New Gold Medal Restaurant: Late-night eats in Oakland Chinatown
If you don’t know a restaurant very well, some of the things you might look out for are the number of people dining there on a given day and, more specifically, the number of locals who frequent the establishment. Located on 8th Street in Oakland Chinatown, the New Gold Medal Restaurant is one of those places with a steady stream of locals stopping in for a bite.
As you sit down for lunch or dinner here, even at odd hours, you’ll notice the tables around you fill up regularly, and if you happened to be an eavesdropper, you’d find that some diners are from out of town, while others live nearby, with their pink, plastic shopping bags filled with Chinatown groceries in tow. The clientele is diverse and the atmosphere is presentable but casual. The woman at the cash register, for example, may be doing double duty breaking up raw noodles during her shift.
You’ll find the service adequate and the menu choices extensive. Appetizers alone fill up an entire page, with exotic choices like jellyfish, beef tripe with black bean sauce, and pig blood with vegetables to add to your more typical egg rolls, potstickers, and deep fried prawns. The list of chow mein and chow fun possibilities goes on and on, and you’ll have a lot of won ton soups to decide between as well.
Something you don’t see on every menu is a porridge selection. There’s beef porridge, abalone and chicken porridge, fish ball porridge, pork liver porridge, prawn porridge, and much more. Rice plates are also extensive, average at just $5.00 each. In addition, you’ll find lobster, crab, and other seafood offerings, clay pot choices, sizzling dishes, duck and squab entrees, an egg foo yung list, and a mu shu list. With so many specialty items on the menu, including varieties that are harder to find at other establishments, it’s no wonder so many locals like to come here. Overall the food is fresh and the flavors tasty, though the won ton soup broth is more on the fishy side.
HelloOakland Tip: New Gold Medal Restaurant also has another secret: it stays open until 3 a.m. So hungry, late-night partiers looking to re-charge their batteries can opt for something far more nourishing than fast food.
Posted by Renee Rutledge
