Hong Kong Chow

Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Wednesday, Jul 8 1998

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Seaworld-- At dinner, the king-size Cantonese restaurant Seaworld gears up for the banquet crowd, which comes for specialties such as superbly crisp Hong Kong fried chicken, lacquer-skinned and accompanied by a small dish of pepper-salt as a dip; for braised ducks' feet served with crunchy, pungent mustard greens; for simply steamed geoduck. The rage in high-end Cantonese places these days is for a mixture of seafood with Western sweets, and one of the best - and most unusual - of Seaworld's dishes involves shrimp garnished with Twinkie-shaped crullers of deep-fried sweet custard, which works better than you might think it would. Another dish, of crunchy fried shrimp tossed in something like hot Miracle Whip and garnished with candied walnuts, is pretty darn good if you ignore the fact that the combination is, after all, pretty darn weird. 8118 E. Garvey Ave., Rosemead; (626) 288-2898. Open seven days for breakfast (dim sum), lunch and dinner. Dinner for two, food only, $18-$32. Beer and wine. Takeout. Lot parking. MC, V.

Victoria Seafood-- Victoria Seafood is a small box of a place, in the heart of Chinese Monterey Park, with big glass fish tanks wedged into every cranny: tanks filled with geoduck clams, hundreds of them lolling out of their undersize shells; tanks with dozens of mossy hard-shell crabs, bound and gagged; tanks with big, thick-lipped fish that stare dolefully out into the room like Edward G. Robinson. Later, great platters come piled high with the excellent Chinese squid, dipped in a thin batter of spicy salt, fried to an exquisite crunchiness and served with a garnish of sliced chiles softened in oil. The Cantonese dried-scallop soup is thick, peppery, crowded with shredded root vegetables and crunchy tree-ear fungus, and speckled with chewy bits of dried scallops, which add a sort of pleasant, postcoital pungency to the broth. 143 W. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park; (626) 280-5921. Open daily 11 a.m.-3 a.m. Dinner for two, food only, $24-$30; much more with live seafood. Beer and wine. Lot parking. MC, V.