Bee Appetit: Taste of Original brings authentic Cantonese food to Freeport Blvd.
As I mentioned in my Q&A session last week, I drive up and down Freeport Boulevard a lot, and I mean a lot. Aside from the weekly rotating puns on the Raley’s marquee (this week it’s MOM YOU ARE ONE IN A MELON), it’s pretty easy to keep your blinders on and not notice the countless businesses that pepper the nondescript strip malls that line the street.
After a while, though, I began to pay closer attention. In part this is because some of the businesses got a little glow up, changing hands or just freshening up their signage. I also made some mental notes when Sactown Magazine ran their most recent feature on where chefs eat, and many spots on the strip got a shoutout.
It’s been my intention for some time to do a bit of a Freeport food crawl, even before I started this role, so there’s no better time to start than now. I’ll be hitting them up in no particular order, driven only by the whims of my palate. I started with Taste of Original.
I noticed their signage popping up a year or so ago, remarkable mostly because the strip mall where it’s located is otherwise so unremarkable, and because it stands out as an anomalous Chinese restaurant flanked by three Japanese spots: Oto’s Marketplace, Akebono Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar and Mahoroba Bakery.
While the restaurant does offer some American favorites like sweet and sour pork or Mongolian beef, you’ll want to look a little deeper here. The menu features classic and authentic Cantonese and Hong Kong style dishes.
We tried the salted egg shrimp and pumpkin ($18.95), thin slivers of starchy-sweet kabocha squash and plump shrimp coated in a fluffy salted egg batter and fried crisp, an excellent study in contrasts of flavor and texture.
I can never resist ma po tofu ($14.95) on a menu, and this one didn’t disappoint. Silky cubes of tofu and tender ground pork in a glossy sauce with a subtle heat, more driven by black pepper than the lurid red chilis that swam alongside.
By contrast, the Fujian pan-fried rice noodles ($16.95) are quite intentionally bland, an excellent example of a dish that is driven by texture over flavor. The presentation is beautiful, the crisp-fried crust of the noodles cut open like a flower, with soft, almost soupy noodles and shrimp within. All it takes is a little XO sauce (or the one from the ma po tofu) to wake the dish up magnificently.
Finally, we ordered the BBQ pork and duck clay pot ($15.95). Bright red pork, green gai lan and burnished brown duck glistened on a bed of rice that took on a crisp foundation on the clay pot and absorbed the aromas of the meats.
The portions are massive. We easily had enough food for six people or more. Bring friends.
The restaurant is also impeccably clean, with pastel colors and playful illustrations and Chinese phrases on the walls. Thanks to the magic of Google Translate, I got a chuckle out of one: “The owner used to make a living based on his looks, until he almost starved to death, after which he started to take the business seriously!”
Taste of Original
Address: 4940 Freeport Blvd., South Land Park
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Phone: 916-942-9032
Website: tasteoforiginalgo.twupro.com
Vegetarian options: There appear to be a few items, but it’s worth asking if any of the dishes can be made vegetarian.
Noise level: Moderate
