Gaga Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Boston

Coming from New York City, I am not ready to give any Chinese restaurant in Boston a rating more than three-star. A friend of mine had been a regular patron of Ga Ga Seafood Restaurant and took us there twice. It was an authentic Cantonese restaurant.

The sauté lobster with ginger and scallion met the high standard of Cantonese style. The trick is to have the right temperature and cooking time. If the temperature is not high enough and the cooking time is too long, the lobster will lose its tenderness; it the temperature is too high then when outside is overcooked but inside will be still raw. The lobster was coated with thin layer of starch and boiled in oil for a quick minute, which was a wide spread restaurant practice to reduce the cooking time. I would prefer skipping this step and just sauté in the wok. I should have made such request when we order the lobster.

The lamb stew was standard, tasty and tender. The chicken was fine but a bit too salty. The Peking sweet and sour porkchop was off. The sweet and sour sauce were sharply fighting each other; they were supposed to create harmony and adding flavor to the meat. The vegetable was awful; it seemed the chef was trying some innovative wrong ingredients with the wrong cooking temperature. It reminded me of my innovative cooking; half of the time it earned high praise from my guests and another half the dish ended in trash can. This plate of vegetable belonged to the trash can. The scallion pancake was not what I had expected but edible.

Food presentation could be too high level of a culinary concept and had zero place in the chef’s mind.

Twice there we were the first group of customers. The dining room smelled terrible and it could ruin your appetite. Luckily, we waited about a half hour for other friends which gave me enough time to get used to the unpleasant smell before the food came to the table.

Hey, it was a Chinese restaurant in Boston. What...

This place is completely hyped up in terms of their signature dish which is the sticky rice lobster. The sticky rice has very little flavor. Not only that, when we got back to the hotel, I asked my mother if she ate the big part of the claws. She said "what big part of the claws, I thought you ate them?" So it turns out the pincher and crusher claw parts were missing and only the claw bearing legs were on the plate! So they were deceitful as well even though the server brought a live lobster out to show us which one they're cooking for us. What happened to the claws?! SMH!

Ordered spring roll as well which was a joke! Two very skinny spring rolls - which are really egg rolls filled with only veggies. They were priced over $6! For two! I've never been to a Chinese restaurant in any Chinatown that charges $6 something for two skinny egg rolls! You can get at least 4 decent sized egg rolls with actual meat in them for $6 at other restaurants I've been to.

The last joke of this place is their deep fried soft shell crab with salty egg. It was an oily mess! I can't believe they had the audacity to bring that out from the kitchen and think that's edible. It was completely soggy and the soft shell tasted like they've been refried from the night before. Horrendous! Ate only 2 pieces and gagged.

We also arrive around 11:30 AM when they had literally no customer so they have absolutely no excuse whatsoever on this terrible style of cooking. We should have taken a hint when we saw how...

Do not order "Peking Duck" from this restaurant. It is neither authentic nor delicious; the chef has no knowledge of what a "Peking Duck" should be. The only thing that is authentic about the dish is the price. I would be happy if they gave us a roast duck as a substitute but what we got is like a 'chow mein duck' from a 'Chop Suey' house, if they do not know how to make a 'Peking Duck' at least tell us so when we pre-ordered a few days in advanced instead of giving us something that is totally unacceptable. My wife even asked when we pre-ordered that we expect thinly sliced duck meat with crispy skins and the answer is yes, yes we know. Ruins our expectations, ruins our celebration. Instead of getting thinly sliced pieces of duck with skin, what we got is one plate of duck pieces (bones mainly) with the skin that is not crisp and another plate with duck meat wet and soggy with bean sprout. The only thing that is closed to the 'Peking Duck' is that a plate of Mantou (white buns) comes along with the 'duck' pieces. The taste of the other dishes are OK; not to our expectations but reasonable and acceptable. The fish though is superb, fresh, and tasty. The service is good, the waiter who served us is excellent and responsive. When we asked for small cups for our celebration, he found us excellent cups gladly...