Workers of the world unite! Restaurant review of Darda Seafood Restaurant

Restaurant: Darda Seafood Restaurant
Location: 296 Barber Court, Milpitas CA
Style of cuisine: Halal Chinese food
Price: Best deal at the 99 Ranch Market
Vegetarian options: A few tofu dishes

If your place of employ offers lunch, chances are the corners have been cut so many times that things are starting to look like a circle. When I worked at Netflix they served a wretched boxed lunch to all the employees (and the expectation was you would stay in the building and eat this crime against humanity instead of going out for lunch). At my current employ the food is a bit better but a working person needs a cheap, local eatery to survive the daily grind. Enter Darda Seafood Restaurant.

Darda occupies the space of two normal restaurants at the 99 Ranch Market mall. An enormous portrait of Mecca fills the back wall. Underneath a towering Kaaba sit dozens of banquet-style tables and chairs. The whole thing feels like a big Chinese wedding that got booked in a mosque.

Did I mention they serve Chinese food?

Here is the Egg Drop soup that they start you off with (whether you want it or not). Due to my overpowering fear of thick, gooey, starch-based soups I only had a spoonful of this item. It was about as gooey and starchy as I expected.



After this humble beginning I thought the rest of the dishes at Darda would be subpar. Below you can see my entrée, served on a cracked plate. Not hairline-fracture crack, mind you, but Greek-wedding-smash-the-plates-on-the-ground cracked. I thought if the restaurant doesn't even take care of its plates what horrors do they inflict on the food in the back? But I was very wrong.



This is the Kung Pao Chicken. It's cooked in a nice, light, not-thick-and-starchy sauce (which was a big surprise). The sauce at Darda (and I mean that in the singular, so far every spicy dish I've tried has the exact same sauce) is wonderful. It's like a cross between Chex-Mix (with all it's Worcestershire-y goodness) and Kung Pao. If you like either of those flavors you'll like Darda.

Pictured below is the Fish in Spicy Sauce. The Spicy sauce is essentially an encore of the Kung Pao sauce, with one interesting difference. Because the sauce is so light, it picks up the flavors of the vegetables in the dish. The bitter mushrooms that found their way into the dish give the sauce a personality of its own. As a result the sauce is a mix of sweet and bitter tastes when accompanying the fish.



While the food at Darda is rather basic, it's still good, plentiful and extremely affordable. A giant pile of chicken, fish or beef goes for $5.95. Normally when one is served this much protein one would expect to have leftovers at the end of the meal. But since the sauce is so light and delicious you will not be blamed (at least by me) for eating the entire family-sized portion. I ate the family portion, I ate the rice for two that is served and I even ate the leftovers sitting at the table across from me. It was that good (and the couple that left the food at the table seemed pretty clean).



Here are the Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty trinkets that you can buy at Darda. For $6 you can have either six little Hello Kitty stickers or a delicious plate of Chinese food. I think the vending machines are placed there to make the food seem like an even better deal than it already is. Maybe they should just remind me how much I spend on videogames for my kids.



Refrigerator rating: 7 yums (out of a possible 10)