Phil I.
Yelp
Wow!!! Let me start with this is a special Cantonese restaurant! As in, perfect for date nights, proposals, birthdays, and other special occasions. BUT, priced at a point that it can be done more often than once in a lifetime or once a year. The ambiance is wonderful! Low level music. Quiet enough you can have a nice conversation, loud enough to add a nice feel. The decor is a hoot! It is very classy, then you look closely and all the paintings have a wonderful and humorous touch! For example, in the beautiful painting of the last supper, all the food on the table are entrees from Chinglish!! In the Napoleon painting, Napoleon is reaching for PohPoh's dumplings (Grandma's dumplings) with chopsticks!!
Now on to the important part, our experience! We were greeted and seated by the lovely, M. Kitty (and wife of) the owner (the other owner being Ken!) after being seated. Upon being seated, M. Regina came to our table, introduced herself to us and took orders for drinks, that sort of thing. After perusing the menu and asking Regina what recommendations she had, we ordered PohPoh's chicken dumplings (you have your choice of chicken, pork, or vegan). These were so good! A nice little spice that was unexpected but soooooo good! We also ordered fried wontons, hot and sour soup and egg drop soup. The hot and sour soup is what my friend always orders to judge what the rest of the meal is going to reflect and he said it was OUTSTANDING! The fried wontons were delicious and maybe a little bit more American than Cantonese. The egg drop soup was ... silky and sooooo good!
For meals we ordered: Mongolian Beef, Lemon Chicken, Scallion Beef, Candied Walnut Prawns, and Braised Tofu with Shiitake Mushrooms. The prawns were incredibly fresh; if I didn't know better, I would have thought they had just gone out back and scooped the prawns out of some waterway immediately before preparing! Everyone raved about the Mongolian Beef and Scallion beef. The meat was so incredibly tender! It was delicious. Lemon chicken, it was cooked perfectly! The chicken was very lightly battered, think thinner than tempura, but the chicken was definitely the star of the dish in that the chicken was absolutely perfect! Not a hint of that weirdness chicken sometimes does where it has chewy spots or that yucky I-was-frozen-thawed-pre-cooked-refrigerated-and-then-finished taste. BUT, the most BRILLIANT dish of the evening was unequivocally the Braised Tofu with Shiitake Mushrooms! Holy schmoley!!! The mushrooms; THE MUSHROOMS! They were Heaven on the tongue! I actually don't have words; the best I can get to is they were at least as silky as the tofu! Even the carnivores at the table were astounded! Everything on this platter was beyond perfection, beyond imagination!!! Ken, the owner came by and I was raving about the dish, he told us the mushrooms were marinated for two days! They are magical without being Oregon magical (IYKYN.)
I guess I should talk about the drinks, too! The table had the Chinglish lager, very refreshing and light! There was also a drink I heard as being the Handover drink. A cocktail that looked very "cool", like what some cool soon-to-be-titan-of-industry would be drinking in early 1960's! There was also some beautifully sexy something or other in a coupe glass. I almost imagined my friend was wearing an evening gown, with long, gloves, smoking a cigarette from a cigarette holder like she was a movie star stepping out of the silver screen from the glory days of Hollywood! Of course, there was vodka on the rocks, you know, that's our thing.
There wasn't a lick of leftovers and we were too stuffed to try any desserts. The mind was wanting, the belly could not accommodate!
I cannot recommend enough that you come to this off-strip gem!!!!