Restaurant: Fortune Kitchen
City: Fremont, CA

I had Shanghainese for dinner with my parents and relatives last night. My sister is back home for spring break, so we had to get the honey walnut shrimp! We rarely order this dish unless we have a few young adults/kids in our party, because shrimp has high cholesterol. The honey glazed walnuts are so good; walnuts are supposedly good for your brain!

Many Chinese restaurants in the US carry the honey walnut shrimp dish, as it is very popular with Americans. Several restaurants will carry multiple regional dishes. While Fortune Kitchen’s dishes are mostly Shanghainese, they carry a few Dongbei (Northeast China) and Cantonese/HK style foods.

I’ve seen the shrimps cooked in two ways; deep fried or pan fried. The honey walnut shrimps are usually on a bed of deep fried (white) rice noodle. The honey walnut shrimps we ordered here were on a bed of lettuce- much healthier than the white rice noodles! Some restaurants will have it on a bed of broccoli.

Honey walnut shrimps is an HK invention that made it’s way to the U.S. when a lot of chefs came over in the early-mid 90s, probably marginally related to the ’97 HK change over to China. Like most of these trends coming that way, landed on the West Coast first and then NYC. One sign it happened this way is it showed up first at banquets, i.e., high to low trickle down. (Chow)

In Cantonese, it is translated to be “Hop Toh Ha” which means walnut shrimp. (FineChinaGirl)