Any Chinese places in the Seattle area with good (pick two or more) food/drinks/decir?

I live in Seattle, but can easily travel to, say, Tacoma, etc. Are there any Chinese-American joints in the area that have at least two of the following?
-- Good food. Need not be traditional, I know I'm after 1950s-1970s Chinese-American.
-- Funky 50s, 60s or 70s decor. Tiki nuances are great, but I love everything from 50s-60s modern crossed with Chinese, to 70s curved-wood-and-indirect-lighting lounge style, to dark-and-mysterious Chinese decor.
-- Some at-least-acceptably-good tiki, tropical or just unusual 'specialty-of-the-house' cocktails. In mugs or not.

So far, all I've found is Louie's Cuisine of China in Ballard, which has awesome food and seriously cool 70s decor with loads of nifty little details (amazing woodwork, funky light fixtures [note the tiny lights IN the planters on the stairwell] and the coolest ceiling fan ever, in the skylight of the back banquet room, plus a cozy gas fire in the lounge). The tender told me they stopped carrying mugs in the 80s; they DO have Mai Tais etc. but I haven't tried them yet.

There's a big place on California Avenue in West Seattle, across from Mashiko Sushi and Husky Deli, which looks great from the outside. Gotta go try that. Another with a big neon sign in Auburn that looks interesting, and a few in the International District (Chinatown) that look neat.

I thought I remembered seeing a place with a nifty-looking central fireplace in it, in downtown Auburn, so I went hunting. Couldn't find it, but I saw a place that looked 50s-ish called the Dragon Pearl. I went inside. The place was shabby, had cool light fixtures (but all of them broken), half the tables were set and half were full of junk. NO ONE in there. Smelled like 40 years of cigarette smoke. The bar was slightly interesting, but my friend and I (both in our late 20s) were put off by one of the three old-bald-guy customers, who looked up and loudly said "Who the FK are THESE aholes?!". The tender was marginally nicer, but only marginally. Their restroom could be smelled from ten feet away. We left. By the looks (and smell) of the place, I'm guessing the food is either incredibly good, or incredibly bad.

Anyone in Seattle area know what's out there to be found? I've asked before about Seattle lounge decor, but the excellent thread about California/LA area Chinese places inspired me.

"Anyone in Seattle area know what's out there to be found?"

Yes.

But really, you ought to park your car and actually check out the joints you mentioned. The New Luck Toy (the West Seattle place) is now a quasi-hip Italian joint. A kinda interesting joint in Burien just became a sports bar.

Going...Going...Gone!

So get going while you can.

Thing is, I don't/can't drive. If I want to get somewhere, usually my only options are the friend with whom I visited Dragon Pearl (who works a lot) and another friend who drives a massive SUV and demands exorbitant gas money (because of his huge vehicle, which he professes to adore).

I'm trying to get out, but I really have no idea where to start. Seattle has hundreds of Cinese restaurants, and most I've been to are quite ordinary, even in Chinatown - drop ceilings, beige carpet, a few pictures on the walls, maybe a fish tank. I'm asking for suggestions because just trolling the streets, hunting, is something I'm actually unable to do.

I'm not asking people to point me to such places out of laziness.

Why dont people looking for good Chinese restaurants start with checking out reviews on Yelp! ?

I mean that is why that site was created and it may give you some insight into some of the places around you. If you dont drive at least you can do legwork online and get an idea of where there is to check out.

Asking on these forums is a good start but I would try there. Or start googling your area. There is a lot of info to be found online if you just start digging. I never ask others for their opinions before I have tried to find out stuff for myself...and sites such as Yelp! or Google are the first places I start to look.

Might be a good idea to check them out.

[ Edited by: leleliz 2009-03-15 17:17 ]

Also true, however decor or cool drinks matter more to me than good Chinese food. And most Yelp reviewers don't care the way tiki/modern-philes care. If the decor is clean, it's great. Sometimes if it's clean but old/unusual, it gets thought of as "dated" and is considered dirty or shabby (and to me, only the Dragon Pearl is truly dirty and shabby - it STUNK). If they've got beer, wine, basic liquor and can make a martini or a manhattan, most people will review the bar as 'good'. It's really only us tiki-philes who'll say that a bar is worth going to for our kind of drinks (and with Chinese joints, I don't just mean polynesian, but also unusual 'specialty of the house' mixtures that are vintage and could be lumped in).

So while, yes, I'll do some Yahooing and Yelping for ideas - I'm not throwing that out - I thought it'd be nice to ask here about such places. And the response has seemed to be rather negative. But as I clarified that getting rides is difficult, I want to find some suggestions before I go driving, since I'm not in a central location; I'm in Renton, so normally just wandering Seattle is difficult. The trip that found the dragon Pearl was unusdual, in that my friend and I had time to trawl downtown Burien hunting for old lounges and restaurants. I hope, soon, to do the same in: West Seattle (California Ave.); International District/Chinatown; anyone know if it's worth even looking in Tacoma? I know of no vintage funk out there save Fife's Poodle Dog.

"I live in Seattle, but can easily travel to, say, Tacoma, etc."

I read that to mean you could easily get around.

As for finding places here's some replies to a similar query you made last year.

As Dogbytes mentioned last year the best old style Chinese restaurant in the Seattle area is the Red Lotus in Auburn. The interior is great and the food is good.

Red Lotus Restaurant
714 Auburn Way N
Auburn, WA 98002
Phone: (253) 833-6233

Second best is the China Doll in Everett.

Though it's one of the few vintage places left in Seattle I personally wouldn't recommend Louie's to anyone.

Yelp can be useful but I see bad reviews of places I really like written by people who obviously don't "get it". (Along the lines of complaining a dive bar is "divey".) And I see raves for places everyone else raves about which seem to be written by sheep.

(I see I was writing this as Torch posted his reply above.)

I had forgotten that that thread went beyond 'lounges with fireplaces'. And "I can easily travel to Tacoma" was my fault, and yes, quite misleading. When I CAN get rides, I can get there - the friend who went with me to Dragon Pearl loves to roam around and hunt. It's just that he's seldom available. When he is, I could definately go there.

And once again, I'm shown that like or dislike of a location can be very subjective (also note the Tonga Room post) There is no concrete guarantee that if one person thinks it's great, it IS great. I LOVE Louie's of China, but I see you don't, and I know other people who don't.

I'm going to check out China Doll. I've seen Red Lotus and wondered about it. Thanks for the advice!

Went to Red Lotus yesterday. WOW. Amazing 70s Chinese decor. Four themed dining rooms: Great Wall was one (great indirect lighting), there were two others, one of which had a working waterfall. Jammed with incredible Chinese/70s decorative panels, ceilings, wall decorations, and wonderful cozy booths. Food was wonderful.

The bartender was friendly, too. She told me they used to use mugs, and had about seven styles, including a "surfer girl" (like TV's Fogcutter?), a "tiki head", and a Buddha (like the Benihana Buddha, I'm guessing). The company that supplied them went under about ten years ago, and they had none left. They had a list of countless shots, drinks and cocktails on the wall - I asked if the Mai Tai was any good. "That's our big drink", she said. What's in theirs? Rum, pineapple, OJ, bit of grenadine, dark Meyer's float. Blargh. She offhandedly mentioned a Zombie, so I grabbed one at eight bucks. It wasn't huge and I didn't ask for the recipe, but it came in a tall glass with lime and a cherry, had three kinds of rum (so says the waitress), was potent and had me buzzed. Kind of the color of a proper Mai Tai, but darker at the top. Good stuff. Anyway, this place is definately great, and it's thanks to you at Tiki Central who got me to go in there.

Gonna hit a thrift store today - the bar waitress told me she saw a bunch of tiki mugs in there recently.

Red Lotus' drinks are hit and miss in quality but no worse than every Tiki bar I've been in (with the exception of Portland's Thatch*).

The mugs they sold were the fairly common Chinese restaurant mugs. They may have had a "tiki head" and a "surfer girl" at one time but the menu I have (the owner gave us one when they updated the menus a couple years back) doesn't mention such mugs. (The menu is at the Tiki bar where I keep all my stuff. Otherwise I'd give the drink descriptions.)

I've came across Red Lotus mugs at Auburn and Kent junk shops but other than having Red Lotus stamps on them the mugs aren't anything unusual.

*I edited this cuz someone thought this meant I didn't like Thatch. Thatch being the exception meant: The drinks at Thatch were good. The drinks at the other places were mediocre to lousy.

(below the line)

woofmutt

[ Edited by: woofmutt 2009-04-22 22:24 ]

I asked the tender which drinks came in which mugs. She told me you could order any drink in any mug, but any/all mug drinks cost $10 and you kept the mug. Another server said there WERE drinks that were in the mugs but they were "really bad". One "used Navy Grog, which we don't carry any more". Used Navy Grog? Thought that was a drink name, not a bottled product. Maybe she meant (Pusser's) Navy Rum, or perhaps the cocktail itself was a Navy Grog, or... No idea.

Woofmutt, if you get the menu handy to a computer, I'd love to hear or see the listed drinks.

[ Edited by: TorchGuy 2009-04-23 12:20 ]

My friend Sparky and I hit the Red Lotus the other day and ordered an item off their appetizer menu we'd never noticed before...

The waitress said they hadn't had the platters for long and thought the owner might have acquired them used from a restaurant sale. The bowls holding the food appeared to be made of Monkey Pod wood and the little brazier looked well used.

A nice addition to one of the greater Seattle area's coolest Chinese restaurants.