Golden renaissance
Michael and I kept our left hands stuffed in our respective left pockets as we met Michael’s dearest friends outside the Golden Fortune 10 months ago.
When we sat down, our waters were served immediately, and Michael proposed a toast, lifting his water glass with his right hand, to M and K’s 17th wedding anniversary. He added that we had another cause for celebration, and we presented our left hands with our shiny golden bands on our ring fingers. Their jaws dropped. We filled them in on the details of our elopement.
The Golden Fortune buzzed and hummed all around us as we merrily discussed their 17 years and our two days (so far). Our appetizers and the main dishes were all great, but we felt rushed. Plates were cleared off as we picked up the last morsel with chopsticks.
Next course! Thank you very much!
I finally asked our waiter to give us a few minutes before bringing our lichee and coconut ice cream, so we could relax. He did; in fact, he gave us exactly four minutes.
After that experience, I was compelled to write a letter to the Eldorado food and beverage manager about how good the meal was, yet how rushed we’d felt.
Prior to that night, Michael and I ate at the Golden Fortune every couple of weeks. That hurried celebration on the 56th hour of our marriage left a bad, lingering taste.
We didn’t go back until last week, when we decided to give the Golden Fortune another chance. I’m happy to say the food was delicious as ever, and the service was so improved the restaurant is back on our top-10 list.
Allen, one of our two servers, treated us as if we were the only diners in the restaurant. We asked him for his favorites, and he didn’t just blurt out the most expensive dishes on the menu, but he asked us what we liked and made his recommendations from there.
He suggested we try the honey-glazed BBQ pork ($6.95) as an appetizer. The pork juices and honey were delightful, like a mini pork tenderloin.
For dinner, we revisited an old favorite: beef with ginger and green onions ($10.95), which has long pieces of scallions and phenomenal chunks of palate-cleansing ginger.
We ordered seafood chow mein ($11.95) on Allen’s suggestion and were glad. It was a pretty dish with massive scallops, shrimp, mussels and bok choy over a bed of hot chow mein. The chow mein was lightly fried on the bottom, giving it a crunchy quality.
The scallops at the Golden Fortune are legendary. In fact, during a visit two years ago, my mother ordered sautéed fresh scallops with wine sauce ($13.95), and she still raves about the size and the taste of those mollusks.
For years now, we’ve tried to order spinach with garlic sauce at the Golden Fortune. In the past, we were told that it was no good, that it was full of sand. The perpetually unavailable item is no longer an option—with sand or without. Allen told us they stopped serving it.
So we ordered Szechuan eggplant ($7.95) as our vegetable dish. Words can’t describe this masterpiece. Let’s just say if there’s food in heaven, this dish is on the menu.
Golden Fortune, with its Hong Kong dishes and Chinese atmosphere, improved upon its single flaw by making its servers leisurely but efficient. We won’t wait another 10 months to eat there again.