On the surface, the majority of restaurants in Philly's Chinatown appear to be variations on a theme: Americanized food, based loosely on Cantonese or Hong Kong style cooking. Of course, there are exceptions, like the Sichuan cuisine offered at Four Rivers, Szechuan Tasty House and E Mei, or the Shanghainese specialties at Dim Sum Garden and Sakura Mandarin. There's Taiwanese food at Empress Garden, if you pick carefully, or can navigate the Chinese-only listings on the back page of the menu. Various regional cuisines can be found on the menus of Rising Tide and Red Kings. And of course there are a few obvious non-Chinese places as well.
But among the many places that present themselves as the standard Chinese restaurant, there have long been rumors about the "other menu." It's often true: many places that outwardly seem like clichéd Americanized restaurants
do offer more authentic food, sometimes on a menu written entirely in Chinese characters. It's not generally a conspiracy to hide the good food from English-speakers, many of these restaurants simply believe that non-Chinese wouldn't be interested in eating the more traditional food. When asking about it, it's not uncommon to hear "you wouldn't like that," and that opinion might be based on actual experience with unadventurous diners, as much as on vague generalizations about Americans' preferences. It's not without foundation that there are assumptions that Americans don't like meat with bones, or too much fat, or anything with unusual textures.
But sometimes the waitstaff can be quite happy to help you navigate the "other menu." Or even if they're not thrilled about the idea, they can sometimes be convinced to let you order the more Chinese-targeted dishes, and there are often large rewards to going off the familiar path. But please, for the sake of all of us exploring these more traditional foods, if you're going to do this, play fair. If you order something that you've never had, it's not cool to send it back or refuse to pay for it. You're exploring, you might get something you don't like. Suck it up. Try it, even if it looks and smells nothing like you were expecting. If you really don't like it, chalk it up to experience. But you're going to make it harder for the rest of us if you try to send it back, or make a fuss about not liking it.
There are separate, traditional menus at many restaurants in Chinatown, but the majority of the places are still Cantonese. There's plenty of rewarding food to be found there, but we've been most interested lately to explore the cooking of some lesser-known regions. Lurking beneath the surface of some very generic-looking restaurants is the distinctive cooking of Fuzhou.
Perhaps the best example of hiding in plain sight is
Chinatown Restaurant. Located at the corner of Tenth and Arch, right in the shadow of the Chinatown arch itself, it would be easy to dismiss this as the typical beef-and-broccoli, sweet-and-sour-chicken joint, serving up all of the usual-suspect dishes for low prices. A while back, we'd heard a rumor that they served the elusive Soup Dumplings (AKA Shanghai Juicy Buns, or Xiao Long Bao) but when we asked about them they said no, and pointed us to their garden-variety dumplings on the Americanized menu. But we recently noticed a poster on the wall with pictures of the juicy buns, so we decided to give it another shot.
We were once again provided with a small menu of Chinatown classics, but this time we asked more directly whether there was another menu. Our waitress said that yes there was another menu, that had different food, but did not offer to give it to us. When we directly asked to look at that one, she somewhat reluctantly agreed, and a whole other dimension opened up. The menu is in both Chinese and English, and despite a few perplexing translations, it's mostly easily decipherable. And after expressing a real interest in those dishes, and asking for advice, the waitstaff was quite helpful, and enthusiastic about recommending things we might want to try.
I'm not sure whether Steamed Shanghai Juicy Buns are traditionally served in Fuzhou, but they make a very tasty version here. The wrappers are a bit thicker and less delicate than those at most of the traditional Shanghainese places, and the buns themselves are a bit smaller too, but this is not necessarily a bad thing: these seem to stay intact a bit better than some, we had no holes or leaks that resulted in soup-loss. And good thing too, because the broth is delicious, as is the tiny meatball it surrounds. Overall, a very fine example of a juicy bun.
Turning that paradigm inside-out, we tried a Meatball soup, which featured a mild, but satisfying, broth, which also included several small meatballs, each wrapped in what seemed like a very fine wonton wrapper.
On another visit, our server suggested the Jellyfish soup, explaining that jellyfish wasn't really the right term, that it was some other kind of fish. And indeed, this soup contained a nice light white fish of some sort, with a slightly unusual texture, but not that of what we think of as jellyfish. The broth was slightly sour, from pickled vegetables that also provided some crunch. We were told that a little red vinegar would be good in it, and indeed, that added acid perked up the flavors nicely.
We did get some actual jellyfish, but prepared in a way we'd never experienced before. Not only were these cross-sections of the bodies, or heads, rather than the tentacles we're used to eating cold, but these pieces were stir-fried, and served hot. They had the springy-crunchy texture we'd expected from this ingredient, but the shape, the tangy sauce, the temperature, and the inclusion of the surprising element of crunchy fried dough, all made this a distinctive and very enjoyable dish.
Also from the sea, the
Clams in Foo Chow Sauce were another favorite (pictured at top of post.) The tiny clams were perfectly tender, and the red wine-based sauce was unique and tasty. As similar sauce was served on pieces of bone-in duck. This was almost as tasty, but it was one skinny duck, there just wasn't a ton of meat amongst the bones.
An
Oyster Pancake reminded us of a Korean Haemul Pajeun, but with a nice funky, smoky overtone from what were either tiny oysters, or chopped-up pieces, along with scallion in a batter that was crisp in parts, tender and pliable in others.
One of the signature dishes of Fuzhou is
Lychee Pork, and it's famous for good reason. It's kind of a really good sweet-and-sour, with a nice balance of fruity and tangy flavors, and no goopy sauce, more of a glaze over the crispy pork nuggets. This would be a crowd-pleasing dish, but was still interesting enough to please our jaded palates.
On the earthier side, we tried a
Mutton Casserole, which had tender chunks of what was probably lamb, it didn't display the funkiness of a really old sheep, but it did have nice flavor, as did the broth, which had also soaked into some curls of tofu skin. Black mushrooms threatened to steal the spotlight though, almost tasting meatier than the mutton, making this a very hearty, rib-sticking dish, and a nice counterpoint to the sweeter pork.
We also had some
stir-fried rice cakes with pork, and these were a very good version, with tender slabs of noodle interspersed with shredded pork and some greens. We also had some basic stir-fried pea shoots and similarly-prepared water spinach, which were both fine, if not distinctive.
There's plenty more to explore on the menu, and although it might be a small hurdle to convince the servers that you actually want to order the food from Fouzhou, once you do, they can be enthusiastic guides.
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We faced a similar skepticism at
Happy Restaurant, at 906 Arch St. We were initially presented with a small and boring menu of Chinatown standards. We asked for the other, larger menu, and our waitress somewhat grudgingly gave them to us, and was very skeptical about a few things that we ordered. But we eventualy convinced her that we did indeed want some of the food from Fuzhou, and we were well-rewarded.
It was a little bit of a hard-sell to convince our server that we wanted the
Pork Bone with Seaweed Soup. She scowled, and told us that there's really no meat on it, but we insisted, and were glad we did. It indeed might be off-putting to some people: there are large bones, with little or no meat on them, along with wide pieces of seaweed, tied in knots. The broth is very thin, salty, and tastes mostly of the sea. We liked it quite a lot, but it's not a familiar-tasting soup, it was austere and exotic, odd and intriguing.
We tried their
Beer Duck, which was similar to the Duck in FooChow sauce we had up the street, but we liked this one even better. The duck itself was a bit more substantial, and the sauce was a little looser, delicious soaked-up with rice.
Small chunks of spare ribs and cubes of taro soaked up a vaguely sweet sauce. We liked them, even if they weren't especially distinctive. Their version of stir-fried rice cakes was fine, if a little bland, as the dish can easily be. The only greens we could seem to get was another rendition of the snow pea shoots, this time with a some chicken broth and garlic. They were quite tasty, and I can never get tired of them, yet we try to find other greens when we can, just for the sake of variety.
Happy's menu is even bigger than Chinatown Restaurant's, with many unfamiliar (to us, at least) offerings that bear further exploration.
There's nothing wring with Cantonese food, and the flavors of Sichuan are finally well-represented in Philly, thanks to Han Dynasty, E Mei, Four Rivers and Szechuan Tasty House. But there are many more regional cuisines in China, and if you'd like to try the food of Fuzhou, you can find it at Chinatown Restaurant and Happy Restaurant. Just ask for the "other menu."
Chinatown Restaurant
935 Arch St (at 10th)
215-925-8688
downloadable menu at: http://chinatownmenu.com/ChinatownRestaurant.html
Happy Restaurant
906 Arch St.
215-922-5588
downloadable menu at: http://chinatownmenu.com/HappyRestaurant.html
More about that in a minute, but first, let's start with noodles! The first item on the menu is the Hot and Sour Crystal Noodle Soup, to which you can add pork, chicken or beef. The noodles are clear, slippery, and fettuccini-sized, swimming in a slightly spicy broth, studded with ground pork and peanuts. A few slices of tender pork lay on top, marinade and grill-char cutting through the flavorful soup. This was quite good, and made us eager to try the rest) or just come back for this one again and again!) 
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