R&G Lounge Review

R & G Lounge served us a solid, pretty good all around meal. (It has a web site which I had neglected to mention in my original announcement: http://www.rnglounge.com/ ) We were all reasonably happy with everything (though not stunned by anything) -- each of us ranked the dishes we ordered and none of the rankings agreed much.

Below are the details on the food. With the exception of the soup, all the items we ordered were recommended by various reviewers, chowhounders, etc. 

• Winter Melon soup. Basic good soup with little chunks of winter melon.
• R&G Special Beef. This dish was on the top half of everyone's list. Stir-fried beef with a great marinade. (But some pieces of meat weren't of great quality.)
• Salt and Pepper deep-fried crab. This is one dish R & G Lounge is famous for: take a live crab, batter it, and deep fry it. However, it was the only dish that was on the bottom half of everyone's list. While the batter was good, the whole thing was quite greasy. This was exacerbated by the work required to break open the shell and crab legs to get at the meat. Overall it was too much work and really messy. (Maybe people who order this dish don't bother opening it up for the crab meat (which was fine/good) and just eat the batter from the outside of the shell?) Due to the work required and the grease, we were hard pressed to finish it (although we did); the dish might be better shared among, say, eight people. But it's still messy, and chopsticks are hard to clean.
• Honey walnut prawns. Very large prawns with honey and good quality candied walnuts. I really liked this dish (but then I generally like honey walnut prawns) and thought this was exactly as this dish is supposed to be. However, overall it got reviews comparable to most of the other dishes. (Others do not enjoy honey walnut prawns as much I do.)
• Eggplant in clay pot. Soft eggplant in gooey sauce. Tasty, but really only when hot.

Total was $25 per person, including taxes and tip but not drinks. Note that we ordered generally the more expensive items on the menu.

After dinner we ended up at two bars in the Mission: Cama and Delirium.

Original Announcement

This Wednesday at 8:00pm we'll converge in the financial district at the R & G Lounge for some Cantonese food. It's dungeness crab season and this place, besides being a supposedly good restaurant overall, reputedly serves one of the best crab dishes in the city (salt & pepper crab).

As always, tell me if you are coming!

Comments from Other Attendees

This chow digest post has somewhat more recent information on what one should and shouldn't order at R&G Lounge: http://www.chow.com/food-news/7190/chinese-menu-pitfalls/

Feel free to add remarks here.