Two down, two to go

[muckefuck]

Originally, the plan had been to catch the Shinjo Ito exhibit Sunday, finishing up with dinner at Oysy. Then two things changed: First, we found out that location was much further south than we'd previously thought (not so much South Loop as East Chinatown) and, second, that the weather tomorrow was going to be fairly nice compared to today's spitting drizzle. monshu assumed I'd rather be walking along the Lake than inside the Chicago Illuminating Center, and this is how we found ourselves on the HoDaR this afternoon calling Nuphy about meeting at Lao Shanghai.

Nuphy soon called me back to confirm whether I really meant Moon Palace, since his normally crack websearching skills failed him and he couldn't find a restaurant named "Lao Shanghai". I assured him that it did, in fact, exist and was located in Chinatown Square, probably not far from the mothership. Recently, Lao Szechwan owner Tony Hu opened two new restaurants: Lao Shanghai and Lao Beijing and, naturally, we've been interested in trying them both--particularly the latter, as may be our only hope of finding some of the dishes we fell in love with in Beijing.

Basically, the online reviews were on target: Food is good, not great, and the service is finding its feet. Of course we had the xiaolongbao (a.k.a. "soup buns")--they're the reason I thought of asking Nuphy along in the first place. He found them better than Moon Palace's, and while I loved the flavour, I agreed with the reviewer who found that they didn't pack the burst of broth she was looking for. monshu's Shanghainese coworker had steered us toward the fish with pine nuts, and we thanked him for it: firm flesh, and a mild but pleasant flavour with a touch of fruit. (I thought at first it was Schisandra chinensis, but Google does not agree. What's that other wrinkled dried red berry the Chinese use to flavour tea and such?)

Rounding out the meal were a reasonably spicy lamb dish (which isn't going to make anyone forget a real Yunnanese/Szechwan/Hunanese preparation anytime soon); asparagus with black bean sauce and spinach with garlic (not able to sell the guys on hollow-stem vegetable with preserved bean curd, I'm afraid!), both of which were unobjectionable, and, for dessert, "glutinous balls". From the Chinese, I recognised that these were tāngyuán, or yuánxiāo (glutinous rice flour balls) served in sweet soup. In Shanghai fashion, the soup was made wish rice lees, and the dish was agreeably mild in much the same manner as the fish. (Too mild for Nuphy or monshu, who had one taste each and then suggested moving on to a nearby bakery for something else.)

All in all, nice for a change of pace, but I picked up a menu for Lao Beijing to peruse and it's only made me more interested in trying there next. As far as I can tell, Chef Hu's formula consists of (a) taking his usual dishes from each cuisine and pulling them to the front; (b) supplementing them with a few local specialties not offered elsewhere; and (c) rounding out the menu with standards like tea-smoked duck, General Tso's chicken, and the like. For Lao Beijing, he has only one(!) chuānr dish, but it is mutton smothered (one hopes) in cumin sauce. They also have láohǔcài, a dish I never thought I'd see in the States, but I'm a little chary since recipes vary so much and I'm not sure they'll be able to replicate the alchemy of the hole-in-the-wall near our hotel by which a heap of cilantro was transformed into a dish I couldn't get enough of.

The window of Lao Beijing also displayed a special dim sum (or, rather, cháshì) menu, but I'm afraid this is the one meal for which the Cantonese have not lost their grip on me. We honestly didn't care much for the dim sum in northern China, which seem to consist largely of different varieties of dry, unfilled breads. Perhaps when it comes time for dessert after our upcoming visit, we'll do what we did today and adjourn to Saint's Alp, a Taiwanese teahouse across Archer. I enjoyed getting to introduce Nuphy to it and watched in horror as his example convinced monshu to abandon his choice of a berry "sorbie" to get another of the double chocolate one Nuphy opted for, while I demurely sipped my mixed berry with nata nectar.

So with Double Li (Sichuanese from a chef who thought Lao Szechwan was too inauthentic--and makes a strong case!) and Happy Chef (dim sum made entirely to order for a crowd heavy with Chinese restauranteurs) out of the way, that leaves only one Chinatown establishment left on our short list: Mulan. I know, it's been around for years, but inevitably we're either in Chinatown for some activity, like shopping or a festival, or we've got friends in tow who are looking for memorable cheap Chinese eats. Either way, an upscale Asian fusion place is not really on our radar, so it looks like the only solution is a special trip someday.