And they’re great! What’s unusual is how the potstickers come out—instead of being sealed dumplings, they consist of a little log of meat inside a disc of wrapper, which isn’t closed—so they have to cook them all the way through on the grill, I guess, which accounted for the fact that these seemed to take a very long time. A couple of summers ago there was a flurry of internet foodie excitement over jianbing or jiang bing, a kind of street food crepe or wrap from Beijing, which was being sold at a stand called Nali’s in the West Loop. We had a wonderful time walking around and taking in the culture of the neighborhood. | Website Design by Kenton Web Design, ITALIAN FOOD FOR OUR TIME: 25 YEARS OF MIA FRANCESCA, CHEF GENE KATO AND THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION, AN INTERLUDE IN CHINATOWN, 10 AM ON A GRAY THURSDAY, THE FOODITOR GUIDE TO BIRRIA ON CHICAGO’S SOUTHWEST SIDE, 19 PAUL, BARBECUE IN PROGRESS IN MORGAN PARK. Their telephone number is +1 608-383-1007. Nanshan chicken is poached white meat—this felt silky enough to be sous vide—served cold in an oily sauce spiced with Szechuan peppercorn, as the telltale tingle around the lips soon revealed. Talking about it with my friend Rob Gardner, he mentioned that he had tried something like “pig face pancake,” so I checked the menu for that and found “Pork Head Meat Pancake,” which indeed fit the bill as rubbery pig face in a pancake with hoisin sauce. as well as a lot of familiar things like Kung Pao Chicken or General Tso’s Chicken, making it easy to pick by looks. Gary Wiviott Co-founder, Chicago food message board LTHForum.com . The 100-metre-long street features an impressive internal spot cooling system and a tall glass shelter – so that patrons can dine al fresco rain or shine. (With every order you get a styrofoam bowl of cold red bean soup, which you are encouraged to sugar as if it were Southern tea. Well, the $15 dish I wound up with is called “spicy hot pot,” but it’s not exactly the soup I was expecting. The first stall on the left as you enter does not even have an English name; what it has is a big golden fish in a glass case, so my sons referred to it as “the golden fish place,” which will have to do. I tried to order lamb skewers, but they didn’t have them for lunch, it seemed, so instead I ordered a chicken wing skewer. Cost for two: A$40. I think what I got was more like the safe choice for gringos than the most interesting choice, but I wound up with a nice looking bowl of beef noodle soup—that is, a little beef in chicken broth with thick udon-like noodles and a few greens. The sign for Town Kitchen is over a metal gate that always seems to be closed; you have to realize that the stall next to it is Town Kitchen as well. More interesting was the cold chicken dish next to it. All Rights Reserved. It feels like old people should be playing bingo in here. I liked this quite a bit, with its hearty, cloudy chicken flavor; just be warned that one son and I both dug into it substantially, and we hardly seemed to make a dent in it. The first stall on the left as you enter does not even have an English name; what it has is a big golden fish in a glass case, so my sons referred to it as “the golden fish place,” which will have to do. I tried to make the universal signal for “I know what I want already, let me go ahead of them” with my eyes, but it wasn’t getting through to the man behind the counter. I went straight to the section of the menu labeled “Tientsin Special” and ordered an onion pancake. I CAN’T HEAR YOU! RC Taco is a business providing services in the field of Restaurant, . But here it is much cheaper for them to run.”. I picked up the menu, tried to order one of the noodle dishes off of it—and he pointed me to an English list of braised meats. If you like that effect, it’s a very tasty bowl of stuff, though it’s big enough for at least two people, maybe more. Find yourself in a basement Chinese food court and what you’re really craving is a burger? I think what I got was more like the safe choice for gringos than the most interesting choice, but I wound up with a nice looking bowl of beef noodle soup—that is, a little beef in chicken broth with thick udon-like noodles and a few greens. They have an English menu, but honestly you could just about guess your choices here: pork potstickers (pork with celery, pork with chive, etc. Anyway, that evening, besides the pork hocks, they had duck heads, duck necks and pig ears, so if you need Chinese meats for your feast, this is the stall. But I did my best to suss out some representative examples at each stall, as starting points for further exploration. This kind of entrepreneurial starter space is common in western Chinatowns and, frankly, ours is pretty small—I was just in a mall outside Toronto whose stall area probably had three times the vendors. I love that. Although most of the menu is stir-fried items, they also have a number of cold dishes, which is a common Chinese thing though something of an acquired taste for non-Chinese. (There was also a Korean noodle place and a banh mi shop down here early on, but I don’t remember trying either one.). This stall is frankly something of a mystery. I liked this quite a bit, with its hearty, cloudy chicken flavor; just be warned that one son and I both dug into it substantially, and we hardly seemed to make a dent in it.