Tink Holl Seafood

Tink Holl Seafood is the new Chinese restaurant in [Asia]town that now currently occupies what used to be space in the Tink Holl store that used to store novelty «traditional Chinese» wares that included sculptures, furniture, and the like. It pits itself against big boys of Wonton Gourmet, Siam Café, and Li Wah within a 5-​minute driving distance…
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really hold up all that well compared to the Cleveland Asian Standards. While they do have an Asian menu and they try for authentic dishes and taste, the restaurant falls flat. The tofu in the «fancy tofu» dish we ordered seemed to be old and stale, while the scallop dish we ordered had barely less batter to the scallops than scallop while being drowned in sauce which made the batter soggy and pointless (and who batters seafood in authentic Chinese dishes, anyway? — OK, maybe shrimp, but you get the point). However the vegetables that came with the dishes were cooked and were quite edible. The food isn’t horrible (I give that honor to the Cincinnati Chinese restaurants with broad brush strokes). It’s just overall acceptable.
Upsides: Service is very friendly, and it’s a good spot to grab a bite before or after shopping at the grocery store next door. I believe it’s open until 2AM (unless I’m wrong), so it’s good for late-​night eats. Prices are reasonable. However, in terms of value, it falls way short, like compared to the likes of Wonton Gourmet around and down the street. I would like to give this place another try some time in the future to see if they improve, but it probably won’t be any time soon, since I can just go to another restaurant in the area that has better food.
I would give Tink Holl 2.5÷5 stars, if I were able to, but I rounded up, since there are cities that do not have restaurants that have quality at least comparable as Tink Holl.

Mehdible.
While portion sizes were ample, the chief operating principle of this venue appears to be «drown it in oil.» You can imagine how unfortunate that might be with the «fancy tofu» dish, which was more of a rubbery oil-​soaked sponge dish. I’m not sure how one manages to do that to tofu or why anyone would want to, but apparently it’s possible.
I’d also ordered the fried scallops. Again, ample offerings, but it was a breaded fried offering… drowned in oil. As you can imagine, that gave it a very soggy texture, which seemed to defeat the purpose of having breaded and fried it in the first place.
There’s much better Chinese food to be had in Cleveland. Several of those venues have just as reasonably-​priced, but better-​tasting seafood on the menu.

Eh.
Went here with Unilocalers Lin and Joyce. Why not consult my asian Unilocalers to try out this new Chinese place? But. it was merely meh.
We got:
— The beef pan fried noodle: — given this was suppose to be Cantonese style, this was not Cantonese style. It wasn’t crispy enough and it was kind of too drenched in sauce and oil… I wasn’t a fan.
— The garlic eggplant: — it was just ok. Kind of wish there were more flavor to it though.
— The seafood tofu casserole: — Yeah, I agree with my fellow Unilocalers, that was probably the best dish we got, as it came out in a stone pot with lots of different foods in the pot.
Overall? Ehh. I mean, I didn’t expect to be blown away by this place but. meh. I wasn’t a fan… it was just ok? The environment is kinda uncomfortable as well…

My fellow Unilocalers friend Joyce P. and Rachael N. and I decided to try Tink Holl since we were all excited about trying a new restaurant together.
I do like a feel of the restaurant. It has a homely Asian feel to it and there were a lot of space in the restaurant. The other good thing i like about this place is how many dish selections they have and the price of the food was very well priced.
The 3 of us ordered a seafood tofu casserole, garlic eggplant, and beef pan fried noodle.
Garlic eggplant: I’m not a huge eggplant fan but I heard garlic eggplants are really delicious so I gave it a shot. I didn’t taste a lot of the garlic flavors to it. The texture of eggplant wasn’t bad but the flavors just wasn’t there for me.
Seafood Tofu Casserole: This was one of the better dishes we got. The flavors were there and there was a great amount of portion of it. But as much as I like it, they just don’t make it the way Wonton Gourmet does (still my favorite yet).
Beef pan fried noodle: the noodles were delicious! The veggies were delicious, but I thought the beef had a bit of a weird texture to it and i didn’t know it was the amount of corn starch or what.
Overall pros: good price, big portions, lots of varieties
Overall cons: scary neighborhood, flavors don’t stand out enough
Either way, I think Tink Holl is a decent authentic Chinese restaurant. It does beat those crappy Chinese restaurants with americanized names but Tink Holl cannot compare to some of the best chinese restaurants here (wonton gourmet, pacific east, hunan east, etc…).

Came here with Unilocalers Rachael and Lin. We had a great evening with plenty of time to talk and catch up.
Tink Holl Seafood is located next to the grocery (one of the places I used to shop.) I think it’s relatively new and still a work in progress. When I got there at Wed night around dinner time, there were only a few tables of people (3) there.
We ordered some classics, like garlic eggplant, seafood tofu casserole (in the clay pot), and the beef pan-​fried noodles. The eggplant was a little different in flavor than what I’m used to, but it was still tender and tasty. The beef pan-​fried noodles was lacking some flavor. I think the seafood tofu clay pot was the best of them all. I can’t turn away tofu ever…
The waiter seemed a little unssure/​new, and that caused the bill paying process to go a little slower. I don’t usually expect spectacular service from Chinese restaurants, so I’ll let this one slide and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Went here with a friend after hearing that it opened up. Located next to Tink Holl Marketplace, I thought this was a great idea to have a place to eat after you shop. The place isn’t really up to par, such as the space itself. There are areas where they can utilize a little better such as the stage area. It’s pretty much open with empty space of nothing. The tables are pretty much scattered and it was just dull. Not a wow for me. There were no music playing and just a weird feeling. It’s like one of those places where the Asian mobs come together and rewind.
However, the food on the other hand isn’t that bad. We had their beef pan fried noodles, shrimp vegetables dish, and crab and fish maw soup. The soup tasted great and so did the noodles. The shrimp dish was kind of skimpy meaning they weren’t really giving the right amount of shrimp. It’s acceptable as far as the taste goes but would’ve been more better if they didn’t cheated me with the shrimp.
To me I like to be in a good environment and this place didn’t WOW me at all so if they fix up the place, make it more inviting then I might change my rating.

This place is very good! 1^st thing I want to Unilocal is 2 lobsters $ 26. Need I say more.
The lobsters are super fresh I got to choose them. Lets call them Jack and Diane. Jack and Diane are no more because they are now in my stomach. They were served in a ginger garlic sauce. Whole cloves of garlic, green onion, and ginger slices. Yuuuuummmmmmmmmy. Asians sure know how do lobster.
Next was the lamb stew it was pretty dam good. I went with a friend who is Chinese so he did the ordering. The lamb was cooked perfectly. No gaminess, tender, melt in your mouth, brown sauce goodness. Nom nom nom.
But wait there is more, We got some type of tofu dish in a brown sauce with some pea pods, onion, and a few other vegetables. It was really good. The tofu looked like scallops and it just melted in your mouth when you take a bite! Again Asians know how to prepare tofu. I do not believe in tofu unless it is in some sort of ginger garlic preparation and crap load of chili oil. Gringos have no clue how to prepare this stuff!
Pea Pod tops were delish as well; steamed with a light garlic sauce. One of my favorite Asian vegetables.
The service was efficient for a brand new restaurant. One thin. that was funny is that I had some chili paste and the waitress said she needed it for another table. It kind of cracked me up!
One of the servers spoke English well and he was pretty knowledgeable.. The manager from a well know town in Pennsylvania was very friendly and helpful. I know I will definitely be back for more of my crustacean friends.