domokun

We had our first China Gourmet experience last night and it was GREAT! We ordered takeout without a hitch, by immediately telling them we wanted to order from the Chinese menu, and giving them numbers and the name of each dish. As we usually do with Chef Chang's food, we ordered way too much. I guess we got one of the last orders of the ribs, Chen Cang beef, hot and numbing beef rolls, boiled peanuts, dan dan noodles, and szechuan pickles. Although we had been to China Star and Temptasian many times before, this was our first time ordering the Chen Cang beef. We weren't sure how many buns to order (we ended up with 6, which was good), but the dish was awesome! I added some of the szechuan pickles (foreign-to-me veggies, in a salty, spicy, oily brine) which made a great flavor combo. The ribs too were great, though the bread crumb topping really needed to be recrisped in a dry skillet (which I did today with the leftovers!) The peanuts were interesting -- I guess I wasn't expecting them to be in a huge container of liquid. The dan dan noodles were the best I've had in the area; though it was a smaller portion than Temptasian, the noodles were thinner, and the broth more flavorful. Hot and numbing beef rolls were slivers of spicy and oily beef, with cabbage and other veggies, rolled in what seemed like a deflated scallion pancake. Pretty tasty, but I think I'll order the hot and numbing beef next time, for more meat, less oil, and more numbing. As an aside, I thought it was really funny when we came to pick up our order, and the host (owner?) excitedly said - "Hey, you ordered the Chinese food!" Like their americanized menu completely didn't count as chinese food.