After nearly four decades, this Chinatown classic remains a tank-to-table seafood stalwart

There were no reservations available at any of the hot-list Philly restaurants my out-of-town friends had hoped to visit. Mawn? Stand in line. Her Place? Good luck. Especially on Penn’s graduation weekend, which brings a citywide reservation crush like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day combined.

The solution for my party of eight was clear: Chinatown. One of Philly’s historic restaurant neighborhoods, it remains endangered by proposed development, evaporating federal funds for essential infrastructure, and taken for granted by too many in power (see Mayor Cherelle Parker’s arena debacle).

Those of us who still eat there often know that it continues to be a thrilling, group-friendly place to dine; its gracious lazy Susans have never failed to bolster my family’s big events. And for this group of visitors, a collection of food writers, a king crab feast at Tai Lake was a lure they could not refuse.

A three-course banquet cooked from one of these majestic beasts, plucked alive from Alaska’s icy waters with its spindly legs still thrashing and weighing in at eight pounds or more, is one of the most spectacular splurges you can find. I’ve always wanted to experience this royal crustacean, but considering the expense — $75 a pound in the current off-season from spring through summer — I’d never managed to assemble the right group of people willing to share the cost.

Tai Lake, still a vital Chinatown destination after 37 years, is one of the few local kitchens I’d trust with such precious cargo. This Hong Kong-style specialist in the delicate art of Cantonese seafood, which emphasizes freshness with minimalist sauces and quick cooking methods, has been a survivor in a neighborhood where tastes have shifted over the past two decades. The neighborhood’s growing embrace of bolder Szechuan flavors and Shanghainese dumpling specialties mirrors trends in China.

At Tai Lake, much of what you’re about to eat is still swimming in the gurgling tanks in the vestibule where you enter off 10th Street and head into the bustling 80-seat dining room jammed with linen-draped tables. There’s a gang of lively shrimp skittering about in one corner, above a quiet bin of plump Brazilian frogs, while eels uncoil and glide through their own watery compartment near the largemouth bass. At the far end was our crab, a jumbo 10-pounder bobbing solo and looking none-too-pleased, having been special-ordered for us a few days in advance.

Its spiky shell and gangly arms are even more impressive out of the water on a tray, carried by a server who paused on his way to the kitchen for us to admire this magnificent creature. Less than 20 minutes later, it began to return from the kitchen in parts.

A massive platter of split crab legs cradled glistening plumes of white meat that were infinitely more succulent than the pre-frozen all-u-can-eat buffet variety. I slurped them down with drawn butter like a crustacean luge. Then came the crab’s body, chopped into deep-fried chunks whose meaty crevices were sealed inside the crackle of a salt-and-pepper crust. Finally, a heap of fried rice jeweled with more crab, egg and scallion landed, brimming over the hollow of the crab’s deep shell, repurposed as a bowl.

The generous spread was enough for our table of eight — along with some add-ons to round out the meal, including some cold translucent ribbons of crunchy jellyfish salad shined with sesame oil, and crispy seafood spring rolls stuffed with creamy shrimp and scallops. Snappy snow pea leaf greens came lavished with a rich, lightly briny gravy tinged with rehydrated dried scallops. A final dish of steamy sea bass topped with shredded scallions and ginger was more than we needed at this late stage, but so luxuriously flaky I couldn’t resist.

“That dinner was worth the trip all by itself,” wrote my New York friend, who’s eaten at his share of Cantonese seafood halls in Flushing and Manhattan.

Apparently, as I later learned, we’d missed the ultimate insider highlight: “Damn, they didn’t give you the steamed egg custard made with the crab brains? It’s the best part!” said Jesse Ito, the Royal Izakaya chef, who grew up going to Tai Lake with his family.

There’s a phenomenon with certain restaurants rooted as deeply in the community as Tai Lake, in which those who’ve come to love it over a lifetime during regular dinners far more modest than a king crab bash will inevitably inform me of several essential dishes from the nearly 200-item menu I somehow missed over four extensive visits.

“Conch with squid...and frogs with yellow chives,” said chef Leo Forneas, culinary director for the Schulson Collective. “The lobster with ginger scallion and those little fried silver fish!” said Dave Weslowski of Feeding Time TV, whose own Instagram posts of the crab feast no doubt wedged its way deep into my subconscious desires. My colleague Kiki Aranita praised Tai Lake’s ginger-laced congee with lobster as “the most indulgent” rice porridge in Philadelphia.

Music producer Will Yip, whose father once ran Ocean City nearby, prizes Tai Lake’s mayonnaise-glazed shrimp and fish maw soup (whose gauzy little bladders float like crunchy cloud puffs through the crab- and egg-drop broth), as well as “the best bang-for-the-buck lobster in all the land.” (Whole lobster at Tai Lake currently sells for $36.) Even more important to Yip is Tai Lake’s continued role as a community anchor: “Tai Lake was always one of the (less-Americanized) places you can depend on to have the closest-to-home feeling.”

Much of that is due to owner Sam Leung, who worked in Hong Kong restaurants before opening Tai Lake in 1988, alongside staff members such as manager Alvin Chen, who’s worked the dining room for more than 20 years. Its late-night hours (dialed back from 1 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. post-pandemic) are still a draw.

And Leung’s involvement in multiple neighborhood associations has kept the 100-seat second-floor dining room humming on the banquet scene — even as demographic shifts have seen the Chinese community move to Northeast Philly and the suburbs beyond. (The neighborhood’s Vietnamese community has provided a loyal clientele since the beginning, explaining the menu’s Vietnamese translations.)

Hong Kong-trained chef Jie “Jack” Zheng is also a long-timer, having staffed the woks and industrial steamer here for 25 years and assuring consistency, doctoring the distinctive house soy sauce with broth and hot green peppers. He’s also fine-tuned the X.O. sauce with a zesty balance of bacon, dried shrimp, and chiles that sends off umami sparks with the sliced rounds of fresh-killed eel. The meaty rings of eel harbor so much flavor and distinctively unctuous flesh, my colleague Max Marin described it perfectly as eating “aquatic pork belly.”

Tai Lake’s kitchen is hardly flawless. Several dishes common in more Americanized restaurants — wonton soup, spare ribs, egg rolls, pan-fried dumplings and kung pao chicken — are perfunctory at best, and sometimes worse. Tai Lake doesn’t even make one of its most popular dishes, the Peking duck, although it is sourced from one of my favorites, Siu Kee across the street.

“Those things aren’t our specialty,” Leung conceded. “We’re a seafood restaurant.”

There were a couple seafood disappointments, too, including a sizzling platter of battered flounder fillets in spicy sauce that was gooey. Tai Lake is also known for offering crispy soft-shell crabs year round, freezing enough in-season to last the year. Ours were likely already the frozen variety by June; they were skimpy, chewy, and bland, especially compared to the still-fresh and fried beauties I’d eaten just the week prior at Mustard Greens in Queen Village.

But these misses were the exceptions. The Dungeness crabs ($28 a pound) are a far more reasonable alternative to a king crab splurge. And as a rule, fish here is always best served on the bone, including a paddle-sized flounder that’s fried to a well-seasoned crisp, its top fillets flaking with a delicate crunch while the bottom crust soaks in all the sesame-soy sauce on the bottom of the plate.

The supremely sweet live coral shrimp from California, an absolute must-order, are best done simply — plainly steamed or served raw over ice. Littleneck clams sourced from Seattle (whose larger meat-to-shell ration Leung prefers to East Coast clams) are also reliably outstanding in a variety of sauces. I prefer them with pork and chiles, the open shells scooping a perfect helping of clam and spicy meat crumbles in every bite.

The gargantuan one-pound steamed West Coast oysters here come in shells as big as shoes, with oysters inside so plump they reminded me of a chicken breast, with the softness of a sweetbread and the marine aftertaste of surf. I haven’t acquired a taste for those jumbo mollusks yet, even if I’d eat anything dunked in Tai Lake’s ginger-soy sauce. Still, the simple fact Tai Lake still serves such a Cantonese delicacy alongside others such as sea cucumber, century eggs, and abalone, is valuable in its own right.

One of my favorite dishes here should have more mass appeal, a whole lobster stir-fried with glutinous fried rice studded with sweet Chinese sausage, turns out to be a relatively new addition. It was requested by diners, proving Tai Lake’s longevity has hinged at least in part on its willingness to evolve, however gently.

“We listen to our customers,” Leung said. “We want them to be happy.”

Or maybe it’s the other way around? Whether you crave a blow-out crab banquet or just a late-night nibble of clams, peel-and-eat shrimp, and snappy snow pea leaves, we should all be grateful this Chinatown classic’s tanks are still bubbling, and that there’s almost always an open table waiting for you.

134 N 10th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107, 215-922-0698; tailakeseafoodrest.com

Open daily, 1 p.m.-11:30 p.m.

Not wheelchair accessible. There is a small step at the entrance.

Gluten-free options are limited.

Menu highlights: Steamed shrimp; whole fish in ginger-scallion sauce; clams with spicy pork; eel in X.O. sauce; lobster in sticky rice; crispy whole flounder; king crab (special order only); snow pea leaves; fish maw-crab soup.

Drinks: There is a liquor license, but the beverage program is basic, and there is no fee for BYOB.