Mea Mei Wok Eatery
12 Freshwater Road
Ph. 726-8424
Take-out food has always been a treat for me, fish and chips and Chinese food being my favourites. Chinese take-out is the choice for special occasions like birthdays, family gatherings and New Year’s Eve. On a couple of recent special evenings I ordered from Mea Mei Wok Eatery. I don’t often see people dining-in at Mea Mei but its take-out and delivery business seems quite healthy.
Mea Mei’s menu covers all the bases. They have all the usual
North American Chinese foods - egg rolls, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice
and the like - as well as Cantonese and Hong Kong or Szechwan style foods. It’s
the Cantonese and Szechwan foods that I like to try because they’re so much more
interesting.
I liked Mea Mei’s dumpling with egg noodle and vegetable
soup. The dumplings were filled with a juicy mixture of ground pork and spices.
The dumplings caught my eye because the pasta had a prune-like surface,
visually interesting and I was delighted to find that despite their shriveled
exterior these dumplings gave up the most tender and moisture laden contents. A
more than generous portion of noodles accompanied the dumplings along with
slices of BBQ pork and vegetables in a smooth, rich chicken broth.
Mea Mei’s spring rolls were large with a wonderfully crunchy
wrapper. The filling was the usual mixture of ground pork, bean sprouts and
other chopped vegetables, including carrot. A liberal topping of deeply
flavoured plum sauce (in packets) made these spring rolls dynamite parcels of
eating pleasure.
If you like the taste of curry powder the Singapore fried
rice noodles might be a good choice. It was a lovely fragrant combination of
rice stick noodles, bean sprouts, ginger, baby shrimp and a good dose of curry
powder. I especially thought this dish was good when paired with our order of
tofu with mixed vegetables and BBQ pork. Cubes of silken tofu combined very
well with broccoli florets in oyster, soy and bean sauce. Both were great dishes
for anyone who does not like to eat too much meat.
One of the more unusual dishes I tried was Mea Mei’s Hong
Kong style orange ribs. These reddish coloured parcels came all stuck together
in a gluey, sticky pink sauce. The word gluey is the best one to describe these
ribs. They had been steamed and coated in some sort of batter that had become
gelatinous. The ribs contained a considerable amount of cartilage, connective
tissue and fat, as well as meat. Personally, I liked the slippery, sticky,
gluey texture of these ribs. Some felt a little guilty eating them because you
realize that most of what you’re consuming isn’t good for you. Nevertheless, I
found them to be thoroughly addictive. Be advised, they may be an acquired
taste because some of my dining companions did not like them - for the same
reasons I liked them. By the way, one problem…even though they were called
orange ribs I tasted no orange, just a homogenized fruity flavour.
Another couple of interesting dishes featured chicken and
fish. The Szechwan spicy fish was a mixture of vegetables like green pepper and
spring onions surrounding bite-sized pieces of cod that appeared to have a
battered coating with the same gelatinous quality as the orange ribs. A sauce -
billed as spicy - held all of these ingredients together; however I found very
little spice in this dish. In fact, only two pieces of fish had any amount of
spicy heat.
The chicken dish, sliced chicken in black bean sauce was
dark with deep flavours. The chicken was extremely tender and was infused with
the flavours of chicken broth, soy sauce, fermented black beans and garlic. I
found a hint of smoke there as well.
Mea Mei’s Mongolian chicken was a sharp contrast to the
black bean dish, in that it was quite sweet with flavours that inhabited the
surface of the dish. Pieces of skinless, boneless chicken were mixed mainly
with slices of green pepper. The sauce contained a mixture of chicken broth,
red pepper, soy and oyster sauce, sugar, cornstarch and possibly some ketchup.
I enjoyed the Mongolian chicken but would have preferred a little less
sweetness and a little more spice.
A simple seafood dish I liked was Mea Mei’s stir-fried
scallops in hot, spicy chili salt. A number of small bay scallops were dusted
in chili salt, and then quickly stir-fried. I appreciated the lack of fuss
because I think scallops are best enjoyed when they have been kept as close to
the natural product as possible.
One dish I’ve always found hard to resist when ordering
Chinese take-out is Cantonese chow mein. Mea Mei’s version features - along
with plenty of Chinese egg noodles - slices of beef, shrimp, mushrooms, onions
and a mix of other vegetables including green pepper and celery. The sauce is
what really makes this dish as the flavours of thickened chicken broth and
oyster sauce permeate all of the various ingredients. Mea Mei’s
Cantonese chow mein is definitely one of their better dishes.
Mea Mei Wok Eatery not only makes good food but it seems
able to produce good food consistently. They also wok.. er..work fast. Usually
my order is ready with 20 to 30 minutes. Fast and good, you can’t complain
about that.
A take-out meal at Mea Mei Wok Eatery like the
aforementioned, that serves about 6 to 8 people, will cost approximately $65 to
$70.
Best Points:
They are able to produce consistently good food in a short time.
Areas for Improvement:
Dishes labeled “spicy” could use even more spice and a taste of orange in the “orange” ribs wouldn’t hurt.
Ratings Category:
Mea Mei Wok Eatery gets 8 points out of 10.