I have to go to Hop Li on Pico for a birthday celebration. Is there anything on the menu that anyone would recommend (or if you haven’t been to Hop Li, which you would recommend on a similar what seems to me to be a generic Westside Chinese menu). I don’t want anything fried and I don’t want anything oily, which seems to eliminate a lot of the menu. From my review of the menu, the most promising dish sounds like Fish Fillet with Garlic and Black Bean Sauce. That has one of those idiotic chili icons to denote that it is spicy. I actually love spicy food, but I was wondering how exactly garlic and black bean sauce are “spicy.” Just a careless menu mistake or am I missing something due to my ignorance of Chinese cuisine?
Any menu suggestions welcome. And I know I could get a healthy meal by just ordering steamed vegetables, but I also don’t want anything tasteless.
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We’ve gotten delivery from them before and they’re decent for old school Americanized Cantonese food. If you like spicy food, none of those dishes with a pepper are going to actually be spicy. Like the Squid with Spicy Salt is marked with a chili, and it’ll just be a standard 5 spice salt dusted fried squid. Not sure how they’re deciding what to use that for (maybe dishes with more black pepper, white pepper, or sichuan pepper?), but you can probably ignore it because Cantonese food is the opposite of a spicy cuisine.
Your dish with the lowest oil content is going to be the steamed fish fillet with house special soy sauce. Another option would be one of the steamed chicken dishes, given that it comes in 1/2 or whole portions it’s probably the canto version of hainan chicken. Most dishes there are going to be stir friend in the wok, which will necessarily entail some oil even if it’s not really detectable because it’ll get emulsified in the sauce.
Another option would be the hot pot dishes which will have more sauce, but should be lower in fat usage.
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Maybe I should just get Szechuan tofu and be done with it. Surprisingly that one doesn’t have a chili marking next to it on the menu. Would that one be super greasy? I have an idea in my head that somehow tofu doesn’t absorb as much oil when thrown in a wok, but I could be quite wrong headed about that.
Just a warning: you should not get a Szechuan tofu dish at a Cantonese restaurant expecting it to taste like a Szechuan place. It’s not going to be spicy despite the description and it’s not going to have the numbing spice either. It’s going to be a canto-adapted version that is very mild. Some fat is going to be in the sauce, just like many of the other dishes, although the tofu itself will of course be very low in fat. Maybe you can be more specific about your desire to not have something “oily”. Is this a texture thing, a taste things, a macronutrient thing, some combination of that? What Chinese or similar dishes have met your criteria before?
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It’s a combination of macronutrient and a taste thing. I don’t want to have 900 calories of Kung Pao Chicken (or to take a dainty bite). It’s not like I have never had a 900 calorie dish at an amazing restaurant, but somehow I don’t think the 900 calorie Kung Pao chicken at Hop Li will be amazing enough to justify the calories. And again I know I can order steamed vegetables with steamed chicken, but I also know that will be bland and tasteless, so I was looking for a middle ground. They do have regular fried tofu with “oyster flavor” sauce. Don’t know if that would be any better than their Szechuan tofu or if either of those dishes would be any healthier than their other fried (or oil-soaked) dishes.
I prefer Hop Woo on Olympic to Hop Li for this type of food nd they do have some legit spicy szechuan food.
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I’d take a pass on the invite. Sounds like you will be miserable there.
their BBQ fried rice is good.
This.
It might be easier to predict what might be acceptable to you, if you can provide a concrete example.
I’m a fan of the Chinatown location and used to eat at the Pico one when I was working in the area (it was some time ago) and found that they compared favorably.
Steamed Rock Cod is the no-brainer choice. I also like their Squid in Black Bean and Clams in XO.
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Yep I was miserable, but you can’t take a pass on a birthday invite. 
If this wasn’t the worst restaurant I have been to in my entire life, it was among the top 5.
Not sure where to start as a bunch of things were ordered for the table and I sampled most.
Starter – egg drop soup. Lukewarm and tasteless.
Mains - yep, I added on the Szechuan tofu. Despite it being awful (and served lukewarm), I actually thought it was the best of the mains I tasted. Just some non-fried tofu in a gloppy brown non-spicy sauce. Steamed fish – awful. Tasteless fish that was clearly not fresh. I think the worst of the mains I tasted was this chicken thing. Some tasteless flat (i.e., not cubed) chicken pieces in a gloppy sauce.
On a bright note, the orange slices that came out at the end tasted perfectly fine.
The wait staff were so surly that if the food weren’t so awful I would have been amused as if I were in a Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode.
Afterwards I came home and binge watched a food blogger posting episodes of himself eating amazing food and I felt doubly sad.
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