RESTAURANT REVIEW : Smooth Sailing at West L.A.’s China Sea

There is a shortfall, a definite underproduction of Chinese restaurants west of the 405. Why should this be? I mean, the closer to the ocean, the closer to the Pacific Rim, right?

Nothing but this Santa Monica/West L.A. Chinese restaurant deficit would get me to Sawtelle Place, a mall with the approximate architectural charm of a junior high school. The China Sea isn’t much to look at itself, just a boxy mall-type room up a wind-whipped flight of stairs, although it does have a sophisticated sheet metal construction over the bar representing a 1930s seaplane coming out of some storm clouds. Or possibly it’s just a fender from a two-car banger over on the 405.

What a pleasure, though, to find that the food is very good. As the name suggests, the China Sea has a specialty in seafood, but it also has a long list of dim sum available at all times, notably including beautifully fluted pot stickers and siu mai and a remarkably fluffy char siu bao (“like a marshmallow with roast pork in the middle,” as somebody said).

There’s an unusual grilled pork sausage, stiff and sweet with deliciously melting fat. Among the meat and poultry dishes, you can find chicken “with pepper skin,” which is chicken cooked to make it look and somehow even taste a little like duck. Clearly, this is a seafood restaurant with no prejudice against higher-ups on the food chain.

Or against vegetables, for that matter. The eight precious vegetables are as good as I’ve ever had, fresh and crisp and a little bit peppery in a very light black bean sauce, and included among the eight precious ingredients is the elusive and somewhat garbanzo bean-like ginkgo nut.

But the seafood is definitely the center of attention. For instance, shrimp with honey-glazed walnuts, in a subtle black bean sauce with water chestnut, bell peppers, the walnuts with their sly after-taste of honey, and from time to time a tiny sting of ginger. Various seafoods are available in a particularly vivid peppery-garlicky black bean sauce. There was a faint odd taste to my scallops, as if they’d been over-floured, but I could probably eat straight ginkgo nuts without objecting if they were served in this sauce.

The oddest name trophy goes to Fred’s Favorite Fried Oysters. (The menu explains that Fred is an oyster connoisseur, which is not quite enough information for me.) They’re very good, plump oysters in a model of light, crisp breading, but I’d rather put lemon juice on them, or even the fiery mustard that is deceptively served in an American plastic mustard dispenser, than the sweet plum sauce that’s offered.

One thing I wish is that the China Sea did not go in for the absurd Chinese practice of serving crab in the shell with the sauce on the outside. Not only is it undignified to lick sweet ginger sauce off a crab shell in public, the sauce--particularly when it’s as thickened with cornstarch as this one--makes it all but impossible to handle the crab to crack the shell etc.

But in light of the scarcity of Chinese restaurants on this side of town, I believe I can overlook that. Yes, I believe I can. That and the Sawtelle Place architecture.