Who can tell me what I ate at Gaga Seafood?
Really been enjoying this place lately: nice live-tank options, pleasant (still kind of shiny-new) atmosphere, a staff that is friendly and patient with the customer who only speaks English but has a lot of questions about the seafood and the menu.
Got a live-tank offering recently with an off-menu preparation: slow-cooked in oil was the way my very helpful server described it to me, and she said she prefers this prep to steaming. I took a photo of the specials menu (attached), which includes pricing by the pound for the live-tank offerings. In the tanks, I have recognized eel, tilapia, cod, sea raven (a favorite of mine, but they only do it as a soup), and shrimp, but not the smallish fish I ordered.
It's the one in this wall blackboard photo listed as $14.95/lb., left column, fifth entry. Would love a reader of Chinese to tell me what I ate (it was lovely). Sadly, my picture of the fish in the tank was terrible.
Any help? Feel free to translate the rest, if you care to.
By MC Slim JB
on Feb 8, 2012 12:33 PM
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A friend of a Facebook friend offered this:
笋壳魚 = "bamboo shell fish", it seems to be a name for Oxyeleotris marmorata, aka "marbled goby" or "marbled sleeper".
Would still welcome any attempts to translate the rest of that menu!
http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/
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If I squint enough I can see your face in the reflection of that shiny-new blackboard! The jig is up, MC Slim JB.
(Just kidding.)
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After doing a little googl-ing & baidu-ing, looks like "marbled goby" is good culinary substitute/replacement for mandarin fish (桂花鱼); that leaves open the question of why it costs more on the menu above.....
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Hmm. Maybe one is live-tank and the other is frozen?
http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/
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If true, that would make sense. Haven't been to Gaga yet, will have to check it out.
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I'm sure there are others who can translate better than I can. Here's a jab:
L column top to bottom
Sea Bass
Black (?) grouper
Stone fish (literal translation)
Another type of Bass
bamboo shell fish
Curry crab
?
Twin lobster
Shanhai hairy crab
R column top to bottom
scallop
raw oyster
"Gui Fei" (aka concubine) clam
Live shrimp
geoduck
"silver" bass
eel
large lobster
At the very bottom in the middle: "blind" bass
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Before the lobsters, I think they mean what we call 'juk yu' in Cantonese. Looking online it looks like this is actually a type of carp in English (Crucian carp?).
I think the last entry on the L is also dungeness crab, not Shanghai hairy crab. In Cantonese, the characters look like "dai fau hai" (dungeness) not "dai jahp hai" (Shanghai hairy crab).
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they also have a full chinese language menu
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anyone up for the task?
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