East Ocean Chinese & Seafood – Albuquerque, New Mexico

East Ocean Chinese & Seafood on Carlisle

In 2022, Freddie Wong posted a TikTok video that went viral on several social media platforms. In the video, Wong, purports to find the most “authentic” Chinese food by utilizing restaurant review website Yelp in a unique way.  “The easiest way to find authentic Chinese food, assuming you’re living in a major metropolitan area, is to go on Yelp and to look for restaurants with three-and-a-half stars,” declared Wong in his TikTok video, which garnered an astonishing 7.2 million views in only two days. “Exactly three and a half, not three, not four. Three-and-a-half stars is a sweet spot for authentic Chinese food.”

The Dining Room

Again, the assumption is based on living in a major metropolitan area where there are a preponderance of “authentic” Chinese restaurants.  In cities such as Albuquerque, few restaurants even offer a traditional Chinese menu (if you ask for it).  Among those is East Ocean which coincidentally or not is rated  exactly three-and-a-half stars on Yelp.  A Duke City mainstay for more than thirty years, East Ocean has a huge following that includes  George Thorning, my friend and colleague at the University of New Mexico.   Though he did experience a bit of consternation when the restaurant changed ownership a few years ago, he still frequents the Carlisle restaurant.   He’s not the only one who loves East Ocean.  It’s been rated one of Albuquerque’s ten best Chinese restaurants by several online sources.

“Authentic”or worse “real Chinese” are  loaded words.  They are discrimatory and unrealistic.  To some extent, that’s also true of the term “tradition.”  Those terms imply that Chinese food has to conform to a set of standard dishes and flavors determined at an arbitrary time and place (e.g., China).  There’s no latitude given foods that evolve over time or the introduction of new ingredients.  Chinese foods invented in America are often belittled (expecially by pretentious critics) as not being authentically Chinese even though they may have been invented by Chinese immigrants.  For some of us who long ago tired of sweet and sour sauced everything, “traditional” Chinese foods offer a welcome difference.

Sizzling Orange Sauce Spare Ribs

East Ocean does have a “traditional” Chinese menu.  It lists 24 items, some of which you’ll never find at Panda Express or at most Duke City Chinese restaurants .  Examples are fish stomach soup, ginger onion crab and salted fish fried rice.  If nothing on this traditional Chinese menu strikes your fancy, the large menu lists other categories: appetizers, soup, noodles, egg foo young, fried rice, chicken and duck, beef, pork, vegetables, seafood, sizzling platters, combination dinner, house/happy dinners, lunchon menu.

You’ve undoubtedly been sitting in a Chinese restaurant when a server rushes past you carrying a “sizzling” dish?   Enticing aromas emanate from the hot food and sauce as they hiss and spit, creating a smoke trail that draws the rapt attention of all guests.   The secret to sizzling foods is that you cook the foods separately on a heated skillet on a gas flame than add the ingredients and sauces at the last minute.  It’s the reason the server is hurrying – to get it to the table before the sizzling stops.  East Ocean offers eight sizzling dishes, everything from sizzling chicken to sizzling garlic with seafood.

Pork Lo Mein

31 March 2024: Rather than one of the appetizers, my Kim and I ordered sizzling orange sauce spare ribs.Though we’ve had orange chicken and orange pork a plenty, sizzling orange sauce spare ribs is something neither or us had ever experienced.  The orange sauce is very much like the orange sauce with which we’re familiar, but the spare ribs have a lot more umami than pork or chicken.  In essence, the spare ribs had a meatiness that counterbalanced the sweetness of the orange sauce.  Most of the spare ribs are boneless, but where we did find bones it was easy to eat around them.  This was an excellent starter.

31 March 2024: My Kim isn’t quite as adventurous as her gastronomic husband, but she does draw the limit at sweet and sour dishes.  Among her favorites are pork lo mein sans vegetables.  She loves the tangle of Chinese egg noodles, a mountain of thin noodles with barbecue pork. A good smoke ring is as prominent in Chinese barbecue as it is in American barbecue.  It signifies the meats are prepared “low and slow”–slowly smoked in low heat to render those meats moist and tender (in the interest of full disclosure, the smoke ring in Chinese barbecue is often the result of food coloring).  Chinese barbecue (char siu) is actually very popular throughout Asia.  Instead of on a smoker, Chinese barbecue utilizes a technique in which strips of marinated meat on forked skewers are roasted in an oven or open fire.

Beef Hot Pot

31 March 2024: Not one to ever shy away from something I’ve never before ordered, I eschewed the multi-page menu to zero in on a new item on the “traditional” menu.  Beef hot pot sounds innocuous enough, but my description might just tell you why others shy away from “traditional” Chinese items.  The beef hot pot lists only two items: Napa cabbage and scallions and the “beef” includes as much fat as beef.  If you have an aversion to the texture or flavor of beef fat, you’re not likely to enjoy this dish.  A wonderful five spice powder-based sauce gives the beef a fabulous flavor and enticing aroma, but the fat did me in after half a plateful.

25 May 2024:  Luncheon specials are available daily (Tuesday through Saturday) until 2PM.  Each luncheon special includes an entree, egg drop soup, steamed rice and an egg roll for an inflation-busting price.  Most of the luncheon specials are of the sweet-and-sour variety I tend to eschew.  They remind me of my nascent days enjoying Chinese food.  Back then Chinese buffets (for the inconceivable price of about five dollars) started the decline of my svelte figure.  I was like Templeton the Rat on Charlotte’s web enjoying the smorgasbord of carnival eats.

Egg Drop Soup

25 May 2024:  My Kim’s luncheon special started with egg drop soup (also known as egg flower soup), is a Chinese soup of wispy beaten eggs in chicken broth.   It’s seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper, thickened with a cornstarch slurry, and (at some restaurants) garnished with chopped green onions.  East Ocean serves its egg drop soup with a small plate of crispy Chinese noodles. Fried in oil to a crispy golden brown, those crispy noodles reconstitute in the soup.  They’re a delightful addition to a soup that’s very nostalgic and comforting.

25 May 2024:   The entree in my Kim’s luncheon special was orange chicken, succulent chicken pieces with a crispy coating in a delicious sticky, tangy, orange sauce.  Very reminiscent of buffet quality orange chicken, the orange chicken is (some might say) too heavily breaded.  Bite into each orange-golden nugget and there will be a little resistance before you reach the moist, delicious chicken.  The sauce is more sweet than it is citrusy though there are faint notes of the citrus fruit for which this dish is named.

Orange Chicken With One Egg Roll

25 May 2024: There are some words which not even Babelfish can translate.  Among them is the Chinese  term“wor.”  Some  sources simplify take it upon themselves to declare “wor” means “everything” in Chinese, but there really is no definitive source to confirm that.  The staff at Cantonese-based restaurants might tell you “wor” means “pot” or “wok.”  The truth is no one really knows.  What connosieurs of Chinese cuisine do know is that the term “wor” generally means you’re about to enjoy something delicious–something like wor wonton soup.

The Woks of Life describes wor wonton soup as “a wonton soup with lots of vegetables, sliced chicken, roast pork, and shrimp added, to make a full meal in one bowl.”  Study the photo below and you’ll quickly discern glistening and translucent onions, sliced zucchini, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, seaweed and that’s just the vegetables.  Proteins include shrimp, char siu (Chinese barbecue) and  roast pork.  The broth is savory, rich and absolutely delicious, a slurp-worthy elixir served hot.  The dumplings are stuffed with wonderfully seasoned pork.  You can discern five-spice powder among the seasonings.  Even in summer, wor wonton soup makes for a great meal in one swimming pool-sized bowl.

Wor Wonton Soup

If you’re an aficionado of the fruits of the sea, you’ll be happy to see all the thirty seafood items on the menu.  Squid, shrimp, crab, lobster and scallops are prepared in a number of ways, all ostensibly delicious.  East Ocean may be three point five on Yelp’s book, but it’s a perfect ten for those of us who  love “traditional” Chinese food even if we don’t fully understand that concept.

East Ocean Chinese & Seafood
3601 Carlisle Blvd., N.E.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 889-9315
Website | Facebook Page
LATEST VISIT:  25 May 2024
1st VISIT: 31 March 2024
# OF VISITS: 2
RATING: 21
COST: $$-$$$
BEST BET: Sizzling Orange Sauce Spare Ribs, Pork Lo Mein, Beef Hot Pot, Wor Wonton Soup, Orange Chicken,
REVIEW #1284

7 thoughts on “East Ocean Chinese & Seafood – Albuquerque, New Mexico

  1. Okay Gil, you’ve confused me. Every place where I’m familiar with the orange chicken, it is a decidedly spicy dish. Is this region specific, or did you order it prepared differently? I wouldn’t be able to distinguish Cantonese from Hunan unless I was told, so I’m always keen to educate myself. Thanks!

    1. Orange chicken is an American-Chinese dish (not invented in China, but by Chinese immigrants in the US). There doesn’t seem to be much consistency from one restaurant to another in its heat level. Hunan and especially Szechuan restaurants do impregnate the sauce with peppers. Naturally my favorite version is Szechuan in which incendiary Szechuan peppers are plentiful. Cantonese restaurants offer perhaps the least piquant orange chicken of all Chinese restaurants. Look for the chili pepper icon next to a menu item to determine if that dish might have some degree of piquancy. Even then, heat level is so subjective that perhaps only in true Szechuan restaurants will you find a truly piquant orange chicken.

  2. I have been going to East Ocean since I was a kid and let me tell you, that wor noodle soup has a special place in my family’s heart and when we moved from ABQ we thought about it all the time. When we finally went back 10 years later the server remembered us. Great place that I never hear about from locals now that I live in ABQ again.

  3. when a place has the words “ocean” and “seafood” both in the name, it is required by state law that you have to get some seafood there.

    I wont turn you over to the cops, Gil, but try to be a law-abiding citizen next time 🙂

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