LTHForum.com

I've been really grooving on new Chinatown lately and was so impressed with my maiden voyage to G4F, that it was time to return.
I ordered pretty similarly to the first time, heavily on seafood, the "braised" small bird and rounding things our with requisite baby bok choy in garlic.

Littleneck Clams in XO sauce

We tried to order duck tongue in XO but they were out. Our rolling- with- the- punches server recommended the clams which had come in frsh that day. And oh were they fresh, a great weekend in bivalve candy for me after a successful round of mussels at Lure the night before. XO was complex, fishy, slightly boozy, with a piquant heat. Its fortified viscosity coated the clams nicely. Just about as good as it gets.

Fried Silver Fish

No not the scurrying bug in your bathroom, tiny whole fried fish discussed in the thread above. A great fry job, though that was about it, the fish so small that they hardly came through the nicely salty batter. My buddy and I were foolish not to BYOB and had done our best to procure a sixer on a Sunday in Chinatown after arriving empty handed. Why oh why is it so hard to find a liquor store down there? Anyway, what I am getting at is this dish would make a great drinking snack, but was kind of a one trick pony compared to the greatness of the other plates.

"Braised" Pigeon

What once was braised quail on this menu is now replaced with pigeon. And this was indeed the first order of pigeon, this pigeon eating fool has ordered off a Chicago menu not of his own design. Look at that little cutie pie, my boy ate his f'in brains out! It was good, crispy, salty skin, moist, minerally meat. We must re-evaluate this despised neighbor to us all, its damned tasty!

Oh and the veg. was exquisite too, perhaps the bittiest of baby bok choy I've had.
GO 4 FOOD! GO 4 REALLY REALLY GOOD FOOD!

_________________
blog E-Dogz

Treated some friends and family to supper Saturday @ Go-4-Food.

Early dinner reservation, solid performance. Group was seated in the basement area of the restaurant which was nice. BYOB is also a great feature.

Kind of a wide mix of people so not too adventurous

Apps:
- chicken wings, crispy, and flavorfull
- beef kabob, decent terryaki like beef skewer
- chicken satay, decent version as well

Mains:
- Cantonese fried rice, really liked the chinese sausage and dried shrimp in this
- 100 spice beef, I like beef dishes like this and this one was pretty good for what it was.
- Tangerine ribs. I liked this dish, thin pork steaks, deep fried
- manilla clams in black bean sauce, not as good as previous visits, but good
- soft shell crabs, salt and pepper preperation, nice flavor from the s&p, otherwise not that good.
- braised quail, really nice, crispy laquered skin, juicy meat.
- shell on shrimp with salted egg yolk, solid version of this dish
- japanese egg tofu in salted egg yolk, somehow missed this dish
- k-fu noodles, really average and forgettable dish, nice noodles, no flavor
- stir fried pea tip with garlic, love these green dishes with garlic
- stir fried baby bok choy with garlic, solid
- on choy with jalapeno and bean curd sauce, subtle heat, nice flavor
- scallop and mushroom cabbage roll, interesting item, I liked it.

Looking back I would have 86'd the chicken satay, soft shell crab, & k-fu noodles, and gotten a whole lobster preperation and another pork dish instead.

Good service, good food,& good fun also pretty cheap @ About $260 with tip

_________________
I got a real good mind.

Before Cotton was King: http://www.grubseeker.blogspot.com

Had a very nice meal here back in early June. 4 of us ordered 6 dishes, with some mixed but mostly positive results . . .


Hot & Sour Seafood Soup
A great, very bold version. This could be the best version I've ever had. The white pepper here was very pronounced and the seafood was tender and fresh-tasting.



Millionaire Style Fried Rice
Another great dish, with all sorts of fresh-tasting seafood nuggets. A very luxurious dish, which, I assume, would appeal to millionaires.



Manila Clams in Hot Black Bean Sauce
Very respectable rendition. The clams were barely (properly) cooked, which made for an especially enjoyable eating experience.



Shrimp in Shell with Salt & Pepper
This was my least favorite dish of the meal. This version really paled in comparison to some others available in Chinatown. The shrimp were fairly mushy and not pleasurable to eat.



Lobster in Ginger and Onion Sauce
We asked the owner what he recommended as an additional seafood dish and he enthusiastically suggested this one, which he happened to be eating for dinner. It was very tasty and again, cooked perfectly. Looking above at Jim's post, this seems like a dish he definitely would have liked.



Potstickers (pork)
Respectable but nothing special. Given how many other interesting dishes were available on the menu, I wish we'd skipped these.

This was a very tasty late-night feast. We arrived just before the kitchen was closing (and called first to make sure it was ok to come in). There are a lot of viable choices in Chinatown and Go4Food is definitely a solid one. I'd love to go back, especially with a larger group and really dig into their menu.

=R=

_________________
I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

I finally made it to Go 4 Food on Sunday. We were greeted very warmly by Victor (?), who asked us where we had heard about Go 4 Food. I told him LTH, and he smiled and said, "Ah! You must know Louisa..."

To start, I somehow completely missed from this thread the scale of the oysters with the fried garlic and vermicelli. Somehow I thought they were bite-sized and came on a platter with a few oysters and was therefore confused when asked how many oysters I wanted. The fact that they are boat-sized oysters was a wonderful surprise. It was like eating a really soothing, garlicky, delicious bowl of soup.

Our ordering was somewhat limited by the fact that two separate parties of 20 arrived at the restaurant just before we did, and we suspect, ate most of the specials. However, we were able to have the Japanese egg tofu, which I really enjoyed. For me, it was a much more effective use of yolk than, say, the soupy duck yolk-tofu dish over at Lao You Ju. I liked the subtly of the flavors, but after a few minutes, I was craving some heat. Added chili oil worked wonderfully. Leftovers, I dipped in sriracha-ed soy sauce.

We also tried the oysters with mushroom casserole: breaded oysters over a lot of mainly (I think) enoki mushrooms. This dish provided nice contrast to the other things we ate and was quite delicious.



This place is super! They also serve Ovaltine, which I wanted, but which my friend vetoed as disgusting to drink with oysters.

That looks terrific! I must order on my next visit.


Call it dessert!

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

A couple recent trips to Go 4 Food has solidified it as my go to for Cantonese-style seafood in the city. The menu has a wide range of fresh seafood options and they are enthusiastic about their daily specials that feature the catch of the day. The ownership is proud of the quality of their seafood and they've been very helpful in helping me organize a large meal for a bachelor party next month (they have a room downstairs perfect for parties of 20-30). To top it all off, they're BYOB. It's the kind of place you have to know about because they're located way off at the end of Chinatown, but the food is worth passing by the other options for.

Some highlights from a recent meal:


Japanese style tofu

The tofu is creamy like custard and the light breading is crispy without being greasy.


Stir-fried on choy

The fresh on choy is stir fried in a light garlic gravy.


French-style beef tenderloin.

They told us this was the chef's specialty and it lived up to its billing. Not sure what makes it french-style, but the meat is tender with crispy edges and lots of black pepper. This might be the beef crack analog to the chicken crack at LSC.


Shrimp with crispy noodles

The shrimp are fluffy and plump providing a wonderful contrast to the crunchy noodles that soften up when mixed with the garlicky sauce.


Salt and pepper shrimp

I have to say I'm surprised to hear the mixed reviews on these shrimp. The experienced Cantonese-food eaters at the table agreed that these were amongst the best we've ever had, perhaps the shrimp were particularly fresh at this meal. The seasoning is heavier on the pepper than most versions, but I thought it perked it up a little to underscore the juicy shrimp.


Dungeness crab in ginger-scallion sauce

The sweet and spicy sauce was in balance with the sweet and meaty crab. The wait staff were vigilant about removing discarded shells too, making this dish not just delicious but also fun to eat.


Lobster in preserved egg yolk

This dish uses the same concept behind dipping lobster in butter. The rich egg-yolk batter coats the buttery hunks of lobster to excellent effect. This is the rib-sticking, satisfying type of Cantonese food that really stays with you.

We liked this most-recent meal so much we're planning to take my Taiwanese in-laws there when they visit in a couple weeks. That's the highest praise we can pay a Cantonese restaurant.

Had a great meal here the other night as well.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I had forgotten my camera for this meal...

Almost everything was amazing, and everything came out extremely hot and fresh, and very well cooked. I'll name a few memorable dishes...

Go 4 food is now my new favorite spot for Cantonese Seafood, most of all for the salt and pepper shrimp. They were very well spiced and fried to a nice outer crisp with a lot of nice clean sea flavor.

The tong choi (or.. on choi, ton choi, ...choy...) in fermented tofu sauce is my go-to green when eating Chinese. It's not usually something to write home about but in this case It must have been very fresh, it was very crisp and snapped easily between the teeth very easily. I'm often disappointed by sub-par tong choi being chewy or lifeless, but this instance was far from that case.

Most of the fried seafood items as well as some of their noodle dishes seemed to be prepared with a healthy portion of butter, which tasted to me very clean and rich, my guess is that they use clarified butter. If this was the case, this was new to me, perhaps its' common in Cantonese cooking and i was just unaware?

Great meal! I'm pretty sure I'll be making a return trip here very soon.

Based on what we had earlier tonight, I wouldn't return to go 4 Food for another try. Eggplant with garlic sauce - many better renditions out there. Salt and pepper pork chops - I guess I'm partial to LTH. The steamed oyster with black beans was very overcooked and both Silver Seafood and Lee Wing Wah do better versions in my opinion. The steamed scallop with roe was also extremely overcooked and I have to ask why there was about a half teaspoon of oxodized and almost raw garlic on the scallop shell? (That's right - chopped garlic held in oil so long that the garlic turned yellowish orange.)

Service was good. Maybe it was bad ordering on my part.

A large cantaloupe/watermelon ice from Mario's helped me forget a very mediocre meal. But I'm hungry now. Looks like I'll have to fix something.

_________________
"Playing the trumpet with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the most fun that you can have with your clothes on." Adolph "Bud" Herseth

I too was underwhelmed by my visit here last week -- my first. They tried to compensate for the inadequate air conditioning by giving everyone a free can of ice-cold Pepsi. I appreciated the gesture, but it was still unpleasant to be sweating throughout the dinner, and not from spice.
I expected the "braised" quail to be something else; maybe that's naive in a Cantonese/Hong Kong restaurant. The frying-in-oil part would have been more tolerable if there hadn't been such a heavy hand with the brine. A short amount of time in brine goes a long way with a tiny bird.
Pea shoots were okay. My friend's clams with black beans had some major grit in a few of the clams, marring what would have been a good dish. The only thing I liked were those very large oysters, so good that I scraped off the toppings to enjoy them as is. A bit overcooked but so fresh that I was very pleased.
The free soup and dessert were a nice touch, but a hot dessert soup with taro was not what I needed in a too-warm restaurant.
If I do return, I will go with a seafood entree next time.

I am curious: to the recent diners at Go4Food, did you see many Chinese diners when you were there?

I ask this because Go4Food has been slipping in quality for the last few months according to my Chinese friends. None of my friends go there anymore, especially with Grand Palace not too far away.

When I was there, the restaurant was half full, and about half the customers were Asian.
This was on a very warm Thursday night.

Crazy,

Very warm Friday evening with two other tables occupied, both by Asians. Complimentary hot soup and hot dessert soups, but hey, even Next has a/c issues.

Thank you for your post because Grand Palace was the place I actually wanted to try, especially the giant clam.

I know that some prominent LTHers like Gourmet Food next door, but I have to admit that when I saw that Go 4 Food was next door to it, I had a premonition of a lousy meal. I know that makes no sense, but it proved to be true.

_________________
"Playing the trumpet with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the most fun that you can have with your clothes on." Adolph "Bud" Herseth

I actually liked Gourmet Food, about 10 years ago! It is amazing what a change in ownership can do! DM me if you'd like to go to Grand Palace soon. I am always up for that place!

I was at Go 4 Food again last night, and had another spectacular meal. I was with my Taiwanese in-laws who called it the best Chinese food they've had in the US. I spoke with the owner in advance of the meal to put together a menu suitable to the Taiwanese palate. This included a ginger-steamed red snapper, pea tips with crab, and a steamed papaya stuffed with lotus seeds and red dates for dessert. I'm sorry to hear that they seem to have some consistency issues, and I urge people to ask for recommendations on what seafood items are fresh when they're there since that's their specialty. On this particular Saturday night the clientele was 100% Asian and the restaurant was full (unlike the last time I went on a Saturday night and we were the only party in the restaurant).

I brought friends from out of town here on Monday as part of a Chinatown food crawl, and we had a small but excellent (third) lunch. We ordered a few of the large oysters. I tried the green onion-ginger preparation for the first time, which I liked fine, though I prefer the version with fried garlic and noodles. The latter just seems richer, more of a soup-like experience. A very pleasant surprise was the S&P cuttlefish, which my friend ordered--delicately fried and pillowy. We intended also to try the seafood soup served in papaya but hadn't realized it takes extra time to prepare and should be ordered in advance. Running late for the Soul Train party downtown, we had to skip the soup. We also weren't served anything sweet at the end--is that just a dinner thing?

I'm a huge G4F fan. In fact, each visit seems to improve on the last. Pristine seafood- really some of the best in town, bright, fresh as can be sauces and garnishes, and perhaps the best service in Chinatown to boot. It is my first choice for Cantonese in Chinatown without a doubt nowadays.

Manila Clams in XO are a requisite. An incredibly generous pile of mollusks in an intense, complex sauce- funky fishy, chile hot, with a nice wine fortified hum.

These guys, Steamed Oysters with Scallion and Ginger were the biggest honking oysters I've ever seen. Four bites worth of succulent, sweet flesh. Like happy_stomach, I might prefer the garlic prep with the glass noodles, but no matter, since the oyster was the star of this show.


New dishes on this visit included this very unique dish that was unlike anything I've had before. Scallop and Mushroom Cabbage Roll

Not exactly pretty in their corn starch laden sauce, these cabbage rolls were quite delectable- stuffed with fresh enoki and shitake mushrooms with the occasional pop of dried scallop funk.

Cantonese Crispy Chicken was the same dish as LTH's Crispy Skin Chicken, a dish I have loved.

I have to say though, G4F's rendition was a few notches superior to recent orders at the namesake- skin perfectly crisp and ideally cooked (all the way through as opposed to LTH!) maintaining perfectly juicy flesh. My new favorite fried chicken in the city.

Why this place is always more than half empty stumps me. Perhaps its clandestine location off the strip maintains a lower profile. Get thee to Go 4 Food!

_________________
blog E-Dogz

Couldn't agree more Jefe. They're not just a great Chinese restaurant, it's probably my favorite seafood restaurant in the city.

That looks gorgeous (starchy sauces are actually correct in China, Japan, and a lot of east Asian countries)—thanks so much for posting these!

seeking crabs saturday and after being told a dungeness @ Moon Palace would run $45 deadheaded to Go-4-Food always solid on my visits.

dungeness crab in preserved egg yolk($27):

I dig this preperation for shrimp, & spiders of the sea



Giant clam app:

clean tastes and flavors



we went seafood heavy, in addition to the above we had the giant scallops, clams in XO, as well as a really good beef fried rice and some baby bok choy.

Not a cheap spot, no alcohol... $89 before tip for 2 adults and a crab muching 5 y.o.. That said we came away full, and still thinking about the food the next day with no buyers remorse.

_________________
I got a real good mind.

Before Cotton was King: http://www.grubseeker.blogspot.com

Like the name of the restaurant, a dished titled “Fried Silverfish” seems unlikely to attract more than a quizzical glance…



…but we loved these slivers (of white fish, not the bathtub insect) fried crisp and served with sliced jalapenos, which elevated this dish considerably.

Egg drop soup was pointless, but what the hell did we expect? I’m not sure I’ve ever had a good version of this dish, but it’s not beyond the realm of the possible.

We had the “French” beef tenderloin, which is marinated steak chunks, crispy and simple, served over lettuce, tomato and raw onion.



I found myself going back throughout the meal for more of this meat. I asked the nice hostess lady about the provenance of this entrée, and she said it was actually inspired by a Vietnamese dish developed during the Gallic occupation of Indo-China. Whatever, it was tasty.

The vegetable “sphere” was a construction that may very well have been traditional Chinese but I’d never had it before.



It was a mass of vegetables, with many types of mushroom (I counted five), under a sheet of what seemed to be a wonton skin. It was cool, it was odd, and it was enhanced with tableside chili sauce (which packed some heat and helped bump up some of Go 4 Food’s more moderately flavored dishes).

A surprise favorite was the tofu “stuffed with meat,” which turned out to be a kind of whipped tofu with herbs and chunks of Chinese sausage, fried and served with sweet-sour sauce.



I ate a lot of these plump brown blimps of tastiness. I really liked the texture, and it was fun running into little blasts of the sausage in the midst of the creamy tofu.

I enjoyed this place quite a lot. The prices are reasonable, it’s BYOB, and the menu offered some surprises…and that’s always a good thing.

_________________
“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

That is actually tofu/yuba skin ("foo/fu pei" in Cantonese)

Thanks, C. It didn't feel quite like wonton skin, but sure, it the elasticity of tofu.

_________________
“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

I would first like to thank Jefe for setting up the group dinner and ordering a good portion of the menu. And I thought Go 4 Food responded with terrific service and very good food. Perhaps more importantly for me, Go 4 Food was a terrific diversion from Hu-Ville and very different from much of the Chinese food I've had in Chicago of late.

The hot and sour soup was without question the best version I've ever tasted. After you've tasted hot and sour soup a thousand times, you hardly care when you taste it again. But this one was very different - in my opinion, just the right hit of white pepper and ratio to vinegar, not too thick and overall delicious. Just when you think you don't care to taste hot and sour soup again, along comes Go 4 Food's version.

But that wasn't the only highlight for me. While some thought the XO sauce on the clams was a little too thick, I thought the sauce was delicious, just the right amount of spice, and really not so thick to bother me. If it had too much cornstarch, we're talking less than a quarter of a teaspoon too much. And while I thought that the clams were mostly decent, it was the sauce that really excited me.

I was also a big fan of the salt and pepper Dungeness crab. No, it was certainly not the best Dungeness crab you'll find, but it was plenty good, plenty moist, and nicely seasoned. Likewise, the ginger/scallion lobster was well cooked and delicious. In my opinion, you're not coming here for the best quality seafood, but rather, the combination of perfectly acceptable seafood in tasty Chinese preparations, which is not always so easy to find. That being said, I was disappointed in the shrimp in salted egg yolk, mostly because the shrimp were mushy and just not right.

But I also really enjoyed the unique Millionaire Fried Rice, which featured some tasty seafood and some smoky oil, and which was really just all around comfort food. I also very much enjoyed the eggplant (don't recall getting any pork belly though and I didn't find it spicy, but hey, this is a Cantonese spot) and I thought the baby bok choy with garlic was excellent - I liked that it retained plenty of texture and was very well seasoned and with a subtle garlic flavor.

We also had the braised pigeon, which was both good and bad. While the flavor was terrific, the bird was really dry. On the other hand, I thought that the Cantonese Crispy Chicken (at least the pieces I had) was just right - it was quite moist, with a delicious crisp skin.

For dessert, Go 4 Food treated us to Japanese pumpkin creme brulee. I could complain that the custard was not as creamy as it should have been, but the flavor was terrific. In many ways, this dish mirrored my overall experience at Go 4 Food - delicious food, albeit with imperfections. Is that so bad? Not at all - I'm excited to return and try more of the menu.

I had a really wonderful meal here last Friday with several friends, half the table had never been here before and they were very impressed with the quality of the food and with how nice the gentlemen who run this place are. I watched them converse in Chinese with an table of senior citizens and help a party of LP ladies who never been there before navigate the menu.

We mostly ordered their greatest hits which never fail to please, but this time they had a spicy curry prep for the dungeness crab that was messy and delicious. There were a couple of new menu items they are introducing and they asked us to try them out. The first was a ginger beer they were making in house and it was amazing, I think the best I've ever had. I don't like much sugar and they confessed to having forgotten to add the sweetener which was the selling point for me. It had a deeply spicy ginger flavor that I loved. I wasn't alone as one fellow diner declared it better than Pleasent House's version. It's not on the menu yet, but hopefully encouraged by our enthusiasm it will be soon.


Go4Food's Ginger Beer

_________________
For what we choose is what we are. He should not miss this second opportunity to re-create himself with food. Jim Crace "The Devil's Larder"

I'll add that I had never had the scallops and though they are prepared with the same options as the oysters (vermicelli noodles & sesame vinaigrette or Black Bean sauce) it was the enormous roe sac that did it for me---wow, was that delicious! They also served up a pretty fine plate of bbq'd meats that I think are a new item. Great meal, lovely host and a lot of food for the price.

_________________
“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” Elizabeth Taylor