I was having lunch with the Picky Omnivore at Eastern Lights today and ordered Mandarin Chicken. It's basically spicy-sweet fried white-meat chicken with random veggies. It was my favorite dish for years. I'm afraid I forgot to photograph my bowl of hot and sour soup. PO ordered some Singapore noodles and I swear it was the best smelling dish that I've smelled in forever. I'm hoping to have more of that soon.
I tried yet another dish at Eastern Lights today that I hadn't tried before, eggplant with garlic sauce. The slightly spicy dish had, of course, eggplant, water chesnuts, corn, and a couple of other vegetables that I couldn't readily identify. The lunch portion, which comes with either an egg roll or a cup of egg drop, hot and sour or wonton soup, is only $5.25. That's incredible. I have a vague recollection that someone recommended this dish to me, but I can't remember who it was. If you are reading this and suggested that I try it, please comment. I will definitely be ordering it again.
I've been meaning to write about this dish for a while, but I had to confirm exactly what it was that we ordered, because I was looking at the wrong section of my take-out menu when I started to blog about it and couldn't find it.
Eastern Lights offers a selection of handmade Chinese noodle dishes that are extraordinarily good. Several of them are soups, containing lots of seafood and pork. I've always been fond of San Shan Za Jang, which is noodles and seafood in a dark and creamy soy bean sauce.
I don't recall that I'd ever ordered Spicy Seafood Noodle before, though, probably because it's described as "Very Spicy". As you can see from the photo, it's noodles with squid, shrimp, scallops and vegetables. I didn't think that it was that hot, but since I've been going to this family's restaurants since 1981, I think my tastebuds have, to a large degree, become desensitized to their hot peppers. I'm much more sensitive to Mexican, Thai and some Indian cooking. Maybe you wouldn't find this dish that hot either, but I can't say for sure. It was slightly sweet, but not excessively so. I'm eager to try it again.
When one has been going to a restaurant (or the predecessor of one) since 1981, you'd think there wouldn't be anything new to try. Despite my love for trying new things, I'm just as likely to order the same dishes over and over without experimenting. The ideal solution is to go to such a restaurant with someone who has been going to the same restaurant about as long, but has been ordering different things. That was the case for lunch today, at Eastern Lights. We shared an order of Sizzling Rice soup, which used to be my family's favorite until my Second Most Faithful Reader became addicted to their Hot and Sour soup, maybe 15 years ago, so it was nice to have a serving of nostalgia along with the meal. Sizzling Rice soup, which serves two or more people, contains chicken, shrimp, water chestnuts, avoidable mushrooms and crispy rice. The rice often makes a dramatic entrance as it is added to the soup, hence the name.
For our main course, we shared Spicy Shredded Dried Tofu with Pork, which I'd never tried before and was excellent. The tofu was very flavorful and the texture reminded me of thick cold-cuts, because it was denser than most tofu I've eaten. The dish also contained fermented black beans, which reminded me slightly of teeny olives with the texture of beans. It was spicy, but not excessively so. I would definitely recommend this entree, which can be found in the Chef's Specialties section of their menu.
Yesterday afternoon, I was recommending Eastern Lights's potstickers and it dawned on me that I hadn't eaten any of them in a while in an "Mmm.. Potstickers..." sort of way.
They make them from scratch at Eastern Lights and are the best ones I've had anywhere. I don't usually have to even order them. This proved to be difficult during my brief stint as a vegetarian, four years ago.
This is the Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, which we order almost every time, because it's one of my Second Most Faithful Reader's favorite dishes. They do a fabulous job on the shrimp. He also always orders hot and sour soup and thinks they make the very best, even better than Mary Chung's, in Cambridge. I forgot to photograph it, because I was too busy stealing multiple spoonfuls. They give you a huge vat and it's way more than I could possibly eat in addition to a meal.
This is the Roast Pork with Green Onions, which is one of my favorites. We used to order Mongolian Beef regularly, because it was my brother's favorite. Now that I don't eat beef, this is a good substitute, since it has the same green onions and crispy rice noodles. I actually like the sweet barbecued pork better anyway.
My family has been going to Frank and Lily Chao's restaurant since they first opened the Mandarin House in South Square mall, around 1980. Around 1990, the Mandarin House moved across Chapel Hill Blvd. to where the Mayflower is today. Eventually, they sold the restaurant and moved to the west coast for a time, around 1998. This made it difficult for us to find the same quality of Chinese food in this area and it felt like a tragedy. When they moved back to this area, they opened their current location, Eastern Lights, on University Drive. There was much rejoicing. When you've been going to the same family's restaurant for about 28 years, you've built up a wealth of memories of not only delicious food, but of family celebrations and even grief.
(One time we went to the Mandarin House, sobbing, after thinking that the cat had accidentally been taken away in an old couch, by Goodwill, but we were wrong. She was fine.)
