When a friend of mine first posed the idea of grabbing a bite at Emerald Chinese Seafood Restaurant, I wondered if he’d assumed I was swimming in money. It is, after all, home to the area’s most expensive soup. If you have $450 to spare and aren’t overly concerned about humane fishing practices, you can munch on a shark fin bobbing in a bowl of rich chicken stock and share it with five or six other people.

What I hadn’t known was that the restaurant offers a late-night menu at reduced prices after 9:00 p.m. every night. “Small, delicious nibbles,” exclaimed my friend, who is also a fan of Emerald’s daytime dim sum service. “And lots of big, round tables that are perfect for large groups,” he added.

So hours after most San Diegans had already eaten their dinners one evening, eight of us entered into a world brimming with duck-filled hot pots, non-decorative fish tanks overstocked with lobsters and black cod, and signage and menus written in pictograms. Had the English translations been missing from the small-plate items, we could have easily ended up with jiggly matter such as pig intestine, beef stomach and preserved eggs, none of which would’ve made for a restful night’s sleep, we felt.

Very little English is spoken in this room of 100 tables, which means there’s a lot of finger pointing when placing your order. And the actual late-night menu card is something you have to request.

Yet right down to the Gekkeikan sake served in jars, or the milky rice porridge meted out rapidly into small bowls at your table, the experience is delightfully hardcore for those of us accustomed to eating kung pao chicken at China Camp.

Immediately after seizing a few sips of porridge – one boasting deliciously oversized scallops and shrimp, the other spiked with chicken breast medallions – our table started piling up with a torrent of meat, veggie and noodle items, many of them deep fried. Interspersed were shallow saucers filled with mellow hot mustard and little glass jeanie bottles of soy sauce.

Mixed reviews were given of the heavily battered Five-Spice Eggplant, which I thought tasted like donut holes until two of my companions suggested that I snag one of the top pieces in the cluster that caught the light sprinkling of minced garlic it receives. An almost identical preparation is given to the Five-Spice Pork, which was much better because of the thin rims of crisped, chewable fat clinging to the meat’s edges.

Most in our group also gravitated toward the same cuts of pork doused in an aromatic yet watery and unconventional barbecue sauce. There’s enough acidity in the sauce to tenderize the meat effectively. However, in the case of spareribs slathered in an excellent black bean sauce, no amount of marinating could have tackled the rough gristle hitched to that meat.

Chicken Pan Fried Noodles captured a nice gassy flavor from the grill. The chicken was generously contained and the noodles were amply coated in oil, which most of us didn’t mind, although one of my companions chalked it up to the reason her stomach somersaulted the next morning.

A pleasant surprise was the Beef and Scallions – the skirt slices proving to be the most supple and meaty that I’ve encountered at Asian restaurants.

Among the other reasonably sized dishes for cheap grabs, which range from $4.95 to $7.95, are Singapore-style Fried Noodles, Shrimp with Scrambled Egg, Roasted Duck on Rice, Jelly Fish & Pork Slice, plus various “hot pots” occupied by stewed beef, diced chicken or sea cucumber.

From the regular menu, available also in these wee hours, we spied lamb stew served in a much larger hot pot that formed the centerpiece for a nearby table. But seafood rules the roost by a long shot with Cantonese-style preparations of squid, conch, abalone, oysters and jumbo lobsters. There’s also an assortment of other soups, indigenous to various culinary sects throughout Hong Kong, such as Shredded Duck with Orange Peel, Fish Filet with Egg, Winter Melon and Seafood Bean Curd. They’re all priced way below the aforementioned, wallet-draining shark fin soup, which the menu indicates must be ordered in advance.

Dessert brought a cool rush of mango in the form of “pudding” that fell between flan and panna cotta in consistency. We unanimously opted for it, overlooking the equally intriguing choice of almond Jell-O. And when it came time to split the bill, we left sated and short of only $13 each – not too shabby for chowing down fiercely ethnic food served past San Diego’s normal dinner hours.