Posted by Perhaps my favorite Cantonese Restaurant is East Pearl! My Cantonese grandfather also loved this place back in the day. It’s not hard to see why – the food is very tasty, and there’s lots and lots of options. Here’s what I recommend.
If you go for lunch, East Pearl Cantonese Restaurant offers Dim Sum! If you’re unfamiliar with Dim Sum, Dim sum is basically a large range of small Chinese dishes (think tapas) that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for brunch.
There’s also the regular menu – which you can order at any time of the day. If you arrive for lunch time they also have very good deals on lunch menu too!
Dim Sum
If you go for lunch, East Pearl offers Dim Sum! If you’re unfamiliar with Dim Sum, Dim sum is basically a large range of small Chinese dishes (think tapas) that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for brunch.
Shumai
Shumai is basically meat wrapped with a wrapping. The filling often consist of ground pork, shrimp, Chinese black mushroom, green onion and ginger with seasonings of Chinese rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil. At East Pearl, they have shrimp and also pork.
Rice noodle roll (腸粉)
Rice noodle rolls is a thin roll made from a wide strip of shahe fen (rice noodles) and can be filled with shrimp, beef, vegetables, etc. I recommend ordering it with shrimp at East Pearl!
Turnip cake 蘿蔔糕
Turnip cake aka radish cake is made with shredded radish (typically Chinese radish) and plain rice flour. This is a delicious dish and East Pearl makes it delicious!
Beef Organs or Tripe Stew
Doesn’t sound very appealing if you’ve never had it before, but if you have had it before, theirs is super tasty!
Chicken Feet
Steamed chicken feet, aka Phoenix Talons or Phoenix Claws, is one of the many classic Dim Sum dishes. If you’ve never had it before, I think you should try it at least once!
Regular Menu
Lots of choices on the regular menu, but I wanted to highlight some of my faves.
Roast Duck
Love this delicious dish – comes roasted with a crunchy skin, and you can eat it as is, or wrap it in the bao’s provided along with scallions and the sauce.
Salted Fish Diced Chicken Eggplant Clay Pot
What a long name! Funnily, normally I’m about the meats, but at East Pearl, this is my favorite dish!!! It’s so delicious, I can’t explain it – I think it’s the salted fish? Perhaps it’s the 30 whole garlic cloves (exaggerating, kind of) but this is so flavorful and I end up eating too many bowls of rice.
Lobster
Stir fried Lobster in Scallions and Garlic, this is a great dish if you want to kick it up a notch on fancy level. We eat this a lot when we are celebrating birthdays or people visiting / in town, etc. The noodles don’t always come with it so if you want noodles, ask for it.
Snow Pea Leaves – Dou Miao
If you do want a veggie dish, I recommend the Dou Miao, snow pea leaves stir fry! This veggie is a tasty veggie that I sometimes make at home, but restaurant level flavors are even more delicious!
Seafood Tofu Clay Pot
My niece absolutely loves tofu, so we order this one a lot, it’s got various seafood like shrimp and squid, and then there’s these giant special soft tofu that is actually pretty delicious (even I think so and I’m not a big tofu fan) so if you like tofu, try it out.
Salt and pepper squid
Speaking of seafood, this one is a very beloved dish – salt and pepper squid! Though it doesn’t always come with the green beans so you may need to ask about that.
Mei Cai Kou Rou (Steamed Pork with Preserved Mustard)
This is a very flavorful dish! It’s made with pickled mustard, sweet pickle (mei cai) and pork belly. If you’ve never had this before I recommend it.
Here’s more information on East Pearl Cantonese Restaurant: