Category Archives: Chinese

Yuen’s

Posted on May 21, 2010 by | 4 comments

CLOSED
Cuisine: Vietnamese/Chinese
5270 Cleveland Ave
614-823-8880
www.yuensrestaurant.com

Click here to map it!

Yuen’s is no new kid on the block – in their previous life the owners had a place near campus on Lane and High called Chinese Village Kitchen. Upon reviewing the menu, it is divided into two parts; the first being the usual American-Chinese fare and the other pages towards the back list Vietnamese and the Cantonese dishes.


The layout of the restaurant is clean and decor is heavily reflective of Chinese influences. The place is airy and has windows on 3 sides of the restaurants, making it a very pleasant place to dine.

We dove right into the back pages of the menu and ordered the beef tendon salad and the squid salad. The beef tendon was heavily seasoned with sesame oil and szechuan pepper and garnished with lots of cilantro. The texture of tendon was slightly chewy and slippery at the same time. This can be a challenging dish for some who may not be used to eating gelatinous textures. The squid salad came with a fish sauce and lime sauce and garnished with jalapenos and red onion. The squid was less than fresh and a little too salty that day.

As per our usual visits to restaurants with Vietnamese menu items, we ordered the bun thit nuong. It is essentially cold rice noodles with spring rolls, bbq pork, julienned carrots and cucumber, tossed with a light vinegary fish sauce laced marinade. This version was as good as we had in other Vietnamese places. There isn’t a tremendous amount of variation to this dish from place to place (perhaps save for Luc’s version), with differences typically being in the emphasis on the ratio of veg vs pork in the spring roll. This one leaned more towards the pork.


For our mains, the waitress recommend adding roasted pork belly in addition to the roast duck (both above). This is a very familiar lunch plate for those who have grown up in Cantonese-influenced household. A roast meat plate is very common for lunch, it could be any combination of char siu (bbq pork), siu yoke (roasted pork belly) and roast duck. The roast duck came doused with some plum sauce that gave us something sweet to counter the saltiness of the duck. It was slightly overcooked and that made the flesh tough and stringy to navigate. The pork belly on the other hand was quickly devoured by the table for its crispy skin and wonderful alternating layers of fat and lean meat. It was lightly augmented with some 5-spice powder and salt. Biting into the crispy skin produces a sound quite similar to the crunch of potato chips. To redeem our carnivorous ways, we ordered some stir fried snow pea shoots. Unfortunately the redemption was lost since the greens were overcooked.

On a separate visit, we decided to try more of their Vietnamese and noodle dishes. The one one the left is the Tieu Chau Style Rice Noodles Soup and the right is the Satay Beef Rice Noodles. The Tieu Chau was filled with slices of pork liver, minced pork, shrimp and fish balls, pretty much a kitchen sink dish. The addition of fried shallots on top gave it the dish some texture and lovely edge of savoriness. Overall it was a very slurp-worthy bowl noodles. the satay noodles on the other hand is on the other end of the spectrum. The sauce was all gloop and no flavor. The Woolf and I couldn’t pick up any distinctive flavor that would make it a satay sauce. Peanut – no (yes, there is sprinklings of crushed peanuts on top but there was definitely none in the sauce). Soy – maybe. Random brown sauce – yes. This bowl did not get a seat in the clean plate club.

Overall, there are a few good things on the menu but unfortunately it is dotted with more unsuccessful ones.  It was also hard to differentiate between the Chinese and Vietnamese dishes as there isn’t a specific call out to the Vietnamese dishes. However if you happen to be on 161 and craving some rice noodles, do stop by as they do have a pretty decent Black Bean Beef Chow Fun.

4 Comments

Posted in Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese

Lee Garden (Dim Sum)

Posted on March 23, 2010 by | 10 comments

This restaurant closed at the end of 2011.

Cuisine: Chinese
2685 Federated Boulevard
614.764.1525

Click here to map it!

When I caught wind of a group of Columbus Undergrounders plotting a trip to Lee Garden for dim sum, well… it didn’t take much arm twisting.  Dim sum is an exceptionally unique experience, and a regrettably rare offering in Columbus.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, there are (to my mind) two basic ideas to build on – brunch and selection.  Brunch, in that weekends between 11am and 2pm are the traditional time to take dim sum (some believe that the very concept of brunch in the US was derived from dim sum’s introduction here).  Selection, in that the format is small plates (think Chinese tapas) and there are something on the order of 50+ distinct options on offer.

I’m tempted to add ‘instant gratification’ to that list – these plates come out on a series of carts that circulate around the dining room.  When one comes to your table, the cover is lifted and you may choose as you please.  Each cart has around 4-8 options, and carts swing by frequently enough that you’ll rarely be left wanting.

Our group of ten was seated at a large, round table conveniently topped with a lazy susan.

With guidance from DavidF (the trip organizer and a veteran dim sum enthusiast), we filled the lazy susan with a wide assortment of small dishes.

Pictured above is a portion of our meal, including pork and shrimp shu mai, potstickers, shrimp har gow, and chicken feet.  This represents perhaps a third of the total number of dished ordered.

From here, things become a bit of a blur… the lazy susan spinning, chopsticks snatching bites, people trying to reconcile their desire to share with wanting just one more taste of… that (or was that just me?)  To try to recount the whole experience is beyond me, so I’ll just hit on a few of the more memorable bites:

Pork shumai – A mix of pork, onions and mushrooms filling what is essentially an open-ended steamed dumpling.  That these are delicious is no surprise, as they’ve achieved such a level of popularity that they can even be found in the freezer section at the supermarket.  Skip those, and eat these.  You’ll be glad you did.

BBQ Pork Buns (char siu bao) – These are snow white steamed buns filled with a lurid red BBQ pork.  The bun texture is somewhat dense and chewy, and difficult to describe save to say that its entirely unlike anything you’d expect from a wheat based bread (which it is).  Get a bite of it with some of the sweet and garlicky BBQ filling, though, and it all makes sense.  This was the dish that DavidF craved the most, and it was easy to understand why.

Chicken Feet – a hell of a lot of work must’ve gone into turning the raw feet into what made it to my plate – these were the complete opposite of tough and chewy, almost unnervingly so.  Each bite, for me, equated to one ‘toe’, and became a mouth exercise in separating gelatinous flesh from bone.  The flavor of the black bean sauce was enjoyable, and… I guess I can say I did it.

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Eventually, the ordering slowed down and the slump of satisfaction set in.  We ate a lot… what’s that going to set us back?

$9 and change per person.  All dishes cost between $2.95 and $3.95.  Quite a few of the dishes appear to be vegetarian, though I’d suggest asking about the sauces to make sure.  Pescetarians should be fine.

10 Comments

Posted in Chinese

Poong Mei (Spring of China)

Posted on March 15, 2010 by | 1 comment

Cuisine: Chinese
4720 Reed Road, near Reed and Henderson.
614.273.9998

Click here to map it!

Poong Mei Asian Bistro is the restaurant also/formerly known as Spring of China. The owners realized that the original name was misleading as their offerings span Chinese, Korean and Japanese, but the transition to a new name seems to be very gradual. We were told that Poong Mei means successful in Chinese, tasty in Korean and beautiful in Japanese and the owners thought that all of these were auspicious for their business.

The menu is divided into Chinese/ Western, Chinese, Korean/Japanese and Korean and there are some interesting selections in each. Our interest was piqued by a rumor that they made their own noodles in house, which indeed they do – there is a whole page devoted to them. They also make their own dumplings from scratch.

The restaurant has a little more of a Korean feel than Chinese, especially when we were presented with a banchan-like selection of kim chi and  pickles.

The dumplings are available steamed and boiled. On the advice of our server we opted for the steamed. The dumplings were large, and the dough on the thicker side, but both the filling and the dough were obviously freshly made. The filling was pork with vegetables and was fragrant with ginger and with flecks of scallion. My understanding from the menu is that the boiled dumplings have a thinner skin and there are 15 in the serving.

The same filling is used for the pork buns. As you can see the portion size for both is very generous and certainly good for sharing.

We wanted to try the noodles and opted for zha jhang myun – hand made noodles with chopped vegetables, pork and shrimp in black bean sauce. The black bean sauce had more of a fermented smoky flavor than the store bought versions – it was pure umami. The texture of the hand made noodles was good, but the dominance of the black bean sauce made it hard to discern their flavor.

Salt and pepper crispy squid is one of our favorite dishes at Yau’s and we decided to order it for the sake of comparison (and because we can’t resist crispy squid). They were more battered and crunchy than Yau’s and were utterly addictive.

The last dish we tried were the crispy tofu balls with bok choi and ginger and garlic sauce. The tofu balls (which contained shrimp as well) were really good and a pleasant variation on the usual tofu preparations. While the outside was crispy the inside was deceptively light and moist. Perhaps a dish that could win over tofu skeptics. 

Poong Mei has enough range in its menu to please both fans of American Chinese food and more intrepid diners with everything from sweet and sour chicken to boiled pork feet, sea cucumber and jelly fish.

1 Comment

Posted in Asian, Chinese, Korean, Restaurant

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Little Dragons

Posted on March 11, 2010 by | 6 comments

Cuisine: Chinese
1508 Morse Road (Morse and Karl)
614.846.9114
Open 7 days a week. Sun-Thursday 11-10pm, Saturday & Sunday 11-11pm
Lunch specials 11-3pm, Dim Sum Saturday & Sunday 11-3pm

Click here to map it!

Like many Chinese restaurants Little Dragons has a split personality. On one side it has a busy take-out counter offering standard Chinese-American fare with Kung Pao, Orange chicken and General Tso representing. On the other side a more authentic Chinese menu with such exotic ingredients as sea cucumbers, conch and balsam pear (bitter gourd).

We opted for some of the more standard offerings from the Chinese menu: snow pea leaves (the menu calls them leeks) sauteed with garlic, spicy crispy tofu, and double fried cooked pork.

The double fried cooked pork, made with slices of pork belly, was unsurprisingly greasy but very flavorful. The belly was stir fried with carrot, cabbage, onion and bamboo shoots, and seasoned heavily with 5 spice powder and hot oil. Good with steamed rice.

I love snow pea leaves and am always pleased to see them on a menu. Little Dragons’ version seemed as much steamed as sauteed and with very little oil, lots of garlic and very fresh tasting. A good antidote to the pork belly.

The tofu with snow peas and pak choi was sound but unexceptional.

The only disappointment of the batch was the scallion pancake which was overly bread-y and insufficiently scallion-y. The typical scallion pancake should almost resemble an Indian paratha in texture with more scallions incorporated into and between the dough.

Little Dragons has a fairly large, partitioned dining room, decorated with fairly typical Chinese decorations and is very clean. The service on our visit was little lackluster as we spent some of the meal trying to flag down our server.  Nonetheless, the food arrived promptly and they were more than willing to answer questions.

Little Dragons serve a selection of bottled beer. If you are grabbing a takeout menu, be advised that there are two versions of it. One has the standard Chinese-American fare and the other includes the authentic dishes listed.

6 Comments

Posted in Asian, Chinese, Restaurant

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