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I was sitting in Tully’s on Main St. as usual late on Friday afternoons and went to look something up on Yelp. (I’m not a huge Yelp fan, since (1) it’s clear that many of the reviews are contributed by people without a good understanding of the cuisine they’re criticizing, and (2) some of the reviews are patently bogus, contributed by sock puppets of business owners, but it’s not completely useless.) I don’t remember what I was looking for or if I found it, but what I did learn was that there’s a Cantonese/Hong Kong-style seafood restaurant in Pleasanton that I didn’t know about.

It’s Tri Valley Seafood, at 5588 Springdale Ave., adjacent to Stoneridge Mall and in the same shopping center as JC Penney Home Store and Office Max. So I wandered over and got some takeout — wor won ton soup and an oyster omelette. (They seem to specialize in live fish and shellfish, but I was on my own and didn’t want anything that elaborate.) The place looked like a pretty typical restaurant catering to an almost exclusively Chinese-speaking clientele, with a lot of untranslated specials on the walls and other Chinese signage.

The take-out stuff was just fine — nothing special, but both the ambience and the food were quite different from the more Americanized cuisine at places like Gold Chopsticks or First Hunan Chef Wong. Their specialty is dim sum, so I’ll be back for that on a weekend.