I used to eat Northeast Chinese style food quite a bit when I lived in San Jose. I was craving it for awhile and my coworker informed me there was a place by me so I decided to give it a try.
This restaurant is located in a strip mall in Newport Hills. This specific spot used to be a video rental place. Outside looks a bit old but they did a pretty good job with the interior decor.
I mainly came here to try Guo Bao Rou, which is basically Tang Soo Yook (Sweet and Sour pork). And man!! This place really nailed it. It was not overly sweet and there was a lot of the ginger flavor. It was fried to perfection. I think they used a rice based coating and It was chewy, crispy, and delicious. Highly recommended.
And then there was a whole fish dish that was only written in Chinese on the wall. Our server told us that it was "yellow fish". I assume it was yellow tail? There were two different options - spicy and salty - and we went with Spicy. This was excellent. If you want to order this, just show them my photo below. Warning - they leave the fish head on. If you get grossed out by something like that, don't order.
The rest of the dishes were not as memorable. Overall everything was quite good but it was a bit too salty for my taste, especially the noodle dish. See the photos attached for what I got to try today.
Service was not bad but the employees here do not speak perfect English. Usually this is not a problem but today they gave and charged me 2 orders of Double Cooked Pork Slices... The dish is called double cooked pork ... Not that I wanted double the order. I guess I was part of the communication problem. But oh well! It was the best dish of the day.
Also one warning is that many of their dishes have peanuts in them. If you have peanut allergies, make sure you proactively and clearly communicate that to the server. My son is severely allergic to nuts so I had to use Google translate to let the server know. And even after that, one of the dishes still came out with peanuts in it. They apologized and took the dish back, so no foul no harm was done but I just wanted to note this.
Overall, I really enjoyed the restaurant. I think the food is quite authentic. Everything is family style (i.e. huge portions), so do not order one dish per person. For the amount food you get, I would say this place is very affordable
They do not take reservations but accept all major credit cards. read more