I apologize for the lack of posts in the last week. I have been doing a lot.
In short, my sister visited me to celebrate my 30th birthday, so I went out with her, my girlfriend, and my sister's boyfriend to a number of places to eat. Look forward to a ton of new posts, including a very long one I will be putting up in regards to my visit to Alinea.
The Alinea post will probably take me a week to put up, so I am taking my time with that, but while that is in queue, I will be posting up on a number of other places.
So one of the other places we visited was the brand spanking new Chef Tony Hu restaurant, Lao Sze Chuan Downtown. I have been holding off on reviewing this place until I visited again, and was able to find that opportunity this weekend.
A few notes if you want the quick rundown:
- Good location for Peking Duck.
- Nice ambiance.
- Xiao Long Bao and Sole Fillet are pretty good.
Brief background, this is actually the third Lao Sze Chuan in Chicago. This is the only one downtown, as the other ones are located further up north and in Chinatown. The downtown Lao Sze Chuan is vastly different from the other two, as it seems like Chef Tony Hu (Unofficial Mayor of Chinatown), has been going out of the way to focus on making this successful. His effort has paid off though, as the place looks great.
It is a two level restaurant that is located off to the side of the food court area at the Shops at North Bridge (right off of the Magnificent mile). There is plenty of seating, though the tables are pretty closely positioned to each other. So if you are ordering a bunch of food, it might feel very cramped as there is very little table space. However, the atmosphere looks good, and after dinner you can always roam around the mall, or walk out around the Magnificent Mile.
So I have had most of the options off of the menu, as I have been here a few times (the previous times I didn't take that many pictures of the food). This place is probably the best Chinese food you can get around the downtown area. It holds up to the caliber of Chinese food that you would find in more Asian oriented communities like in California, or even in China. Chef Tony flew in a chef directly from China to help prepare the Peking Duck properly, which is shown below.
For people who have never eaten Peking Duck, you make your duck wrap by taking a warm wrapper that kind of has a burrito wrapper feel, only a lot softer, and thinner, put some sauce, and veggies on it, dip the duck in the sugar, wrap it all up, and devour it. The components all taste very fresh, and the duck is nicely prepared. The skin is nice and crispy, so I was pretty reasonable satisfied. You can also order more wrappers if you run out of them with no additional charge. This is the only Lao Sze Chuan that has Peking Duck, so that already defines the downtown location.
Another great go-to for this place is the Xiao Long Bao, or soup dumplings.
I am actually really picky about how Xiao Long Bao are prepared, as my heritage is Taiwanese. So I will start off by saying this place has pretty passable Xiao Long Bao. I don't know of many places in Chicago that have good Xiao Long Bao though, so if you are making a trip out for Xiao Long Bao in the Gold Coast/River North area, definitely find your way around to the North Bridge Shopping area.
These Xiao Long Bao are decent, but far from perfect. The wrapper skins are too thick, which takes focus away from the filling and the soup. I like a good wrapper, and if it were a normal dumpling I would not be so critical, but this is a soup dumpling, so the highlight should be the filling and the soup.
Which brings up another point, their isn't quite enough soup in each Xiao Long Bao. There is enough to make it an identifiable characteristic, but they could put more soup to make it more robust.
Though making good Xiao Long Bao is not easy, as you have to balance the thickness of the wrapper along with the consistency of the soup. If the skin is really thin, it breaks very easily, especially when it is soaked by the soup, so that balance for making it just right has very little room for mistakes.
These criticisms are relatively minor, as it is still a good location for Xiao Long Bao. I would stop in just to eat a bunch as a snack.
Moving on, I also like their Sole Fillet with Chili Bean Sauce.
I am normally not very good with spicy food, but I have been gradually training myself. These fillets have a good amount of heat. It is not too overpowering, so its very manageable for people who don't normally eat spicy food. The fillet is very soft as well.
We also ordered their Pan Fried Dumplings.
Though watch out, I picked one up, bit into it, and the back part of the dumpling blew out, spraying scalding hot juice onto my hand. It burned my fingers a little bit. Otherwise the taste was okay, but nothing notable. Good presentation, but overall, it is a dish that can easily be overlooked.
Oh, a nice little addition they had when I paid the bill was they gave me a red envelope with 1 RMB (Chinese Dollar) in it for Chinese New Years.
That was a nice and fun addition to our meal.
So it looks like Lao Sze Chuan downtown is gradually picking up more traffic, and is becoming a very promising spot on the Magnificent Mile.
I don't quite understand Chef Tony's obsession with making a third Lao Sze Chuan. Xiao Long Bao and Peking Duck aren't even regional cuisine famous to the Sze Chuan province of China. I know he owns the "Lao" brand name, and "Lao Sze Chuan" brand name, but when you have a third one, it is just confusing. It is especially confusing when this restaurant is taking a different direction than the others. I think it would be better just to have a different name altogether, and make it easier to identify.
Well, that wraps up what I have to say about Lao Sze Chuan. Tune in for my future post on Alinea in about a week, but in the mean time I will be updating really soon on other spots I have visited.
