Golden Harbor Authentic Chinese Cuisine

You know it is an authentic Chinese restaurant when the menu is in Chinese. My friends begged me to go with them because their Chinese reading skill is limited. But I had no idea that I would be standing in front of the wall for so long - the menu is super extensive. The funny thing is when I mentioned that they have an "egg" section and a claypot section - my friends didn't even know!

They have an interesting operation where customers order by the number on a slip of paper and then you pay for it at the counter. They charge 50 cents for clearing the table. And you grab all the utensils, bowls, tea, cups by yourself.

We ordered the fried tofu, because that's one of the few dishes that my friends always get. However, I thought it was just okay. I prefer crispy fried tofu, not mushy fried tofu. We tried the salted fish with chicken claypot rice and that was pretty legit. The pork bun from the Taiwanese section was good too. They serve the buns and the meat separately so you make your own sandwich. The pork chop udon was a little disappointing, the pork chop looked super dry. They also have a dim sum section and we got the liquid-y yellow bun aka "lau sa bao" in Cantonese. That's a popular dim sum in Hong Kong and it's special because the steamed bun has liquidy yellow egg custard oozing out when you bite into it. However, the egg custard at this place wasn't too liquid-y so it was more like "lai wong bao". We got some simple green veggies to balance everything else out.

My friends warned me to drink lots of water due to the amount of MSG in the food and boy, were they not kidding. It's still good though. It sure beats ordering from the English menu :)

There is a huge difference between Chinese food and Taiwanese food. I think it's very misleading to have a restaurant bill itself as "authentic Chinese cuisine" then specialize in their Taiwanese dishes only. I had hoped their Chinese dishes would be good or passable at least, but their versions of Mongolian beef, Szechuan chicken, and chicken with black bean sauce were barely edible. I would give the Chinese food 2 stars and the Taiwanese food 4 stars (because the Crispy fried tofu was good) and average it all at 3 stars.
Taiwanese dishes are heavy on soy sauce and sesame oil.  They can have a Malaysian influence. There are a lot of deep fried dishes. So if you prefer deep-fried food and brown sauces, as well as home-style or stewed meat, you might like this restaurant quite a bit.
It's BYOB and bus your own table or pay a $1 fee, so good for feeding a large group family-style, by sharing dishes.

Take a close look at the pictures that customers have attached of the food they ate here because that's what it really looks like.

what wiki has to say about Taiwanese food:
<a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTaiwanese_cuisine&s=76c56e41fdb5a90eaaea6b49442f6e8fccc56c9c5ff68b25e48a856e053790ad" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/…</a>

We get the hot and sour soup Taiwanese style no meat, crispy tofu (sauce on the side), and some greens. For dessert we get the sesame balls.  Great food.