Always Seafood Restaurant

Found this place through an ad and I have to admit, the food is alright. I gave them three stars because their washrooms are pretty appalling…
We also ordered lobster as well as four other dishes and they have us a complimentary tofu dish! Weoo!

My friends and I feasted like animals at Always Seafood Restaurant. We ordered the Alaskan King Crab cooked 3 ways and another set dinner menu for 10 people.
I didn’t feel greasy after eating, but was definitely stuffed. I enjoyed every dish and would come back here to eat again. The service was excellent, except the rice took forever to get to our table. We kept asking for it and I guess they didn’t have enough and had to cook more from scratch. The rice finally came half an hour later.
The prices are reasonable and I like the fact that they take credit cards too.

Random restaurants that nobody know about are the way to go in this town.
Free parking on the side streets is a bit difficult to find as there isn’t much of it, but eventually you’ll find something.
The interior is nicely renovated, but is starting to show its age a little bit. Any restaurant will get a little beaten up over time. But the «era» is definitely modern.
Beers have gone up in price now, to $ 3 a bottle. Still very reasonable though. They have a few brands such as Coors Light, Kokanee, and Tsingtao. Chairman Mao would be proud.
The staff were authentic Chinese. So authentic that we actually had trouble communicating with them in English. Then I also realized they didn’t understand Cantonese. After about 5 minutes of intense gesturing (I was literally sweating by the time I was done), we got our order in.
They were out of Peking duck today, so unfortunately there will be no review today on that.
The must-​have dish though is the oyster congee. It’s basically rice in this totally awesome and delicious oyster soup. Not to be confused with congee. This is literally like they emptied a pot of rice into a soup after it was cooked. I could eat this everyday. This is what makes Always a 5-​star establishment instead of simply 4. Yes, it is life-​changing good.
Their honey pork ribs were tasty but a *little* too crispy. The meat was slightly shriveled as a result.
Tofu hot pot — nice large chunks. I really like how this place didn’t skimp on the ingredients or make the sauce too salty (common problem with many other places).
Seafood eggplant clay pot — same deal. Filled with nice giant scallops.
Sichuan style chicken — nice fresh peppers, and just the right amount of peppers to make one sweat just a tiny bit. Actually one of the best I’ve had in town.
Their rice pots are also among the nicest I’ve seen anywhere. Stainless steel. Forget those cheapo-​looking red plastic ones every other place seems to use. This rice pot exudes class.
One last mention — this place is open LATE. As in 0500 on weekends. Last time I was here this late, there were some shady triad-​looking people eating here. Hey, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for the common folk. Can’t traffic humans on an empty stomach. Okay, I kid. About the human trafficking part.

I had a rippin awesome time here, but that’s probably cuz my godmother knew the staff, and came often enough to know what to order. We had oysters on the half shell with vermicelli and black bean sauce, and same thing with scallops. Their clam dish was also really well done. Yummy! I am definitely coming back!

This is a 3.5 star review.
Having trouble finding a place for late night dining? Need to go easy on the pocket?
I just got back from a trip back home and my fiancée brought me to his new find. I can never eat too much Chinese food and I find that for the two of us, we can’t order too much at once. HOWEVER, Always Seafood has a late night dining menu (they open until 2am) that is very reasonably priced for tapas sized Chinese entrees, INCLUDING fresh dungeness crab for $ 10. This means that I get a variety of dishes that do not overwhelm me and since beers are $ 2.75 per bottle, he also gets what he wants. It’s a win win situation.
The downside is that they are so busy that getting the attention of the wait staff at times is a chore. But hey, for the price and the quality of food, and the lack of late night/​early morning dining restaurants downtown, it’s worth a venture.
There’s parking at the back of the restaurant in case you can’t find street parking.

Let’s start off with the décor, the décor is good, it’s clean, and there’s a big screen TV when you walk in. At night time it can get really cold, and so the put heaters around the cold windows to ensure that customers are as warm as possible.
Let’s start off with the awesome. Late Night ordering for Domestic beer is 2.75 per bottle. That’s a crazy price. The food is decently priced and unlike many other Chinese places they DO take credit cards. Which is highly unsual.
My friends and I had the garlic pea tips which were delicious and fresh. Nothing outstanding but always a great staple dish to try if you haven’t tried this type of vegetable before.
The one dish that may really surprise you is the Oyster congee, don’t let the name fool you. It’s more like a soup with Oyster, pork, preserved veggies that made it a savoury dish. Both my friends were surprised when they tried the dish out.
And then we had the fried squid, it was hot, and crispy.
I’ve been there five times since it has open. As of the time that I’m writing this, whole crabs are $ 10 bucks, and whole lobsters are $ 20. I don’t know how long this is going to last.
There is a word of warning, if you don’t like to hear dice rolling in the back, and people yelling out loud late at night, then don’t go this place. It may give you that rough feeling, but during regular dinner times, the place is great.
Plus…there is parking in the back. I would recommend people to go and try this place at least once, especially if you like a great place to eat and offers cheap beer.

So on a drunken Saturday night, I begged friends to take me to Accord for steamed oysters. I love steamed oysters, haven’t been in over a year and nobody ever seems to want to go with me.
So…we drive up… where’s Accord? Nope, there was Always seafood restaurant in it’s place instead. It was 2 am and our choices were limited so I wasn’t about to complain.
Walked inside, phew, same freaking people working here. I feel hope. We asked for ‘cold tea’, yes they still have it. Sounds like a party.
Anyways, too bad so sad, they ran out of oysters. So we order the usual chilli fried squid, pea tips, scallop fried rice and a deep fried chilli crab.
The first three dishes were decently good. It could be because I was so hungry or maybe it was just good.
Then came the disaster of the dead crab. It looked bad deep fried on the plate already. WTF how can anything deep fried look bad on a plate. Check if all legs there. Then we noticed it was missing a claw. Anyways, we dug it and something did NOT taste right. We complained that it wasn’t fresh and the waitress swore she caught it live. It was our fault for not asking to see the crab first. Then we found the missing second claw, it was smaller than my thumb and curled into some weird mishapen form. Ughh. We complained again and again just got blank stares. Ughhh.
Anyways, we got out bill and noticed they only charged us $ 10 for the crab, but the lingering fishiness flavor lives on in my mouth…