Seven Seas Chinese Restaurant

Gazette Lifestyles
April 22, 2004
Renee Brooks Catacalos
(BehindThePlate)

Many Americans have come to think take-out mix-and-match combos with egg rolls are all there is to Chinese food, but Seven Seas Restaurant in College Park wants you to think again.

Sporting a brand-new facade and an eye-catching mural above the parking lot, Seven Seas serves freshly prepared Chinese-American favorites alongside an extensive menu of authentic Chinese specialties and Japanese sushi, sashimi and tempura.

"We are a very good restaurant for dining in," said owner Kitty Shen, who opened Seven Seas 15 years ago, soon after emigrating with her family from Taiwan "We try to give a very fair price and introduce customers to more variety of Chinese food."

One example is the dim sum and sushi lunch buffet. For $6.95, diners help themselves to handmade stuffed buns and dumplings, fried and white rice, several entrees such as beef with vegetables and side dishes such as marinated eggs, seaweed salad and Chinese cabbage slaw Sushi offerings include California, Philadelphia, veggie, rainbow and big rolls.

The lunch crowd can be unpredictable, but Seven Seas entertains a full house most evenings.

The extensive menu includes many familiar favorites such as General Tso's chicken, $8.95, and orange beef, $9.95. The beef with vegetables, $8.95, is much more flavorful than standard take-out fare. Served with a robust brown sauce and a generous portion of goodquality beef, it's very earthy and full of mushrooms.

A popular choice is the rice wine cooked chicken, which Shen said is one of the most requested authentic items they sell. Served in a sizzling iron hot pot, the sweet, heady stew with tender chunks of chicken, whole garlic cloves and thick slices of ginger is a steal at $8.95.

Also excellent was the fragrant crispy duck, which costs $10.45 for a half and $19.95 for a whole duck.

These entrees are the tip of the iceberg of the Chinese specialties, as Shen showed me a separate menu for diners with more exotic tastes. Items on this menu range from appetizers of seasoned sliced beef tendon, $4.95, to entrees such as Chinese-style egg foo young, $8.95. "In China, egg too young is not a patty," Shen explained. "The egg is more pancake-like, and it's served on top of the sauce."

Fixed-price banquet dinners with multiple courses for groups of six, eight or 10 are also popular among Chinese diners.

The sushi bar holds its owncolorful and artistic sushi platters issue forth from the sushi bar continuously during lunch and dinner.

"Sushi is one of our most popular items," Shen said, noting that there are not many other places to order top-quality sushi in the College Park area.

The wait staff is attentive, and Shen is usually seen greeting customers and ensuring their comfort. A nice touch is the small scoop of refreshing lime sherbet for each diner that accompanies the check.

Takeout is about half of Shen's business, and she said her goal with the renovation was to encourage more diners to eat in. She adopted a softer interior color scheme and added Chinese artworks and calligraphy. She said the strategy seems to be working.

"Definitely the renovation did us a lot of good," Shen said.

Seven Seas Chinese Restaurant 8503 Baltimore Blvd. (Rt. 1) College Park, MD 20740
Tel.: 301-345-5808 (We do Delivery) Fax: 301-345-3783