SEAFOOD WITH ASPARAGUS AND PASTA FROM WEI HONG PHOTOGRAPH BY KATHERINE BISH
Wei Hong Seafood Restaurant features Chinese cuisine so authentic your Aunt Dot wouldn't touch it
By Dave Lowry
Photograph by Katherine Bish
You know our rule for fine Chinese dining: If there isn't at least one item on the menu that your Aunt Dot would not have considered food, the place has made too many compromises with authenticity. Duck tongue qualifies. And when you can get it prepared two different ways, the place is worth a visit. Wei Hong Seafood Restaurant is among the newest eateries along the section of Olive from I-170 to North & South, a stretch that's become a destination for Asian cuisine, from fast-food joints to fine dining. Wei Hong is closer to the latter, a grand setting with an astounding panoply of Cantonese fare.
The cooking of Canton was exotic when it became the first "Chinese food" widely available here. By the '70s it was dismissed as bland and predictable, supplanted in popularity by the spicier and bolder Hunan and Szechuan cuisines. Only recently has it reemerged, truer to its origins, surprising many with its delicate complexities. Wei Hong has nearly 200 items on the menu, many of them familiar: spicy kung pao chicken ($8.75), mu shu pork ($8.25) and beef chow mein ($8.25). Careful of our girlish figure, we limited our choices to Cantonese or house specials to get an idea of the quality and performance of the kitchen. We weren't disappointed.
Peking duck is offered, but canny diners will go instead for the Cantonese-style roast duck. It's slivered fresh ginger and fragrant five-spice powder you're tasting along with that succulent, crispy brown skin, either a half ($9.25) or whole duck ($18) hacked into big, meaty, savory chunks. Try it with a platter of dark-green Chinese broccoli bathed in a rich oyster sauce ($7.95). In another Cantonese specialty, an entire sole is steamed, the flaky white flesh of the fish lightly infused with fresh ginger and garlic ($14.95). Order this along with bamboo shoots, broccoli, water chestnuts, carrots and bean sprouts, all braised in a velvety sauce with crunchy, meaty black mushrooms ($8.95).
If your idea of fried rice is an overly salty, mushy mess studded with wilted vegetables and bits of meat, try the yang chow version here. It's a full meal, with chunks of ham, shrimp and vegetables, but what really recommends this dish is the guo ba, the skin of slightly scorched rice that comes from the bottom of the wok ($8.25). Speaking of rice, one of the most overlooked delights of southern Chinese cooking is still jook or congee, a soupy stew of rice cooked in a broth until it's soft as porridge. The several versions offered here are all worthwhile, including one mixed with seafood ($5.95) or slices of pork and pickled egg ($4.95).
Good Cantonese cuisine is characterized as much by texture as by taste, so ingredients aren't fussed with or disguised by heavy sauces. If you want to sample it in much of its glory, try the stir-fried whelk. Italians call it scungilli; it's a mollusk that tastes a lot like abalone—chewy but exquisitely flavored. It's presented with vegetables, and you should eat it slowly, savoring the near-perfect blend of tsuei (crunchy and crisp) with nun (soft and tender), all brought together in hsien, a word whose meaning describes Cantonese cooking at its best: displaying the natural taste of the food ($14.95).
Thick chao fun noodles are a Chinese restaurant standard, usually bland, with overcooked ingredients. Here, they're deftly tossed in a searingly hot wok just long enough to be sautéed without absorbing any extra oil. Big portions come bright with fresh, fragrant vegetables also sautéed just al dente, along with shrimp or a seafood combination (both $11.95), or with chicken, beef or pork (all $8.25).
Appetizers are mostly standards, as are the soups, save for a "Chow Zhou fish soup." Any time you read Chaozhou on a menu, take note. Chaozhou is in the Guangdong province of southern China, a place famous for elaborate seafood dishes. This soup, a delicate broth studded with fish slices and vegetables, is not to be missed ($6.95).
Menu descriptions are nonexistent, so unless you read the accompanying Chinese text, there's no way to know that hong sue means that the main ingredient is lightly batter-fried and served with mixed, stir-fried (sue is the "suey" in chop suey) vegetables. It's one of the highlights of Cantonese cooking, a perfect match of light and rich tastes, and it comes with pork meatballs ($8.95), slices of pork and eggplant ($7.95), tilapia and fleshy, tender pike tail (both $10.95).
"X.O. Sauce" is another menu mystery. It's the brand name of a sauce made from a strange combination of dried shrimp, scallops, garlic and other ingredients, and it's enormously useful as a dip or braising liquid. X.O. Sauce is to Chinese restaurant cooking what little cars are to Shriners. (The name was supposed to evoke glamorous images of the similarly titled brandy.) You can get duck tongues braised in it ($10.95), or lightly sautéed with a heavier, oyster sauce-based dressing ($9.95). Either way, be sure to hold the tongues sideways on your chopsticks and bite into them along their length to avoid the rubbery cartilage that runs down their centers.
Though language can be a problem, with explanations not much more useful than the bare-bones menu descriptions, service was swift and efficient and presentations were notably above average. The location is weird. Wei Hong is in the '40s-era Fine Arts Theatre, the seats removed but beautifully restored—with several levels for dining, given the slope of the floor—and well-appointed with the round rosewood tables and tall chairs found in many Chinese places. One always has the feeling that the house lights are about to darken and the show will begin soon.
Wei Hong is the perfect place for a wedding reception or any other gathering where a stage might come in handy. Invite Aunt Dot. Just don't order her the tongues.
Wei Hong Seafood Restaurant
Address: 7740 Olive
Phone: 314-726-0363
Average Main Course: $20
Dress: What you'd wear to the office on casual Fridays.
Reservations: Not necessary unless it's a large party.
Bottom Line: Way-above-average Cantonese fare served in a setting that gives new meaning to the phrase "dinner theater."
