Great Lake Chinese Seafood

From the bottom right and moving clockwise: Pea Tips with Garlic, Roast Duck, Wide Rice Noodles with Beef and Vegetables, Crispy Pan-Fried Noodles with Beef, Shrimp with Honey Walnuts, and Whole Sole Steamed with Soy Sauce, Ginger, and Green Onions.

I want to welcome new readers who may have found me through the short article in August's Ann Arbor Observer.  We — that is to say both myself and Joe — were very excited when an Observer reporter contacted me about doing an article about Kitchen Chick.  I was very nervous when the article came out, and I made Joe read it first.  The reporter did a great job, and I'm very happy.  If you're local, grab a copy of the Observer and check it out.

You might think the above photo looks a little familiar. The photographer took a photo of me taking a photo of that fabulous spread my group enjoyed that night. So now you see what I was seeing while he was taking the photo.

I most often use a Pentax Optio S4 for my food photography. It's discreet and does a good enough job for web photos. I don't like to use the flash unless it's absolutely necessary because I don't want to disrupt the other tables around me. I also use a Nikon D70. The garam masala spice photo in an earlier post, for example, was taken with the D70 and a macro lens. I color balance and adjust the contrast in Photoshop.

Back to the food... Joe and I have been going to Great Lake since they opened way long ago in the 90s. Heavens, I can't even remember when that was. I think I was still in grad school. We held our wedding reception at Great Lake and served an immense 10 course banquet. We thought 10 dishes with 10 people per table would be good enough to make sure no one went home hungry, but we had no idea that the courses would come served on huge banquet platters, resulting in more than twice the amount of food we expected. I had to announce after the third course that seven more were coming -- not counting the cakes! Let's just say there were leftovers to take home for everyone who wanted some.

So when the Observer asked where I would like to be photographed, Great Lake was the obvious choice...

We gathered a group of friends, and put together a rather large menu. We had one person who couldn't eat pork, and another who wasn't overly fond of seafood, so our menu is beef-heavy with some seafood dishes that we had to have.  (You'll note an absence of chicken dishes on our tasting menu.  We've always found their seafood and beef dishes to be better, on the whole, than their chicken dishes.  With the exception of the roast chicken, which is quite good.)

• Soup: Dried Tofu and Pork
• Appetizer: String Buns
• Whole Sole Steamed with Soy Sauce, Ginger, and Green Onions
• Wide Rice Noodles with Beef and Vegetables
• Beef Tenderloin with Black Pepper Sauce
• Half Roast Duck with Plum Sauce
• Crispy Pan-Fried Noodles with Beef
• Shrimp with Honey Walnuts
• Stir-Fried Pea Tips with Garlic

The Dried Tofu and Pork Soup was wonderful.  One of our party commented, "Delicious! ...Something I would have been afraid to order based on the name but was glad we'd gotten it."  Great Lake's "daily soup" is served up in a traditional clay pot. If they don't know you, you'll probably have to specifically ask for it.  Not all of their daily soups will appeal to American tastes.  Ask what they're serving first, and you might even try asking for a small taste sample.

We also indulged in String Buns, a must-have favorite of one of our tasters.  String Buns are a very slightly sweet bread that is served either steamed or deep fried. Short "strings" of dough are wrapped inside an outer layer of the same kind of dough.  One of our group thought they were too plain.  But for the rest of us...  Fried bread with crunchy exterior and soft delicate interior!  What could be better?  (Even better:  you can buy frozen String Buns in a variety of flavors at an Asian grocery store and make your own.)

String Buns: Deep-Fried Goodness.

After that the dishes came out very quickly. All the beef dishes were great.  In fact, though Great Lake is by name a seafood restaurant, their beef dishes are always great.  A personal favorite of Joe's and mine is the Beef Tenderloin with Black Pepper Sauce.  The bold black pepper sauce is what makes this dish fabulous.  It comes with a lot of white onions, but if you don't like onions you can ask to leave them off.

A standout dish: Beef Tenderloin with Black Pepper Sauce.

Great Lake does an excellent job with their pan-fried noodles.  A platter of crisp-fried thin noodles form a delicious crunchy bed for the chosen meat or seafood and vegetables and gravy-like sauce.  You'll be fighting over who gets that last serving of crispy noodles.  Chinese broccoli is usually served with this dish.  Americans may find it a bit woody and bitter.  If you're trying it for the first time, start with the tender leafy tips or a thin stalk.

Our second beef dish was Wide Rice Noodles with Beef.  This is a mellow dish; tender slices of beef mix with soft wide rice noodles with a mild (i.e. not spicy at all), but rich, sauce.  A very traditional Hong Kong style dish.

When putting together banquet menus there, Joe and I usually include a whole fish steamed with ginger and soy sauce and slivered green onions.  We usually do this with Tilapia from the live tank up front (yep, that's how fresh some of the fish are at Great Lake).  This night was our first time trying it with sole.  This was the least favorite dish of two of our tasters, though one admits a bias against sole to begin with.  I found the sole to be too mild in flavor and way too boney.   I personally like steamed fish, and it's good if you can get a bit of ginger and green onion with each bite, but I recommend getting it with a thicker, fleshier fish that can be more easily lifted off the bone.

Shrimp with Honey Walnuts was another favorite of the table.  The shrimp are fried with a delicate coating and then tossed in a sweet, creamy mayonnaise-based sauce and honey-glazed walnuts.  When Great Lake nails the preparation, this dish is amazing, and this night was one of those nights. (Unlike most dishes at Great Lake, this one isn't always consistent. On rare occasions there's too much sauce, making the dish gloppy, but that's rare enough, and the dish is so good when done well, that we almost always order it.)

The Roast Duck was received with so-so remarks.  One taster gushed over the plum sauce, while another felt that it wasn't strong enough for the greasy dark duck meat.  (Let's face it: duck meat tends to be greasy.  They do a good job with it here, but it's still duck.)

With so much meat, we felt the need to add a vegetable.  Great Lake does good spinach with garlic, but we opted for something a bit more exotic: pea tips with garlic.  The pea tips are actually the tips of the pea plant, and their delicate curling stems and leaves make for an attractive dish.  One taster said, "a surprisingly good side dish, this makes me eager to eat those dark leafy greens we are supposed to consume in our regular diet!"

We don't often order dessert at Great Lake, but this night we finished off our feast with mango pudding, which was a smooth mango-flavored pudding with small bits of the fruit mixed in, served with what appears to be sweetened condensed milk poured over the top.

Mango Pudding: a fitting (and light!) end to a Chinese feast.

Great Lake is a Hong Kong-style restaurant, and while they do offer the standard Szechuan and Americanized dishes found on just about every Chinese restaurant menu in the States, their strength is in preparing Hong Kong-style cuisine.  Don't stop with the standard menu, make sure to give the small green menu and the specials board a good look and ask your server to explain any unfamiliar dishes. I do feel the need to add a small comment: our dishes were plated up with special care.  The staff got a little excited when the Observer's free-lance photographer showed up (who can blame them, we were excited too) and went out of their way with the presentation.  You won't find the dishes plated up quite so fancily and served on silver pedestals when you go there, but the food will be the same -- and that's what matters!   Other dishes we think are very good at Great Lake:

• "Long Life Noodles" — listed on the menu in English as Braised Noodles with Black Mushrooms, they also have slivered pea pods, and they're great.  The only reason we didn't order them this time was because we already had two noodle dishes.
• Salmon with Garlic Paste — a filet of salmon served with a minced garlic paste spread over the top.  Mmmmm.
• Bok Choy with Black Mushrooms — an excellent vegetable option
• Singapore-Style Noodles — their version includes slivers of sweet pickled vegetable, and is one of the best we've ever had
• Chicken with Black Bean Sauce served on a Hot Plate
• Beef with Mango and Onion  — if they have this, it will probably be mentioned on the white board beside the door

And a couple more for the less adventurous:

• Lemon Chicken — for when you crave big slabs of deep-fried goodness in a tangy lemon sauce
• Hong Kong-Style Sweet and Sour Pork — somewhat less sweet and with a more complex flavor than the Americanized norm, this is tasty enough that we've occasionally included it on banquet menus.  (But confirm that you're getting the Hong Kong-style dish and not the usual Americanized version.)

Incidentally, Great Lake is also one of the two local restaurants that serves Dim Sum — basically a brunch of Chinese appetizers.  That's a topic for a separate writeup, but if you want to try it for yourself, go there on a Saturday or Sunday morning (11:30 is best).

Great Lake Chinese Seafood

2910 Carpenter Road

Ann Arbor, MI 48108

(734) 973-6666

Comments

[sean]

I look forward to the post on Dim-Sum. We have been looking for some good dim-sum in the area. We may need to try this place out.

[Tricia]

It's always such a treat to eat chinese food with people who really understand the cuisine and can go beyond the menu. The first time this happened, the Taiwanese immigrant mother of a college friend took us to a place in Houston and ordered off the Chinese menu. More recently - and more to the point of your post! - a UM Chinese prof took me (an I.T. type) and a couple of her department secretaries for a special lunch at Great Lakes, to show her appreciation. It was fabulous! I've been afraid to go back, in fear that I'd order the wrong thing and it would ruin my impression of the place. Perhaps armed with your information I can try it again...

[Jane]

There is nothing like a good chinese meal.

[Promilaa Bhatia]

I agree with all your comments about Great Lake - it's fabulous. My husband and I love Dim Sum and have tried it in every city we've visited together - from San Francisco to Toronto and New York and yes, even Las Vegas (we wanted something differnt from the regular American fare and actually hunted down the only dim sum place in Las Vegas) . It would not be incorrect to say that before we visit a city, we usually go online to look up restaurants that offer dim sum. We found a couple even in Cleveland, though we were quite disappointed with the food (after one tries Great Lake, everything seems a bit of a letdown!). I don't think I've had better dim sum anywhere in the States! I do have certain grievances against Great Lake though. Lately, they charge for every additional bowl of white rice that comes gratis with dishes like pea tips for instance. When two people dine, it is difficult to eat more than two bowls of rice anyway with everything else that you order, so it was quite surprising to discover that they charge now for the additional bowl of rice. My other pet peeve is that it is very hard to communicate with the servers, so asking for recommendations about the specials or a little information about an item on the menu is usually met with a blank stare of incomprehension. I imagine it is easier to climb the Great Wall of China than it is to elicit some useful information about certain items on the menu that you may be interested in! We just don't know how to work our way around this huge roadblock, which always leaves us ordering the tried and tested dishes everytime! Any sort of advice from you (short of learning Mandarin :>), as regards the above problem will be greatly appreciated. Can't wait to go to Great Lake again!

[Kitchen Chick]

Promilaa: Mandarin will only help you with a few of the waitstaff -- most of the staff speak Cantonese! We haven't had much problem with getting dish descriptions, though there have been times when they simply do not know the English word for an ingredient. If you're looking to expand the dishes you like, try adding in one unfamiliar dish at a meal. But always order a dish (or more) you like, so you can guarantee that you'll have something you'll enjoy in case the new dish doesn't agree with your tastes.

[Joe]

(KC's husband here)

I haven't run across the rice thing, but we may just not have ordered extra rice.

On the language barrier... In my experience at Great Lake, there's almost always someone on staff who speaks English well, even if it isn't your server. You may have to ask politely if there's someone around who can explain the dish to you, but unless you're there late at night when staffing is low, there should be.

One source of recommendations is the white board by the door that lists specials -- these tend to have ingredients that aren't always available. We've had good luck experimenting with them.

[RobynT]

I am definitely going to check it out. This is my second year in Michigan (originally from Hawai'i) and I am so spoiled by the dim sum and other Chinese food back home!

I never knew it until moving here but I think maybe the stuff in Hawai'i is mostly Hong Kong-style. Having Cantonese-speakers also reassures me since that's what most of the Chinese in Hawai'i speak. (I don't, but at least it will sound familiar, and maybe it's a sign that the food will be more what I am used to.)

Last year we went to Evergreen, Lai Lai, and Little Panda in Lansing. Little Panda was the best, but still not as good as we like! I'm so excited to try this place!

[Kate]

I've always had great food at Great-Lake (if not the best service.) I have also had good luck ordering from the small green-type menu inside the regular menu or the specials board. The beef with ginger and green onions is to die for by-the-way (as long as you like a strong ginger kick).

[Kitchen Chick]

Kate: thanks for the recommendation. We do like a ginger kick in this household.

RobynT: I've heard good things about Hong Hua's Hong Kong style food, too. (Someday we'll make it there.) They're located in Farmington Hills.

[thu]

Hey L,
Hong Hua is really great. All my chinese friends at work goes there to celebrate Lunar New Year. There are alot of Asian eat there that means something. Maybe you and your hubby and our family should venture out there sometimes. Also, Pearl restaurant on the corner of 10 mile and Grandriver is also great too.

thu

[Randi]

We were in AA yesterday and on our way to Trader Joe's, I saw great lakes, but I could have sworn it was on Washtenaw. Is that a different place?

[Joe, Kitchen Chick's husband]

There's a bank in this area called "Great Lakes Financial," which might be what you saw. Great Lake is still near the corner of Carpenter and Packard, behind the White Castle.