizzling Scallops
Wilted Water Spinach
Dungeness Crab in Ginger Sauce
Roast Peking Duck
Marinated Chicken
Beef Flat Noodles with Satay Sauce
Chinese Broccoli
Snow Pea Greens
Fish Hot Pot
Hot and Sour Soup

The marinated chicken came out first, and it was cold (I think it's supposed to be cold?) and kind of bland. Cold chicken skin kind of grosses me out. We're all politely taking pieces of chicken, and then a HUGE bowl of Hot and Sour Soup comes out. It was the best Hot and Sour Soup I have ever had. Huge mushrooms. Tangy broth that wasn't the consistency of snot. Big fluffy pieces of egg. Man. We're all pretty pleased with ourselves at this point, and then:

FOOD ATTACK.

All of a sudden there was more food than anyone knew what to do with. We didn't have enough room for anything on the table. It was chaos. It was a mad scramble to eat before things got cold. It was amazing.

I couldn't tell the greens apart. I mean, they were different, but I didn't know which one was which, so... they were good? Right. One of them was bitter. The...green one.

The duck was all right. I didn't care for the sauce that came with it.

I was sorely disappointed with the Beef Noodles, which had come highly recommended. They were pretty bland, I didn't understand what the fuss was about.

The crab was good, the sauce incredibly flavorful, although it didn't taste much like ginger. We didn't eat nearly all of it, and so I'm going to make some crab salad with it tonight. Or, oh man, maybe I'll make crab puffs. *drool*

The best parts by far were the Sizzling Scallops with Black Pepper and the Fish Hot Pot. The scallops were breaded and fried, doused with sauce and stir fried with bell peppers. I am such a sucker for scallops. Man. The Hot Pot was some unidentifiable white fish (tilapia?) in a citrus broth with orange peels floating in it. Incredibly flavorful.

They were out of the barbecue pork, which was disappointing, and the meal was ever so slightly more expensive than we had anticipated, but all in all, one of the best Asian food experiences I've had in Austin, or, really, anywhere. Plus they gave us orange slices for dessert! Lovely. Come visit me in Austin and I'll take you.