Inside a former Boston Market on the side of Baltimore National Pike is Ye’s Seafood House. No, Kanye West has not, thankfully, come to Ellicott City. Rather, this is a Chinese restaurant that was opened in January by an owner and chef from Fuzhou, the capital city of the Fujian province in South China.
A comfortable, light-filled space with charming fish wallpaper, cozy booths, three big round tables with the lazy Susans that make banqueting in Chinese restaurants so enjoyably communal, and a window into the expansive kitchen behind the counter, Ye’s is a decidedly welcome addition to the neighborhood shopping center.
The second restaurant from folks who also have a spot in New Jersey, Ye’s offers a menu that reads like a catalog, with both traditional dishes and American-Chinese dishes, as well as some from Thailand and Singapore, and even a few from India.
The focus, though, is on traditional Chinese food and, unsurprisingly, seafood, given the restaurant’s name and that the city of Fuzhou—on the Min River near the East China Sea—is well-known for its seafood. Fresh lobster, blue crabs, conch, razor clams, crawfish, sea bass, squid, oysters, prawns, and shrimp load the menu. They arrive fried; steamed; doused with ginger and scallions or salt and pepper; piled onto vermicelli and sauced with garlic; paired with black beans, tofu, or chiles; and accompanied by small bowls of perfectly cooked rice.
A note of warning: If you order the baby shrimp and choose not to eat them whole, as we did, you’ll be spending much of your dinner peeling the shells and heads off with your fingers. But you’re Marylanders, accustomed to picking crabs since birth, so if anything, this will make you feel even more at-home.
And the kitchen is adept at more than seafood, turning out excellent Peking duck—both a half-duck and as an appetizer folded into steamed bao—as well as pork belly, ginger chicken, spicy lamb, spareribs, shredded pork, and, yes, General Tso’s Chicken.
Don’t overlook the smaller dishes, particularly those stellar Peking duck bao, and an excellent rendition of pork dumplings, which were beautifully shaped and steamed and came presented on a bamboo leaf. A plate of sauteed water spinach was also splendid and exceedingly fresh—which was not surprising, as our servers were sorting wooden crates filled with the greenery at a side table when we came in. There’s also a terrific range of other dishes for both the more adventurous (jellyfish salad, sizzling frog) and those wanting a safer lunch (pad Thai, udon soup).
Ye’s does not have a liquor license, but they do have impressively large pots of tea, as well as sodas, plus coconut and soy milk. As with many Chinese restaurants, don’t expect dessert. But if you’re somehow still hungry, Tous Les Jours Bakery is conveniently next-door and has cases filled with Asian-French pastries. Nothing like a yuzu pie or an apple-jam Mont Blanc to top off a dinner of shumai, salt and pepper prawns, and bowls of fish maw soup.