DC Chinese Food
Commenter Max asks an important Christmas question that’s also vitally important for the incoming Obama team to consider:
Merry Christmas, Matthew and enjoy the Chinese food! (Which brings up the question: does the Chinese food here suck as much as the Mexican food? Because I had the worst Chinese food I ever had here (cooked by actual Chinese people), and I’m hoping it was a one-off.)(Maybe the badness of the food induces badness in governing, so we need a stimulus project to replace all the restaurants in DC with good ones.)
The issue with Chinese food and DC isn’t that there’s no good stuff, it’s that there’s an extraordinary quantity of bad stuff. If you go to a shitty neighborhood where there’s very little in the way of retail options — like Columbia Heights in 2003 or U Street in 2004 or the Atlas District in 2006 or many other places to this day — the one thing you can count on being there is an incredibly awful Chinese restaurant. Back when I lived near the corner of 10th and V I was in a deeply dysfunctional relationship with Lucy Chinese on 10th and U. Every time we spent the night together I would regret it in the worst way the following morning and swear we were through, but soon enough I would come crawling back. It was disturbing.
What pulled me out of the self-destructive cycle was Mr. Chen’s Organic Chinese. I’ve never actually been to Mr Chen’s and I’m not totally sure where it is (Woodley Park, I think) but they’ve got a pretty wide delivery radius and if you’re in it you should check the place out — it’s very classic Chinese-American place but well made and with good ingredients. These days, though, I live just blocks from DC’s best Chinese restaurant Full Kee, which is just slightly off the main drag in Chinatown. The cuisine is a bit hard for me to characterize, but there’s a lot of good seafood here. I recommend both the crispy spicy head-on shrimp and the crispy spicy fried squid. I think the shrimp’s somewhat better, but the best part is the head so the more squeamish may want to go with the squid.
Full Kee doesn’t deliver, so if I want delivery I now turn to Great Wall Szechuan House near Logan Circle. Stick to the Szechuan items on the menu. Also notable in the city in Chinatown Express on 6th Street south of H. There’s a little box on the menu featuring cheap dumplings, cheap fried noodles, cheap noodle soup, and cheap pork buns. None of this stuff is great, but it’s all an excellent bargain and delightfully close to the movie theater and the Verizon Center.
But my favorite Chinese place in the area is, like most of Greater Washington’s very best Asian food, in a random strip mall in the suburbs. Thus, if you’ve got the means to go there check out Hong Kong Palace in Falls Church. Note, though, that despite the name this is a Szechuan place. Try the lamb with cumin.
For more on the general subject, check out the “Chinese” section in Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide.
59 Responses to “DC Chinese Food”
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December 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I lived in New York City for ten years, and had the same impression – even though NYC has lots of great Chinese food, it also has even more terrible Chinese food. If you walk from one good Chinese restaurant in NY to another, you’ll only be walking a few blocks, but in between them there will be five awful places. Most New Yorkers won’t agree with me but that’s because the awful places become invisible after you’ve gone by them a few times.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
HKP is pretty excellent (Tyler C inveigled me out there one day) – they do a wonderful fish and tofu stew. Also good for Marylanders is China Canteen in Rockville – again their cumin lamb is a standout (also try their pork with green peppers).
December 26th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The only cities I’ve been to with good Chinese food are New York, San Francisco, Hanoi, and Bangkok. Hanoi is the best. The Vietnamese hate Chinese people, but they love the food and prepare it well. If you’re ever in New Zealand, DO NOT get Chinese food. The Kiwis don’t seem to like food with flavor, so the Chinese restaurants there don’t use it. Strangely, the Indian restaurants there are pretty good. Order the lamb, it’s really good there. As for DC, it does have some great Ethiopian food. Best red lentils I’ve ever had was in DC.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I think this is generally the case with Chinese food anywhere you might be: only about 10-15% of the restaurants are good and another 10-15% won’t make you sick. I’ve never found this to be the case with other ethnic places. Indian is almost always good, Mexican at worst is bland but not disgusting, Italian at worst is passable etc etc etc.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Tom Faber’s right about New York. Really good and really bad. My rule in New York is to go to the place with the worst decor. If the decor is really bad, they must still be in business because the food is good. I also stay away from places that don’t serve Dim Sum for lunch.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I’ve thought several times about ordering the shrimp at Full Kee, but I’ve always wimped out because I don’t know how to eat it.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
if you like sichuanese food, great wall on 14th & p is quality, cheap, and legit — make sure to get stuff off the ‘ma la’ menu.
sichuan pavillion on 18th and K is also the real deal — though a bit pricier than great wall.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
oh yeah, hot, head-on-shrimp action!
i assume these are shrimp with fins and scales, right?
December 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
http://www.thevegetablegarden.com/
December 26th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Has anyone tried “China Inn,’ the place where longtime D.C. resident (but now deceased) Red Auerbach of Boston Celtic fame used to hold court? Surely a true NBA fan like Yglesias has checked this place out…
December 26th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Chicago’s Chinatown also has pretty good — and authentic — Chinese. Le Sze’ Chuan on Archer is great. Ed’s Potsticker House on 32nd and Halsted is a hidden gem. It’s in a neighborhood adjacent to Chinatown that’s seeing an influx of overflow Chinese-Americans as Chinatown becomes too full and pricey. Though if recent demographic patterns continue (it went from almost an exclusive Chinese clientele when we moved into the ‘hood in 2001, to a distinct minority white presence by the time we moved out of Chicago, to about 50-50 a year ago when we visited), it isn’t really “hidden” any longer.
December 26th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I went to Mark’s Duck House in Falls Church for the Peking Duck (couldn’t get into the Peking Inn), but I was surprised at how good the Chinese food was. There’s a couple places in Wheaton that are more authentic (duck’s blood, etc.) and seem okay.
As for the shrimp, the Dragon Roll at Sushi Sono in Columbia features a fried whole shrimp, the entire head sticking out one end and the tail out the other. I just eat them whole.
I’m thoroughly sick of the run-of-the-mill Chinese food that saturates the marketplace and am always eager to find something that’s a cut above. I guess I’ll have to try these out.
By the way, the Chinese food in Hong Kong/Kowloon just kicked my ass. Everything was just a little weird in terms of taste, smell & texture and I couldn’t really enjoy anything.
December 26th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“pretty good — and authentic — Chinese”
So what is authentic? I’ve never been to China, so I’m not sure. But I bet they couldn’t even say what’s authentic. Think about it, what if you were in Poland and looking for an ‘authentic’ American hamburger? What is that? I’ve been in 49 states, and hamburgers are different in every one of them. We have a great Thai restaurant here in Boulder (Khow Thai), and it’s Bangkok Thai, but without the bug dishes. No fried grasshoppers for you! But Bangkok Thai ain’t Chiang Mai Thai. I had Pad Thai in Chiang Mai, and was expecting peanuts. Instead, it was brine shrimp. But I would say this, there are restaurants that really are un-authentic. We call them Vietnamese restaurants. Where’s my baguette, and where’s my morning glory stems? And why can’t I get Pho for breakfast? What’s up with that?
December 26th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I’ll add this. The worst Chinese food in the world used to be at the international terminal in the Taipei airport. But they remodeled! It’s nice now. It used to be that you would get a bowl of soup in a styrofoam bowl. And you’d want to eat the styrofoam because it might taste better. Now, they’ve re-franchised the restaurants. They are all franchises of the top restaurants in Taipei now, and they’re really good. If you live long enough, sometimes good things really do happen.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
If you are ever in Denver and have a taste for some Chinese, go to Great Wall, and get the tea-smoked duck.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
What a name — Great Wall Szechuan. The Great Wall is nowhere near Szechuan. It’s like saying “Eiffel Tower German Restaurant”.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
#1 This reminds me of the prison scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. You lucky bastard! As a Norfolk, VA resident, please don’t complain about how godawful the food in D.C. is. One would think that with all the Navy officers you might get a little appreciation for international cuisine. Think again. You can’t throw a rock around here without hitting an incredibly bad Chinese restaurant.
#2 Ditto the comments on most Chinese food being bad just about anywhere.
#3 If you want good Chinese food, try Tokyo. It’s hit or miss but even the ramen shops can be pretty damn yummy. And the Chinatown in Yokohama is pretty damn good.
#4 Fostert: Former Boulderite here. I love Kow Thai. Have you ever been to the Vietnamese place over near Canyon and 28th (forget the exact geography)? They’ve got an amazing spicy dungenness crab dish. Also, ditto the fact that you food is relative. Try getting good Mexican food in Mexico
Just kidding of course, but as the son of New Mexicans, proper ‘Mexican’ food comes from a few places in Santa Fe and the like, full stop.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I know nothing about DC, but I thought it might be helpful to google what Chinese people had to say…Haven’t found any suggestions yet, but This post includes the following observation: “Washington’s Chinatown is fairly neat and clean, but in American Chinatowns it’s often easier to find good Chinese restaurants the messier and more broken they are.”
Well, maybe I’ll look some more…
December 26th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Paul Kee in Wheaton, MD and Mark’s Duck House in Arlington, VA. Those are the two best in the DC area that I’ve tried. They’re both good and authentic to 1970s childhood memories of restaurants in China and Taiwan.
Chinese food in China generally has little in common with Chinese food outside of China (or HK or Taiwan). A Chinese restaurant in Belleville in Paris is also generally going to be the same as one in DC or Nairobi, etc. But I’ve had good Chinese in Japan too – some elements of Japanese cuisine originally come from China after all. In Japan, it tends to be the dives that do it best.
Never had Chinese in Thailand and can’t understand why anyone would do that, given the diverse pleasures of the native cuisine.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“Have you ever been to the Vietnamese place over near Canyon and 28th”
Hmm, do you mean Chez Thuy? That’s about five blocks north. Great food, but not really Vietnamese. I’m okay with a good green bean side dish, but I’ve never seen green beans in Vietnam. And no baguettes at Chez Thuy. It’s just not Vietnamese without a baguette. And I’ve still never seen good fried chicken at a Vietnamese restaurant in America. That’s a real treat, but you have to go to Vietnam to get it. And yes, American soldiers taught them that dish. But the rice batter is a real improvement on the American version.
And yes, Santa Fe has some really good Mexican food. But I’ve had some great Migas in Austin. And we had an awesome Taco Lady who came to our workplace. Best jalapeno sauce ever. Great tamales, too.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
“Never had Chinese in Thailand and can’t understand why anyone would do that,”
Umm, because you’re drunk, lost, and hungry in Chinatown. And you can’t find a motorbike driver (”Bangkok helicopter”). The food’s really good, though. Similar to Taipei.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
One of the interesting phenomena that I’ve noticed about DC is that many of the best ethnic restaurants are no longer in the city, but have instead fled to the suburbs. Part of this is probably rent–you can get a cheap space in a random strip mall (and some strip-mall Chinese up Rockville pike is supposedly good), and the traditional ethnic enclave neighborhoods have also gone suburban.
Up here in the Silver Spring / Wheaton area, I’m partial to Hollywood East. They have 2 locations, the original is the random strip mall, with specials on red paper on the walls. The new one, on University Bvd, has updated decor but largely the same food. Between there and El Pollo Rico, and the erstwhile Navra Thai, you can’t go wrong with take-out in the neighborhood (cause with a 1.5 year old, there’s not much actual eating out anymore).
December 26th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Yes, Chez Thuy’s the place I’m thinking about. Not having been to Vietnam, I’m clueless on what the authentic cuisine is like. I always assumed that Chez Thuy was Vietnamese/French or French/Vietnamese. Perhaps it’s just American food parading as French/Vietnamese. The fried chicken certainly sounds good.
Irreirregardless: that spicy crab dish is nasty good.
December 26th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
“I always assumed that Chez Thuy was Vietnamese/French”
There really isn’t such a thing. The Vietnamese have integrated French cooking into their food. It’s just ‘Vietnamese’ now. And they’ve done the same with Chinese and American foods. But the Vietnamese only take what they want. You can always get a great baguette in Vietnam, but just try to find a croissant. You have to go to Laos for a good croissant. If you really want to understand the Vietnamese, consider this saying that several of my drivers have told me: “We eat Chinese food, we live in French houses, we marry Japanese women. We are Vietnamese.” And trust me, the men really are suckers for Japanese women there. Which is weird, because there’s nothing hotter than a Vietnamese woman wearing an Ao Dai. But I guess the grass is always greener….
December 26th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Take-out Chinese restaurants make it easy to tell whether an unfamiliar neighborhood is dangerous. If they have bulletproof Plexiglas shields above the counters, the ‘hood is a bad one.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
“Irreirregardless: that spicy crab dish is nasty good.”
I’m sure it is. Sadly, I don’t eat much shellfish, and I certainly don’t eat crabs. I’m probably the only Goyim who mostly keeps Kosher. Bacon, prawns and the occasional insects are where I diverge. But it’s food allergies, not religion, that determines that. Crab will send me to the hospital so quick that they should probably just take me to the morgue. But grasshoppers are fine. Go figure.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Et tu Fostert? Goyim is plural. Goy is singular. This is getting annoyim.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Sorry, hate to be the jew police…
December 27th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Look, to be Goy and still know some Yiddish is asking a lot. And you’re not really being the Jew Police, it’s Yiddish, not Hebrew. But who is a Jew, anyway? All I know is that I’m not getting re-circumsized no matter how hot she is. That first time should be enough.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:35 am
You know, I can’t remember the first circumcision, but I couldn’t walk for eighteen months after.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:55 am
I used to work with a bunch of Vietnamese guys in Orange County, and there we would go to a wide variety of restaurants in Little Saigon, and I’m pretty sure they were all authentic. Vietnamese food seems like the healthiest national cuisine that I’ve come across; lots of fresh vegetables, grilled (not fried) meat, etc. Most Vietnamese people are pretty slim, too, even the ones in America.
Then there’s the bikini coffee bars. Vietnamese girls in skimpy bikinis and high heels serving coffee, tea, milkshakes, etc. while Vietnamese men sit around talking, disobeying the no-smoking sign, watching sports on TV, etc. Good times.
Outside of Little Saigon, most authentic Vietnamese places have names like “Pho+? 73,” “Pho+? 95,” etc. I’m really not sure why. One place in Huntington Beach was called “What the Pho+?,” but I haven’t tried their food. The +?, incidentally, is the generally-accepted ASCII method of writing the appropriate diacritical marks on the word for the popular beef noodle soup, and it’s pronounced like “Fuh?,” with a rising tone.
And for Chinese food, go to the San Gabriel Valley (I used to live in Monterey Park). If you don’t know where to start, read Jonathan Gold. He’ll lead you to good Korean food in Koreatown and good Thai food in Thai Town, too.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:36 am
I live in the SG Valley. There’s an enormous number of Chinese restaurants here, as you’d expect from the population, and of course some are excellent, but the majority are crap, whereas I found you can’t go wrong in San Francisco. On the other hand, I imagine it’s possible that you can get something like whatever they serve in Hanoi Chinese restaurants, considering the number of bilingual Chinese/Vietnamese signs you see, especially in Chinatown.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:48 am
the majority are crap
I never found that to be the case in the SGV. My wife is Chinese and a foodie, and most of the time that I’ve not like something it’s been because it’s just been too hardcore for me (she’s liked it, though), not because the food was bad. I can really only think of a handful of subpar meals we’ve had. Some of it is truly excellent, and most of the rest is solid but standard for a particular region’s food.
Where are you going in SF? I’ve never found anything there (as far as Chinese food goes) that I couldn’t find at home, though I haven’t tried a whole bunch. Ditto the South Bay.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:28 am
The issue with Chinese food and DC isn’t that there’s no good stuff, it’s that there’s an extraordinary quantity of bad stuff.
I shoulda said ‘the DC metropolitan area’, but from what I can tell from the comments above, it’s all pretty crappy everywhere around here.
Every time we spent the night together I would regret it in the worst way the following morning and swear we were through, but soon enough I would come crawling back. It was disturbing.
Ah, now the place I ate at here has this some really bland cold pork and cabbage, covered in what looked and tasted like watered-down Elmer’s glue. With it, they included some kind of somewhat cold seasoned rice, that included some bad char siu pork and badly mangled vegetables – the rices was apparently covered in tumeric and not much else. Bitter, cold, and basically inedible! I don’t know what it would’ve done to my guts because I didn’t eat enough to find out. (The Italian places taste ok, sometimes, but ow. Gutpain. Mexican food? Blah. Arby’s? Cold and kinda nasty. Score so far: one semi-chain Italian place that does ok pizza.)
The cuisine is a bit hard for me to characterize, but there’s a lot of good seafood here.
It’s HK and/or Cantonese (my guess: the chef is from HK, but he might originally be from ‘around there’). The hints: lots of seafood (making him coastal), lots of stir-fry, not so much with the spicy, and of course, the part where they have an entire section dedicated to HK-style soup with noodles. Of course, if I look up the chef’s special recipes, most originate in Canton.
Try the lamb with cumin.
Noted: sounds tasty!, as does the spiced-salt shrimp.
Since we’re all trading info, if you’re in Dallas, you either have to go way downtown to the Vietmanese restaurants around Bryan/Fitzhugh, or you go over to Beltline & Josey – there are a bunch of cheap (good) pho places there, and since you’re on Beltline, you can just keep going east on Beltline, through restaurant row in Addison (feel free to stop, but avoid Solly’s BBQ and Jason’s Deli and the Brazilian place) and then on east to Coit, and drive around a bit: that’s Richardson’s Chinese colony area.
My favorite, Tong’s (Xichuan) is there, but I hear that since Master Tong left, they’ve been trying to appeal to ‘english people’ and so the food isn’t near as good. But they have fixed that. (And of course, they have the cheesy 70’s decor and menus that signify good, cheap food.)
max
['Thanks man!']
December 27th, 2008 at 11:37 am
My favorite DC Chinese restaurant anecdote?
Back in the 90s when I was working in DC I was out with a vegetarian friend in downtown DC when we were looking for a bite to eat. He said “lets do Chinese because they always have vegetarian options” so we walked into a nondescript Chinese restaurant in DC’s tiny little “chinatown” and sat down for a meal.
After frowning at the menu my friend calls the waitress over and asks if they have any vegetarian dishes. “Oh yes” he was told. We have “vegetarian beef, vegetarian pork, vegetarian chicken, and vegetarian shrimp” and sure enough, they did! printed right there on the menu under the beef, pork, chicken, and seafood sections of the menu.
I was laughing so hard that I actually snorted beer through my nose, while my indignant friend walked back to the kitchen to instruct the cook on how he wanted plain vegetables and rice.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Forget the Chinese good in DC. It is no longer Chinatown. It is pitiful. The requirement for opening a store in Chinatown is that you have a sign in chinese. It has not been Chinatown in DC since the Verizon Center was built. But even before that it was never Chinatown. It was one of the ugliest looking areas in DC, but the Verizon Center saved the area. There used to be chinese grocery stores and a vibrant chinese poputlation along with QUALITY chinese food with large banquet halls. Now there is legal sea foods, fudruckers, chipotle, “chain heaven”, office buldings and high end condos. etc…You are better off going to the burbs for good chinese food.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Kent – you do realize that there is such a thing as vegetarian chicken, beef, etc.? Chinese use soy gluten to make tofu with texture and taste similar to meat. If you’ve never tried it, it’s very good and can satisfy your meat cravings if you’re eating vegetarian.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Never had Chinese in Thailand and can’t understand why anyone would do that, given the diverse pleasures of the native cuisine.
@Helmut: You do realize that something like 15% of Thailand’s population is ethnic Chinese, right? And there’s a great deal of mixing past that as well? Both Chinese-Thai people and Thai people enjoy Chinese food, because it’s very much rooted in the country’s history and culture.
Unless you care to clarify what you mean by ‘anyone’.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Mr Chen’s really is outstanding.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
JS, I grew up partially in Thailand (and in Taiwan and Japan), and lived near a Chinese temple in Bangkok. Yes, SE Asia is diverse in its cultural roots and overlapping histories. But, given this, if one wants to take it to the limit, how far does one go in saying that all Asian cuisines are related to each other?
I guess it’s picking fine points, but I don’t think of Thai as having much to do with the Chinese cuisine I know from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and at least northern China. I’m not sure exactly how one would define the core features – the essence – that makes Chinese cuisine distinct from Thai or Vietnamese, but we do make these distinctions (as do the people who live there) rather than say, simply, “Asian cuisine.”
December 27th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Mayflower in Mt. Pleasant has some of the best General Tso’s bean curd I’ve ever had.
Also, Adams Express on the same street has some outstanding Korean food.
December 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
If you go to Full Kee, you really must order the oyster and scallion casserole. One of the best Chinese-restaurant dishes I’ve ever had.
It’s certainly true that the best Chinese restaurants in the area are in the suburbs, though. There’s a second instance of Full Kee at Bailey’s Crossroads that has much the same food as the Chinatown place, but possibly better (the oyster and scallion casserole is wonderful at both), and is a lot less of a dump. Full Kee is a Cantonese place, and there are some other very good Cantonese places in the 7 Corners, Bailey’s, Falls Church area. Mark’s Duck House, mentioned above, has very good food indeed. I can’t recommend their Roast Pig too highly. They have dim sum at lunch every day. Miu Kee, on Rt. 50 just east of Annandale Road, has great Roast Pig as well, and lots of other good stuff. Shun their Chinese-American stuff, though, and you have to be careful, as the real stuff and the American stuff are sort of interleaved on their menu. Lucky Three, on Rt. 7 between 7 Corners and Bailey’s Xroads, has a remarkably good dim-sum buffet on weekdays. I haven’t been in a couple of years, but it used to be ten bucks. Fortune, at 7 Corners, has really good seafood, and a really good dim sum lunch every day, although it’s a little on the expensive side.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Full Key in Wheaton (not related to Full Kee downtown or in VA). Good Fortune in Wheaton for dim sum. Any place where you see lots of Chinese families is good. Avoid new upscale malls and new strip malls.
Avoid Chinese restaurants that rely on deep-frying, sweet sauces, and “brown sauce.” When I am at a place that serves General Tso’s Chicken, I say to myself, “I could be at McDonald’s eating Chicken McNuggets for less money.” I should get a Brix counter as I can rate the decline of ethnic restaurants into Americanized crap by how much sugar they are putting in the sauces. This applies to Thai restaurants as well.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Grace Garden in Odenton, MD. It’s in a little strip mall outside Ft. Meade in a not so nice area. But this place is the darling of the chowhounds, and Tom Siestma of the WaPo is set to do a write up on them over the New Year. From what I gather (I have not been there yet), it’s very authentic Cantonese done with a lot of pride from the chef.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:24 am
TNR restaurant in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington is the best Chinese food I’ve had in DC hands down.
December 28th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
What about City Lights of China, by Dupont? I haven’t been there for about 5 years, and maybe I’m a philistine, but I remember really liking it.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I love House of Dynasty in Alexandria. Ever been? I will say that it’s the only Chinese food that I can eat in this area.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:06 am
No one has mentioned Joe’s Noodle House in Rockville (Sichuan) yet?
December 29th, 2008 at 11:01 am
TNR in the courthouse arlington neighborhood is disgusting. The boba drinks are made from a powder or syrup. The noodles in my noodle soup were the prepackaged big yellow ones which didn’t match the cuisine of the dish. The spicy dishes aren’t spicy at all. Especially since I heard this place was “great for Taiwanese food”, and I’m Taiwanese-American, it was such a disappointment.
…and that’s why I don’t listen to non-Asian people critiquing Asian food. I want to agree with “ethnic” cuisine foodies, but I never do. It’s like non-Asians are tasting something completely different from me. So many times an ingredient that is heralded as “good” is a watered-down subdued version of what it’s suppose to taste like. If you want pig blood it should taste like pig blood. I can enjoy traditional French foods as much as nouveau French fusion, but for some reason I can only equate -good- Chinese food with authentic Chinese food.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I also think TNR is the best Chinese in the area. Not only is it flavorable and fresh, but it is also very cheap.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I’m Chinese American and was raised in the DC area. Still live here. After skimming through the comments, I can make these observations.
- DC Chinatown has always stunk but definitely went downhill around the time the Verizon Center was being built.
- Someone mentioned SF as not impressive. They are more heavy on seafood, but more distinctive is that their dim sum is 100 times better than this area.
- If you have not had good Chinese food in HK or another ethnic Chinese/Asian city, it’s probably because you are expecting American Chinese food like Beef Broccoli or Moo Goo Gai Pan. We don’t make that stuff at home or in China. They don’t even know how to in most cases.
- To pick a good Chinese restaurant do the following. Do not walk into any place without Chinese words on the outside. That said, Chinatown is the exception since you’ll run into bad stuff there. Then look inside. If it looks old and dark, that’s a better sign. The best sign is if they write specials in Chinese on the walls (paper or board) or if they have a menu not bound in a fancy pleather cover. The cover is for show to non-Chinese. You want a menu on a laminated sheet of paper with a little grease on it. If it is all in Chinese, ask the server or another diner to help guide you. I’ve done this for my friends and we have great meais.
- One almost sure sign of a great Chinese meal is if they have hanging meat in the store front window or in view of the dining room. This shows that they cure/roast/cook their own meat fresh, not from frozen. Unfortunately other than Paul Kee, I can’t think of any in the DC area.
- Great places, I’m sad to say I have little experience in VA, other than China Garden in Rosslyn. In MD, Paul Kee & Full Key in Wheaton. My friends say Silver Fountain in Aspen Hill and I like it too, but I’m biased as I’ve known the owners since I was 3 years old. My father likes Tyson’s Buffet in Rockville, and I have no idea why. The place is not great unless you haven’t eaten in days. DC – Tony Chengs in Chinatown, either the Mongolian style on the ground level or the seafood upstairs will work, but a bit pricey. Chinatown Garden also in Chinatown serves decent American Chinese, but the trick is to ask for the “other” menu and ask for a recommendation from it.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:35 am
Pan is correct. Grace Garden is the real deal. I was one of the chowhounds that went to the initial dinner there that started the outpouring of internet love for this place. I have never had better Chinese food anywhere.
The thing is that the place really is your typical strip mall Chinese joint, sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a cheesy bar. But the food is insanely good, and Chef Li knows and loves his food. I’ve had some of the best meals of my life there.
I’ll be back again this Friday night. Stop by and say hello. You won’t regret it. Also, be sure to order off the Chinese menu.
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