Taste of Paradise

Up to now, authentic Chinese cooking has had only a slippery toehold in the Valley. Don’t look now, but that’s about to change, thanks to Hong Kong Paradise and Seafood Bistro.

This exuberant new Encino restaurant soars on the wings of high-energy Cantonese cooking. That means a lot of live seafood, relatively little spicing and a reliance on basic techniques in the kitchen. Want a live crab? Then have one, plucked from a tank and steamed whole in a delicious garlic broth. Fond of fresh clams? Try a heaping platter of them, all glistening with black bean sauce.

The restaurant is spacious, with decor I’d describe as pleasantly ruffled. The new owners have brought in Oriental pottery and attractive Chinese brush paintings. The art doesn’t quite match the blond wood paneling and light vinyl booths, though, so the restaurant seems to be saying it is planted firmly on the American side of the Pacific Rim.

But that’s not altogether true of what is on the table. Many of the more than 200 dishes, about half of them seafood, would be reasonably at home in a restaurant in Hong Kong itself.

Ordinarily, Chinese restaurants only offer dim sum in the morning and evening, but Hong Kong Paradise serves its all day. They’re all wonderful appetizers. Another good starter would be an order of lettuce cups--lettuce leaves smeared with plum sauce and stuffed with fillings based on chicken, barbecued pork, mixed seafood or beef. Perhaps the best among them is a mixture of minced chicken, water chestnut and black mushroom--very rich.

Then there are soups, which make wonderful second courses. Winter melon soup is a clear broth flavored with ham and soft pieces of the stringy, squash-like vegetable. Westlake beef soup is a grown-up version of egg flower soup, a beefy broth thickened with minced beef and cilantro. Hong Kong Paradise is the only Valley Chinese restaurant I know of that serves expensive shark’s fin soup by the individual bowl. Its version is gelatinous, intensely flavored and altogether delicious.

But all these dishes are merely precursors to the seafoods, which are prepared in a mind-numbing number of ways. Pacific lobster (only $12.99 a pound) is especially delicious deep fried in the shell with a spicy chile sauce. Deep fried, lightly battered shrimp are wonderful out of their shells, sprinkled with spiced salt.

Whole fish such as flounder, rock cod and catfish can be steamed simply with ginger and green onion or baked with salt, dried bean paste and crushed garlic. For my money, the flounder is the sweetest and most delicate fish the restaurant serves. There are also scallops, abalone, sea cucumber, squid and oyster preparations. I’m a sucker for the fried oysters, all redolent of ginger and green onions.

For something more substantial than seafood, the clay pot dishes are ideal. Beef brisket and turnip clay pot is about as rustic as a Chinese dish gets; it’s big, tender chunks of beef mingling with caramelized pieces of turnip. I’m also a fan of the impossibly rich roast pork and fresh oyster clay pot, subtly perfumed with star anise.

You could round out a meal with a few vegetable dishes and rice dishes, like crisp spears of asparagus tossed in a wok with whole black mushrooms. The pungent and complex salted fish and chicken fried rice is a definite step up from the fried rice in Americanized Cantonese restaurants.

All meals end with fresh orange slices and glossy wrapped fortune cookies, the restaurant’s one concession to suburban sensibilities. Hong Kong Paradise and Seafood Bistro may be a long way from paradise, but it is probably as close as Encino will ever get to Hong Kong.

BE THERE

Hong Kong Paradise and Seafood Bistro. 16240 Ventura Blvd., Encino. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Dinner for two, $24-$49. Full bar. Valet parking. All major cards. (818) 783-7213.