Where to find a really good Chinese restaurant is a question that vexes diners all over the world.
In his latest book, travel writer John Krich treks through no less than four continents in search of an answer.
Krich’s “Won Ton Lust: Adventures in Search of the World’s Best Chinese Restaurant” (Kodansha) documents a year (between the falls of ’94 and ’95) he spent with his Shanghai-born wife, Mei, eating in Chinese restaurants around the globe.
He recently came through Chicago to discuss and sign copies of this culinary adventure at the 95th Restaurant, where Thursday’s lunch crowd was treated to dishes of duck with mango salad and crab meat with snow peas made from recipes in the book.
These dishes helped ease the hunger pangs created by Krich’s often tempting descriptions of regional Chinese fare, which are accompanied by large helpings of novelesque travelogue.
“It’s less a food guide than a story about the romance between me and my wife and the characters we met along the way,” he explained. “But if you want to use it as a guide, we include addresses in the back.”
Also in the back of the book is a list of the top 40 restaurants the couple encountered on their journey–the closest ones to Chicago being New York’s Tse Yang and Shun Lee Palace. (Sorry.) Sadly, the two limited their Chicago sampling to Chinatown’s defunct Golden Bull and The Szechuan House, neither of which impressed.
Krich’s fishy inability to find good Chinese chow in Chicago (as well his reference to North Michigan Avenue as the “miracle mile”) may caution some readers to take his words with a big dash of soy. But the author claims that he had very little time in Chicago, a city he describes in the book as “jauntily ugly, industrial and windscrubbed.”
“We only had about two days and it was one of the only places my wife didn’t have any relatives,” he said.
Good naturedly, Krich explained that he gets scrutiny of his local coverage in each city he visits, as well the inevitable question “Where is the best Chinese restaurant?”
Although he admits that comparing highly varied regional cuisines with each other and tiny cafes with banquet palaces is probably an impossible task, Krich still conjured up a couple fond food memories.
“Probably the Fu Yuen Frangrant Garden in Taipei, if I had to name one,” he said. “The second would probably be the Oriental in London, which is owned by the Sultan of Brunei and is the only Chinese restaurant in Europe with a Michelin star.”
But possibly more entertaining and valuable than his top restaurant picks are Krich’s tales from dining dungeons like London’s raucous Wang Kei where, in response to questions on why their food is so cheap, waiters snap, “Because you so cheap.”
