Last CallLast Call is The Takeout’s online watering hole where you can chat, share recipes, and use the comment section as an open thread. Here’s what we’ve been reading/watching/listening around the office today.I’ve been back in Chicago this week to visit The Takeout global headquarters, a trip I’ve been looking forward to and fretting over because there are never enough hours in the day when I visit Chicago. I need to eat all the things, see all the people, and did I mention eat all the things?
I had a number of stellar meals and beers and cocktails while I’ve been in town, but one culinary mission I had was to take the water taxi down to Chinatown for some mapo tofu. I first fell in love with mapo tofu when I first had it at Lao Sze Chuan; this time, my friends and I tried out Dongpo Impression, a Szechuan place I hadn’t yet been to.
Oh mapo tofu. I didn’t even care what else my friends ordered—we shared a giant feast—I just need my tofu fix. I like tofu in other applications, but something about the combination of numbing Szechuan peppercorn broth and silky, yielding tofu squares makes my heart happy. It also makes me sweat a little, but I think that’s just the endorphins.
DISCUSSION
Kate, can you suggest a few places for me in Chicago Chinatown to get great, authentic dim-sum? I’m not one who likes spicy food, my most adventurous would be a 2 pad thai on a 1-5 schedule, and 1-3 or 1-4 I’m always 1. I DO enjoy a balanced, sour, face warming hot and sour soup. I like dipping my fried squid rings in sweet chili sauce. But I can’t take face-red, palate-numb, dripping sweat so much your hair is WET spice. I also like Chinese/Asian spicy better than Mexican spicy, it seems more subtle and grows with eating, similarly wanes with a break to eat something else on the table before going back...
Anyway, all that said, I am going soon and I want to have some excellent dim sum. I also, guiltily, wouldn’t mind suggestions for best eggrolls (hand rolled, peppery, stuffed with fluffy cabbage and little bits of pork), or (I know, not ‘real’) General Tso’s. The best I ever had was in college, place closed, but it was a dark, dark burgundy, thick sauce with scallions, rich with garlic, tangy, spicy, sweet, even a little bitter. That Tso’s was So great, I still remember it so fondly, it was amazing with broccoli. Now a days, and in my smaller Fort Wayne (not Indy or Chicago) all the Tso’s is translucent/syrupy and just sweet, mostly, with maybe plum sauce fleeting flavor, and a touch of heat - boring!