Fine, authentic ethnic restaurants continue to spread across the East Valley, and this is one of the best. Wading through over 210 items on the menu, you may wonder how the kitchen stocks enough ingredients to prepare them all, but the customers swear that every dish is authentic. Tao Garden concentrates on the food, not the plain decor, which is typical of most strip mall Chinese restaurants. If you want to stay with safe, mainstream dishes, Tao Garden offers a fine selection at lunch and dinner. Fat, doughy pot stickers have a skillet-fried crunch. Fiery kung pao chicken and black beef chow mein are also among dozens of familiar items.

But most of the families are eating seafood, fresh from the display tanks -- filled with live crabs, lobster and fish -- in the dining room. Other live tanks -- stocked with rock cod, flatfish, catfish, scallops and clams -- are hidden from view in the kitchen. That's where Tao Garden really shines, in Cantonese and Mandarin seafood items. Some are on the menu, but the most adventurous are listed on Chinese-only marker boards. They're cheerfully translated by friendly waiters. The kitchen takes advantage of the freshness and is creatively simple in its preparation of items like scallops, served still in the shell, over cellophane noodles and drizzled with a fantastic black bean sauce. One of the most elegantly simple dishes is shrimp, lightly steamed, heads on, with a touch of garlic. Most appetizers run $5 to $6, and entrees are in the $8-$10 range.

Categories: Restaurants

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