Citywise
Pass the Chop Sticks, Por Favor
Texas at last has some first rate Chinese Restaurants. And They're in (where else?) San Antonio.
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THE CUISINE OF NORTHERN CHINA (Peking), Shanghai, and the western province of Szechuan remained little-known to Americans until the late 1960's. Then, a sudden flowering of interest in Chinese food led curious gourmets to explore the hot, spicy, oily foods of Szechuan and the graceful, aristocratic seasonings of the Mandarin style. They loved them. Went wild about them, in fact. "Northern" Chinese restaurants sprang up on the East and West coasts, and new Szechuan restaurants vied with one another to produce dishes so intimidatingly fiery that the prudent customer often wondered whether he should have brought along a thermos of milk as an emergency fire extinguisher for his tender gastric linings.
Before this Great Culinary Leap Forward, only the merest handful of Chinese restaurants in the United States served anything but Cantonese food. Among the best of these were the two branches of the Peking Restaurant in Washington, D.C., praised by long-time New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne as being "as good as anything New York or San Francisco, which boast of their Chinatowns, can offer."
Early this year Karate Hsu, who served as chef at one of the Pekings and is the brother of their owner, set forth on his own to open a branch somewhere in the vast virgin territory away from the Coasts. Like the Leons, he picked San Antonio. Bolstered by a modest amount of missionary zeal ("I saw there was no Peking food in San Antonio. I want people to try it so they say, 'Mandarin food is O.K.'") he selected a location in a Chinese-owned building on San Antonio's near West side and set about remodeling it, doing most of the work himself. In March, 1973, the improbably-named Peking Jr. Restaurant was born.
At its best, the food at Karate's restaurant is simply unbeatable in Texas. He has a repertory of over 400 dishes—the whole menu of the Peking, Washington, is available for your inspection, and with advance notice he can prepare anything on it. One of the best of these is Chicken Velvet, a Chinese banquet dish reserved for special occasions and consisting of finely minced chicken breast, mixed with egg white and stirfried in a matter of seconds along with black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and snow peas. For some unfathomable reason, Karate insists on calling this Froon Chicken (perhaps that's really its name), but it is magnificent.
He also can prepare Peking Duck (hung for three days with spices before cooking), Twice-cooked Shrimp, and Twice-cooked Pork, provided you give him some prior notice.
The house menu at the Peking Jr. is much more limited than the parent branch, and some of the listed items like Jao Tze (boiled meat dumplings, $2) are frequently unavailable. But even if you walk in unheralded, you can expect to find succulent Chinese dishes you didn't even know existed. Simply set aside the menu and tell Karate you want real Chinese food, not chow mein or egg foo young, then sit back and see what he brings. Your repast will probably include Two Kinds of Meat Szechuan Style (shredded pork and chicken in a hot sauce, about $5), truly superb; Moo-Shi Pork (a deftly-seasoned melange of crisp vegetables, egg, and shredded pork rolled at the table in thin crepe-like pancakes, about $4); Kung-Pao Chicken (chicken with peanuts in a hot sauce, $3.50); or Curry Chicken ($3). You can also get such things as O O soup (40¢), a commendable Sweet and Sour Pork ($2.50), Oyster-sauced Beef ($3.60), or Hot-and-Sour Soup (50¢). For the spicier dishes, be sure to mention that you want them hot; otherwise Karate may play it safe and opt for milder seasoning.
Karate wanted his place to be "like a family restaurant." He succeeded. It is essentially a one-man operation. He does all the cooking (ask him to show you his specially-designed small woks, reduced from the usual gargantuan restaurant size in order to improve the cooking); he washes all his own dishes; with the aid of one waitress, he waits all the tables; you can sometimes hear him singing along with the exotic recorded Oriental music as he chops away in the back. If the place is not busy, he is as likely as not to sit down and join you while you eat. (You can learn a lot from this.)
As you might have gathered, dinner at the Peking Jr. is not a particularly sedate experience. Karate knows a lot more about classic Chinese cooking than he does about running a restaurant, and the rough edges are sometimes painfully obvious. This is a pity, because the excellence of the food surely merits better organization. But organization depends in part on a steady flow of hungry customers, and the misfortune of the Peking Jr. to date has been that people just don't even know it exists. Located in the warehouse and market district on a one-way street used mainly by chicanos traveling between downtown San Antonio and the barrios of the West Side, it has phenomenally low visibility to the Anglo clientele that supports the King Wah. Actually, though, it is no more than an easy four-minute walk under IH 35 from the popular, all-night Mi Tierra Mexican restaurant.
Karate worries that customers who do know about his place may stay away at night because they think the neighborhood might be dangerous. He points to the parking directly in front of his door and scoffs at the idea. "Besides," he chuckles, "I studied karate for seventeen years and taught the Washington, D.C. police department. I can take care of things." A giant blown-up photo on the wall attests to his black-belt status. Nevertheless, in his search for regular customers who think "Mandarin food is O.K.," Karate is contemplating a shift to a Northside location; you should check to make sure he is still at 406 Buena Vista before you go.
A FOOTNOTE ON OTHER CHINESE restaurants in Texas: while we have found none to compare with the Peking Jr. and the King Wah, the runnerup would certainly be the Peking Palace, 4119 Lomo Alto, Dallas. Also associated with the Washington Pekings, it is comfortable, pleasant, and smoothly-run. The food (though good) lacks the discipline of the others, and the prices are a little on the high side. Austin's best is the Great Wall, 12408 Bumet Road; but its food is merely high-quality Texas-Chinese rather than the real thing. By reputation the Ming Palace is the best in Houston, which goes to show that reputations can be wrong. It bears no resemblance to an authentic Chinese restaurant. We have yet to find a suitable place in Fort Worth.
GOOD CHINESE FOOD IS SHEER delight. Once you become
familiar with it, you may find yourself shopping around for a good wok and a reliable set of recipes
for home-cooking. (We strongly recommend The Chinese Cookbook, by Craig Claiborne and Virginia
Lee, as the best available guide for the novice and the old-timer alike). Texas is on the threshold of
having a reasonable selection of dependable Chinese restaurants for the first time in its history.
Although the prices at the best new restaurants may seem high when compared to the price at your old
Chinese-American chop suey standby, the quality of the ingredients and the excellence of the final
result are well worth what you pay.
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