IMAGINE A FISH that looks like a flower. Picture a large piece of fish, flesh cut in a cross-hatched pattern, so that, once cooked, it opens up like a chrysanthemum. Now imagine that the glossy edges of the fish have crispy, crackly, caramelized edges, in sharp contrast to its sweet, flaky center.

It's not unusual in Chinese cooking for the food, especially fish or meat, to be cut up into special shapes so they bloom. "Chrysanthemum" fish may sound like you're going to be eating a mouthful of something preferred by goats, but it's actually one of the many delicacies on the menu at Hong Kong in Doraville.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
Swimming about in a large holding tank are lobster, stone fish, tilapia, eel, shrimp (top) and crab.
Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
The conch and chives dish, as well the 'chrysanthemum' fish entree (above), are two of the many delicacies on the menu, which includes frog's legs.
Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)
The salt and pepper deep friend crab.
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HONG KONG 5150 Buford Highway, Doraville Overall rating: Food: Hard-core Chinese and Hong-Kong style Chinese dishes, with lots of noodles, rice and a lunch buffet for those who are shy about new adventures in eating. Service: Prompt and friendly, although you may have to resort to pointing to things on the menu to get what you want. Setting: The restaurant is of the no-frills sort, tucked into an overcrowded strip mall. Address, telephone: 5150 Buford Highway, Doraville, 770-454-0588 Hours: Every day but Friday open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Fridays the restaurant closes at midnight. Price range: Most noodle dishes are under $10. There are few items, such as the frog's legs and some seafood dishes that are between $10 and $15. Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express Best dishes: Sauteed frog's legs with leeks, chrysanthemum-style fish, crab soup with noodles, beef chow fun (dry noodles with garlic) Full bar or wine/beer: Beer and wine only Reservations: Accepted Vegetarian selections: Mixed vegetable chow mein, sauteed bamboo shoots, vegetables with bean sauce Children: Welcome Parking: Large lot Wheelchair access: No Smoking: No Noise level: Low Patio: No Takeout: Yes KEY TO RATINGS Outstanding. Sets the standard for fine dining in the region. Excellent. One of the best in the Atlanta area. Very good. Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining. Good. A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss. Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated Fair or Poor.

Hong Kong touts itself as a seafood restaurant, and on the menu is a far-away looking photograph of the harbor there, with the city's tell-tale landscape of skyscrapers that come to the edge of the water. It gives the menu a mysterious, unreachable feel.

Inside its pages the offerings seem mysterious, too, but far from unreachable — frog's legs with leeks, chrysanthemum-style fish, sauteed conch and braised jellyfish are but an order away. And the holding tanks of stone fish, lobsters and geoduck clams just past the restaurant's foyer are ominous harbingers of what might show up on your plate for lunch.

I'm glad I didn't have to see the frogs, though.

Hong Kong offers frog six ways to Sunday, but if you want just the meatier portion of legs, you're not going to get them, even if the menu says you are. Here, they serve the whole frog — chopped up — which means you'll be picking through a lot of cartilage in your stir fry flavored with bean sprouts. The dish is a mellow blend of garlic and leek flavor, with shreds of fresh ginger (and yes, frog does taste pretty much like chicken), but after a while the whole affair will exhaust you.

Not so with deep-fried crab, its heady, vanilla-scented flesh nestled beautifully beneath the mantle of its large shell, ready for eating. Fresh sprigs of cilantro offer a perky contrast to the bits of scallion and tawny-flavored caramelized garlic tossed into the dish. Crab is even better left in the shell, baptized in a rich, wheaty, seafood broth with ultra-thin wheat noodles and lots of cooked cucumbers.

Cracking open a leg and digging for meat, though, I'm noticing that the crowd is more the noodle type. Every table but ours is ordering lots of noodle dishes. I begin to factor in that whole "when in Rome" mantra and decide to follow suit.

I am not disappointed: A dry, wide noodle dish (dry basically means the dish will be more like a stir fry, rather than wet, which will be like a soup) is drenched in garlic flavor and meaty strips of sauteed beef. It's the kind of completely unintimidating dish that can be found at the food court, but is so much better tasting at a hard-core restaurant like Hong Kong, without all the gloss-inducing food additives. Peppered beef is even better, with a strong showing of black pepper that made me sneeze three times before finishing it.

It's dishes such as these that round out Hong Kong's menu, giving diners who are a little threatened by duck intestines with yellow vegetables something to resort to, while allowing the more adventurous of us to hack through that frog spine with glee.

And for dessert? Deep-fried Chinese noodles, which are like long, unsugared doughnuts, dipped in more of my crab soup's broth. You weren't expecting brownies, were you?