FuAn Garden

Cold appetizers.

Rice crust! 

Oooooh, lookit her mix.

Cold noodles. 

Twice-cooked fish.

Boiled fish fillet.

The recommended steamed fish!

The controversial mapo tofu.  Is it good? Is it not so good?  You decide!

We wanted this potato dish to be crunchier.

Braised green beans add a nice balance to the meal.

We obviously hated the steamed fish.

Complimentary dessert soup, often offered at Szechuan places.
What the hell was in this?  We don't remember.
This is what happens when you post 7 months after the visit.

Rating: Two thumbs up
Date: 6/6/2014

Time in: 7:15 PM
Time out: 9:00 PM
Servers' recommendations: Steamed fish
What we ordered: Cold appetizers, steamed fish, cold noodle, stir-fried potato with green pepper, twice-cooked fish, shrimp with rice crust, mapo tofu, boiled fish fillet
Number in our party: 7 (Howie, Summer, Sarah M., Dorothy, and Mike as guest judges)
Final check amount: $123.01
Price per person: $17.57
  
Notes: 

• The steamed fish was very simple and tasty.
• Dorothy thought the mapo tofu good.  Jenne found it oddly bitter.
• The green beans were quite delicious.
• Sarah M. and Miko were, unsurprisingly, all about the rice crust.  Our obsession with rice knows no bounds.
• We wished the potato dish had been crunchier.
• We approve of the twice-cooked fish!
• The cold noodles were also nice.
• Fu An Garden is on par with Dede's -- it might be a little less oily, in fact.
• Our favorites:
• Jenne: cold noodles
• Miko: rice crust
• Dorothy: mapo tofu
• Howie: cold noodles
• Mike: twice-cooked fish
• Sarah M.: rice crust
• Summer: cold noodles
• Note: I (Miko) revisited, and the shrimp tasted strongly of dirt.  I'll probably avoid the shrimp dishes from now on.

RESTAURANT INFORMATION  
Address: 4768 Convoy St
Phone number: 858.650.6999
Noise level: 4
Accepts credit cards? Yes
Parking: Designated parking lot. It's fairly small, but there's also street parking available.
Ideal group size: Any
Available vegetarian options: Many!

In which we join forces with allied combatants!

Once again, Dede's was the site of our meeting with strangers from the internet...but this time it was with the mirror-universe versions of OUR VERY SELVES.  

You guys. There is another military-named Convoy food blog, called Convoy Recon! It is also run by two friends who love food, but they are gentlemen instead of ladies, and they are not librarians.  They are however completely charming and cool and have the nicest friends ever. And live in my neighborhood! They've gotten about halfway through the recon(quest) and were kind enough to invite us to join them in their visit to Dede's.

I'll let their writeup speak for the food experience (hooray, they liked both dishes we recommended, even though the cumin lamb is usually better than it was that day) but it was a lovely meal both food and conversation-wise.  We'd reconquer with them any time!

Some of the carnage.