Dueling Dishes: Green Beans. Capital Seafood vs. Jamillah Garden

The title for this new feature in Stick a Fork In It should be self explanatory. Each week, we'll try a dish, either deliberately or randomly, which may or may not be a signature item of the place from where we choose to try them, and then compare them against each other, concluding with what we think is the better dish.

This week's duelers: Dry fried green beans from Capital Seafood in Irvine versus those from Jamillah Garden in Tustin

Why? Well because the dish is a personal favorite of mine -- one that I can actually make myself with some degree of success. Even still, I order it in Chinese restaurants whenever it's offered. The secret in making it right is in the first and crucial step: a quick blanch in oil. This blisters the bean's outer skin and makes it easier to digest. The operative word here is "quick", because if the beans stay in the oil too long, you lose the fresh, snappy, crunchiness that is its soul. After that, it's stir fried in a wok. Seasonings and other ingredients are tossed in, which can vary from the plain (salt and garlic), to the elaborate (some sort of ground meat).

Edwin Goei

At Irvine's Capital Seafood's Express counter, the pods ($8.70) are available as a take-out item -- ready-to-be-packed as part of a combo, or a la carte. They were properly crunchy, with that requisite snap. You can hear the crunch when you bite, like it was just picked off the plant. The dish's flavoring, which is slightly under the radar until you encounter a burst of peppercorn, is secondary to texture.

Edwin Goei

At Jamillah Garden in Tustin, order the beans as take-out ($10.82) like I did, and a container of rice is included at no extra cost. But because they're overcooked, the texture -- its crunch and snap -- disappeared long ago. What's left was flaccid, droopy, and soggy. The flavor, however, made up the difference. Its sauce -- tangy, acidic and vinegary -- served its true purpose dribbled over the rice.

So the winner this week? Capital Seafood.

Check back next week for another episode of Dueling Dishes!