Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House

Chinatown's Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House gets lots of praise for, of course, their hand drawn noodles freshly made to order in house (sit in the back by the kitchen to watch the noodles being pounded out). But my question always with traditional Asian restaurants, and especially those like Nan Zhou that feature soup, is, "Is anything vegetarian?"
I'm happy to report that there are two vegetarian dishes at Nan Zhou, the small and always bustling (meaning get in and get out, 'cause others are waiting) Chinatown restaurant. Two dishes may not seem like a lot, but most of the menu is just meaty variations of noodle soup. Oh, and for the adventurous non-vegetarians there are spicy pigs ears, marinated intestines, and marinated beef tendons in the appetizer section to keep you busy. For $3, a small plate of noodles with peanut sauce and scallions is the cheapest way to fill up. These are great, fresh, chewy noodles with a basic, salty and nutty sauce that was a bit stiff, but a few spoonfuls of my partner's soup broth loosened the noodles right up. No where near as transcendent as Han Dynasty's garlicky sesame noodle dish that will have you dreaming about a plate of noodles (and tasting it) for days, but for $3, you can't complain.
Noodle soups come with either hand drawn noodles or shaved noodles (knife-cut and thicker), and if you don't specify, you're getting the hand drawn noodles, which is what most people get.

The large, $4.50 bowl of steaming vegetable noodle soup has Asian greens, scallions, and cilantro swimming in a piping-hot, mild vegetable broth with a pleasant hint of star anise that can be spiced up with the usual suspects of condiments on the table — soy sauce, vinegar, Sriracha, and chilis in oil. But the fresh, tender noodles are the star here, and you'll think you can't finish the whole bowl, but you will.

Slurp your winter-cold little hearts out vegetarians, because this bowl of noodle soup might be one of only a handful of traditional Asian noodle soups in the city you can enjoy.

Update: The vegetarian-ness of the vegetable noodle soup is dubious. Proceed at your own risk.

Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House
927 Race St., Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-923-1550
Sun-Thurs: 11am-9pm
Fri-Sat: 11am-10pm

Han Dynasty

Two out of the three dished that we ate at Han Dynasty, the much foodie-hyped Philadelphia outpost of Han Chiang's authentic Sichuan restaurant, were not what we initially ordered. With the infamously frank and wise-cracking owner dashing from table to table to ensure all orders go through him in order to guide your decisions, you can expect a similar experience, too.

Honestly, I was a little apprehensive to try Han Dynasty. For one, Han Dynasty is known for their authentically hot spiced dishes that send even pepper fiends into a sweat, and, while I do enjoy spicy food, I do not enjoy setting my face afire and eating in a state of numbness. If you're similarly apprehensive, do not be. All entrees come with a numeric heat scale (1-10) on the menu, so it's easy to steer clear of the dishes that will blow your head off.

Secondly, I wasn't sure how vegetarian friendly the menu was. All of the reviews I've read were about the meat dishes. Also, I could just see Chiang cantankerously telling me a vegetarian life was not worth living, and sending me out the door to reexamine my lifestyle choices if I asked for vegetarian recommendations. No such thing happened, and there are tofu options for many of the entrees, and also a handful of vegetable dishes on the menu.
The appetizer we initially ordered was discovered to not be available after a bit of waiting, so Chiang recommended the Sesame Cold Noodles since it would not take long to come out of the kitchen. Brought to the table by Chiang, he smeared a mountain of garlic on top of the scallion-topped noodles and tossed them table-side with the salty and slightly sweet soy and sesame sauce.

Wow, was there a lot of garlic! Enough to make the Cullen family pick up and move one state over. So much more vibrant and powerful than any sesame noodles I've ever made at home, this dish turned out to me my favorite. Every other table also had a bowl of cold sesame noodles, so these noodles definitely are a crowd pleaser, and probably an easy introduction to Sichuan dishes.
Keeping with the garlic theme, I went a Garlic Sauce Style entree (4 on the spice scale) with stir fried thin strips of firm tofu, ginger, garlic, bamboo shoots, wood ear mushrooms, and bell peppers. Certainly spicier than any "spicy" dish at most Chinese American restaurants, the heat was noticeable but very pleasurable. The garlic sauce just covers the tofu without being cornstarch-gloppy, making the dish seem light.
The boy tried to order Hot Sauce Style tofu, which comes in at 7 on the spice scale, but was told without hesitation by Chiang that he couldn't handle it . . . even if the kitchen made it medium spiciness. Not feeling like arguing, nor having the luxury of explaining our heat tolerance in a relaxed, slow dining room (the dining room was too hectic on our visit for Chiang to stop and converse), the boy acquiesced and ordered something else.

Double Cooked Style fish (2 on the spice scale) with leeks and hot peppers cooked in a black bean sauce and chili oil was only slightly less spicy than my tofu dish, and was equally exceptional. Tender, non-greasy, fried fish was enveloped in a light, salty and spicy sauce studded with only a few black beans, unlike thick black bean dishes at most Chinese restaurants.

For a more relaxed atmosphere and better service, especially if it is your first time dining at Han Dynasty and you'd like to converse with Chiang about the dishes, I'd recommend eating on a weeknight. Our Friday night service was slow, with only Chiang and two other servers, literally, running from table to table in a full house. Tables who came in long after us received their food before us.

Clearly understaffed on a busy night, Chiang recognized our long wait with small samples of two dishes, which, unfortunately, he realized we could not eat because they contained meat the minute he set them on the table. And as we got up to leave, a sincere apology for our wait came from Chiang again.

We've only just scratched the surface at Han Dynasty, but have already had some of the best Chinese dishes we've ever eaten. Now that we have a feel for the spice levels and better understand the vegetarian options, I think we can safely move on to some spicier dishes.

If you do eat meat, be sure to make a reservation for the $25, family-style, communal feasts every first Monday of the month where Chiang sends dish upon dish (mostly meat) out of the kitchen to the salivating Han Dynasty devotees that fill the dining room.

Han Dynasty
108 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-922-1888
BYOB

Dim Sum Garden

Underneath a tunnel which acts as a homeless shelter, and next to a Chinatown bus station sits a the neon-fringed, sparsely decorated Dim Sum Garden. This Shanghainese eatery, which is not really a traditional dim sum house, has gotten praise for their hand drawn noodles and the (apparently in Philly) elusive Shanghai soup bun (Xiao Long Bao). Unfortunately, Shanghai soup buns — a sort of steamed dumpling filled with pork and hot soup — are not vegetarian. Carry on.
What I love about the grungy-looking (although, it was clean) Chinese eatery is the smiling service. What I love even more is the decisiveness and confidence our smiling server had in recommending the better of two dishes — even if she might have been lying just to get on with her job. Thank you for having conviction.
The vegetable steamed buns are not the steamed soup buns most people come looking for, but are the thicker bread-like buns, and are filled with a mixture of chopped Shanghai cabbage, black mushrooms, and tofu. Mildly flavored, be sure to douse the vegetable bun with one of the few condiments on the table, like vinegar, soy sauce, or chili sauce.
The vegetable steamed dumplings (again not the one's filled with soup) are filled with the same mixture as the steamed vegetable buns, so it may be best to pick one over the other so as not to grow tired of the filling.

Having just eaten a really bad dumpling that surely came from a freezer bag at another restaurant, rest assured that Dim Sum Garden's dumplings and buns are housemade. You can watch the employees make the doughy pockets behind the counter.The handdrawn dry noodles with tofu come slathered with a strongly anise-scented brown sauce studded with bits of craggy, chewy tofu and peanuts. I love the chewy noodles, but the extremely salty, though tasty sauce was borderline inedible. I managed to down most of the noodles by convincing myself that enjoying salty food is an indulgence, but an hour later found myself successively downing six glasses of water to quench my thirst.Feeling that the salty noodles with tofu were an aberration, I checked back in with Dim Sum Garden. This time I ordered the tomatoes and eggs over rice, simply because I've never seen a dish of that description on any Chinese menu.

What came out was breakfast on top of rice — a large plate of rice topped with scrambled eggs and ever-so-slightly-sweet cooked tomatoes with side garnish of cooked bok choy. This dish is the absolute opposite end of the salt and seasoning spectrum; there is almost none. Yet, it still tastes good. Condiments from the table livened things up a bit, though. An odd sounding dish, but trust me when I say it is the perfect meal for any time of the day.

If you eat meat, I'd say drop by Dim Sum Garden for the handmade steamed soup buns (every table orders them, so they must be good), but if you're veg, there are plenty of dishes to choose from on the menu.

Dim Sum Garden
59 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, PA 19176
215-627-0218

Yummy Yummy: Ball Waffle

Don't know where, but I stumbled upon the fact that Yummy Yummy (name win!) makes ball waffles — also known as eggette or gai dan jai — a Hong Kong street food consisting of egg, flour, sugar, and evaporated milk. That yellow honeycomb balloon hanging in Yummy Yummy's window is your beacon. Three electric waffle irons at Yummy Yummy with deep round wells crank out the large waffles with pull-apart bite-size balls. When I was there, none of the signs were written in English, so just know going in that there are three flavors of waffle to choose from: plain, chocolate, and green tea with white chocolate.

How do they taste? Like a waffle, actually. A little crispy on the outside, a little doughy on the inside, and subtly sweet.
The green tea waffle tastes faintly of green tea on the first bite, and then it's all waffle after that. The white chocolate chip dropped in the middle of each well (or at least most) adds a bit of sweetness to each bite. I prefer the green tea waffle because of the added sweetness, but the waffle still is not nearly as sweet as most American desserts.
Ball waffle innards!

These two waffles cost a total of $4.

Yummy Yummy
52 N. 10th St., Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-625-9188

Lee How Fook

Many moons ago we were looking for a BYOB Chinese restaurant to tuck into before a show at the Troc, and landed in Lee How Fook on 11th St. in Chinatown.

Small, but not cramped inside, the dining room was less than half full on a weekend evening. The staff sat at one of the dining tables chatting, looking bored and twirling a bottle opener while not actively working.
Pan seared vegetable dumplings were so tough and chewy, I actually inquired about how they were cooked, thinking they were deep fried for too long and possibly reheated. Nope, just pan seared to within an inch of their lives.
From the vegetable section of the menu, I ordered the sauteed string beans, a dish I often get at Chinese restaurants. But here the crisp green beans were in a cloyingly sweet sauce instead of the usual garlicky bean sauce. Thankfully, I like cloyingly sweet sauces at Chinese restaurants, but the switch-up of sauces surprised me a bit.
Mapo Tofu was a large dish of soft tofu squares and diced peppers in an uninspiring and bland sauce, which is why I usually don't order Mapo Tofu, but this was not my dish.

With so many Chinese restaurants in Chinatown, not to mention other parts of the city, next time we crave Chinese we'll skip Lee How Fook, as we did not find one thing to love with our admittedly small sampling of the menu. We did love Lee How Fook's BYOB status, though, and sometimes that counts for a lot.

Lee How Fook
219 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-925-7266
Tues-Sun, 11:30am-10pm
Mon, closed
BYOB

Chifa

In or around the Philly area, Jose Garces sets the bar for Spanish and Latino-influenced tapas restaurants. There's no denying that Amada, Garces' spanish tapas restaurant; Tinto, his Basque tapas restaurant; and Distrito, his Mexican tapas restaurant, are truly top of the line. We diners are fortunate to have his ever expanding empire (Village Whiskey is opening this Thursday! uh, make that Friday) right at our feet, but it is unfortunate for other restaurateurs serving food in the same vein -- they are going to be compared to Garces.

But it's not only other Spanish and Latino tapas restaurants that I compare to Garces, I also pit Garces against Garces. Will one of his restaurants be as good as his others? And so it is, I go to see how Garces' Peruvian and Cantonese-fusion tapas restaurant, Chifa, stacks up?
Pisco sour is the national drink of Peru, and I hear Chifa makes a mean one, but I cannot resist a drink with lima beans as an ingredient, so went with the Lima Bean Fizz, an eerily glowing blue-green drink mixed with cucumber infused vodka, lima beans, and Thai Basil. It's the cucumber and basil that really shines through in this drink, not the lima bean, so the legume leery should not hesitate to order up a Lima Bean Fizz.
These complimentary yucca-flour cheese rolls with sweet and spicy guava butter alone are enough reason to visit Chifa. Warm and aromatically cheesy with a chewy center, these rolls are addictive, and possibly the best part on my entire meal.

You know how people go to Olive Garden and order the cheapest item on the menu just to get the complimentary bread sticks and salad? Not to compare Chifa's rolls to Olive Garden's bread sticks (no comparison!), but I'd go to Chifa and order one of anything just to get these fried cheese rolls.

While I did have two meat eaters with me on this visit, I am not going to cover their meat dishes (other reviews out there have done a great job of this), but will stick to the vegetarian dishes. Be sure to ask your server what dishes can be made vegetarian that aren't under the 'Vegetable' section, because there are a couple.After such a high with the cheese rolls, these scallion pancakes were such a low. Uniformly round with small scallion bits, I thought they lacked the flavor and character of slapdash scallion pancakes packed with scallions found at many Asian restaurants. This is the only dish of the evening (meat dishes included) that we would not order again. Simply put, the scallion pancakes are boring. I asked for Chaufa, a stir fried rice dish with mango and edamame, to be served without the chorizo and scallops. Moister and sweeter than most stir fries I've ever had, I can't say that this sizable-for-tapas hot pot of rice blows stir fried rice from other Chinese restaurants out of the water. Excellent, tasty, sweet, savory? Yes. I'm sure it's the chorizo and scallops that elevate this dish above standard Chinese fare, but without those ingredients, you're looking at a bowl of stir fried rice.Under the vegetable section you'll find a dish called Aji Mushrooms with only Aji mushrooms, tofu, and potatoes listed as a descriptor. I ordered this without asking what the dish was like, and was completely surprised to have a puffy pastry dough baked in a bowl arrive, to which the server poked a hole in the center and poured cream over the mushrooms and tofu inside. It was like eating a pot pie filled with the best mushroom soup you've ever had. This dish even stood out amongst the meat dishes.
By omitting the King Crab, the kitchen can make a vegetarian version of Red Curry Del General with eggplant and tofu. Underneath the sweet and spicy red curry sits a mound of sticky jasmine rice. An excellent red curry, but I've had just as good from most Thai places for much cheaper.
With the recommended three dishes per person, we were too full for dessert, but these complimentary puffed rice bars, otherwise known as Rice Krispie treats, topped with and edible dragon printed paper did the trick of bringing our meal to an end.

As per my experience, I'd recommend staying away from the more classically Asian dishes (although, apparently the pork belly buns are to die for) and order the dishes that cannot be had at every corner Chinese or Thai restaurant, not because these dishes aren't great at Chifa, but because your average (really it would be above-average) Asian restaurant has already perfected these dishes.

With still a few veggie dishes on the menu untried, a return visit is definitely in order, if only to get those fried puffy cheese balls again!

Chifa
707 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-925-5555
Lunch: Mon-Sat 11:30am-2:30pm
Dinner: Sun-Thurs 5pm-10pm; Fri-Sat 5pm-12am

Dumpling House

Update: no longer open.

I would have never seen Dumpling House, a Chinese restaurant in the Little Italy neighborhood of Wilmington that opened up earlier this summer, if it weren't for the passenger in my car who turned around and spied the red awning with the words Dumpling House on the front of a small building as I drove down a one way street perpendicular to the street Dumpling house sits on. Good drivers keep their eyes on the road, after all.

It's been a long while since Dumpling House came under my radar, and, since then, has gotten good reviews in Delaware's News Journal (I'd link, but print media just doesn't get it; you have to pay for the article) and their free rag, Spark (which does let you read an article online that's older than 7 days), so hopped on the bandwagon and got myself on over there.

I met up with my new bud, Mike Mathews, a political blogger at Down With Absolutes and radio host on Delaware Talk Radio, who also enjoys good food and a little critique. (I eat a MANNA pie and win his contest, he gives me David Byrne tickets, I give him homemade cookies, we do lunch -- that 's the backstory. Moral of the story: eat pie; it's good for you.)With three booths, a two-top, and a five-seat bar downstairs, and a handful of tables on the second floor, the inside of Dumpling House is small, but certainly not a tight squeeze (they could fit more tables, if they wanted), and we had no problem getting a table downstairs at lunch during the week. Go ahead and make a reservation for Friday and Saturday night dining, if you want to be certain of a seat, though. And bring a bottle of wine, as the Dumpling House is BYOB with a corkage fee.

The appetizers at Dumpling House are quite affordable ( $1.95 - $6.95), and soups ($7.95) are reasonable, but the entrees are a little on the steep side ($12.95 - $20.95), and there is no lunch menu with discounted prices.

The menu at Dumpling House is thoughtfully printed with green ink to signify vegetarian dishes, and blue ink to signify non-vegetarian dishes. I knew I was pushing my luck when I asked our server if the dumpling soup (printed in blue ink) had a vegetarian broth, but she went back to the kitchen to check, and, no, it's not; it's made with chicken broth.
Gotta go with dumplings at a place called Dumpling House, right? Orders of steamed or pan-seared; house, chicken, beef, or vegetarian; 4, 8, 12, or 13+ dumplings are available. We decided to split an order of eight pan-seared dumplings -- four vegetarian and four house dumplings -- that come with a soy sauce-based dipping sauce and chili sauce ($10.95).

This is where I admit that I'm no Chinese food expert. I rarely eat Chinese-American because I find the flavors bland compared to my more loved Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. Mike eats more Chinese than I do, and declared the dumpling wrappers thinner and not as doughy as one usually finds, and this is a good thing. I find the hint of warm, star anise in the mushroom, tofu, onion, celery and cabbage stuffed veggie dumplings pleasing, and Mike concurs that his house dumplings stuffed with pork, shrimp, and veggies also has a pleasant hint of star anise. Crispy edges make the both of us happy. I went ahead and splurged on the spicy eggplant entree ($16.95), and was fully expecting the garlic and black bean sauce eggplant entree (quite good) one gets at every Chinese restaurant. So, I was surprised to see a vibrant dish of large hunks of fried eggplant, enoki mushrooms, green and yellow bell pepper, and strips of daikon (not sure, but it was pale and crunchy like daikon) in a light, but very flavorful garlic sauce made spicy with large slices of jalapenos, basil, and the tiniest little stems of some herb that tasted like cilantro (again, not sure). Well, you could have bowled me over! This eggplant dish was unexpected, and quite possibly the tastiest Chinese dish I've ever eaten. But I still wish it came at a cheaper price for lunch.Mike ordered the stir fried noodles with shrimp, mushrooms, and veggies ($14.95). He liked his dish, but thought it a bit oily. I was so impressed with my entree that I tried to get him to admit that his noodle dish was at least a notch better than what he gets at most Chinese joints, but he said the dish was very similar to the lo mein dishes he can get any where. He's one tough customer, but I'll take his word.

Dumpling House definitely deserves multiple revisits to see what other great Chinese dishes they're pushing out, but I'm not sure I can order anything other than the spicy eggplant; I've already found a favorite.

Dumpling House
1828 W. 11th St., Wilmington, DE 19805
302-888-1828
Tues.-Sun., 11:30 am-2:30 pm, 5:30 pm-9:30 pm
BYOB

K.C.'s Pastries

My eating schedule doesn’t sync with anyone’s. I like to eat lunch between 10:30 a.m and 11:30 a.m.; dinner between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.. And if I don’t snack every two hours on the hour, I get cranky. (Really. I don’t lie.) A dinner date at 8 p.m with normal people? Gotsta have a snack to survive.

Seriously cheap snacks – buns, cakes, and bubble tea – are what K.C.’s pastries in Chinatown is good for. Grab a bun, a Chinese pastry filled with sweet or savory fillings, and you’re (I’m) good to go ‘til dinner on normal people’s schedule.

Steer clear of the meat-filled buns (if vegetarian), and most of what’s left are sweet-filled buns, but the cheese and corn bun can take care of your savory cravings. Canned corn and cheese atop a sweet bread roll may sound like something from a college dorm kitchen, but it tastes just as good as you remember your ramen culinary creations – damn good!

For whatever reason, we were more scared of the peanut butter bun than the corn and cheese bun, but that peanut butter bun was out of this world. I think we feared a glob of gooey peanut butter in the center (that was my fear, at least), but, instead, the pastry had layers of dough and layers of just enough peanut butter to satisfy. No goo bomb inside!

Thanks K.C.! I made it to dinner (at 8:30 p.m.), and was most pleasant to be around.

K.C.'s Pastries, two locations:
109 N. 10th St., Philadelphia, PA, 19107
145 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, PA, 19107
215-238-8808

P. F. Chang's China Bistro

I hope no one gets up in arms about what I’m about to say. Chinese-American food is probably my least favorite, widely popular (restaurants everywhere) ethnic cuisine. Chinese-American food is not offensive; it’s just that I prefer spicier, more in-depth seasoning. I’ve never eaten “real” Chinese food, and don’t know if I ever will without traveling to China, so I can’t comment on that front.

So, why did I dine at P. F. Chang’s, a Chinese-American chain in the suburbs? Because when I drive past the place, the smell permeating the air is phenomenal. I also have a friend that is a server there who vouches for their food, and added that they have many vegetarian dishes. Plus, I wasn’t hanging in restaurant-rich Philly that night.

I was impressed with P. F. Chang’s before I even stepped in the door. As I often do, I checked the restaurant’s web site to see if there is anything on their menu I can eat. P.F. Chang’s web menu is exceptional. They are up front about the ingredients and nutritional information for every dish on the menu, and make it very easy to access this information. They clearly emphasize that their vegetarian oyster sauce contains no animal products, and they even have a gluten-free menu and an athletic training menu. This is something that, apparently, a lot of national chains do, and I like it. I do understand that this information is absurd to expect from independent restaurants, as they have a much smaller budget, and flexibility as to what comes out of the kitchen.

The wait for a table at P. F. Chang’s sans reservation on a Friday night is not pretty. Our thirty minute wait was more like a fifty minute wait, but out in the suburbs there’s always a Pier 1 and Borders next door in which to while your time away. I also compulsively check all horse statues for anatomical correctness, but only a mere two seconds were spent confirming that P. F. Chang’s overbearing statue was not molded correctly.

Once in, we sat in our friend’s section and took all ordering cues from him. We started with a mighty good mixed drink (a separate post coming on that one), pan-fried vegetarian dumplings (only 40 more calories and 4 more grams of fat than steamed), and vegetarian lettuce wraps for appetizers. The dumplings were like most dumplings at most Chinese-American joints – filled with a mash of various vegetables, mushrooms, and seasonings –not at all bad, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The lettuce wraps were the star of the appetizers. Small cubes of fried silken tofu seasoned with Chinese Five Spice, mint and lime came with four large lettuce leaves in which you spoon as much or as little of the filling on top, and wrap up. A soy and vinegar dipping sauce accompanied the dish. The lettuce wraps were the star because the seasoning had punch, and normally squishy silken tofu was crisp and enjoyable due to the fact that the tofu cubes were small, so had a greater crispy fried surface to squishy center ratio. I’ve never enjoyed silken tofu (outside of dessert applications) more than at P. F. Chang’s. Our friend said that many people order this large sized appetizer at lunch as a main, and I can see why.

Our friend’s most recommended vegetarian entrée is the stir-fried Japanese eggplant in a chili pepper sauce. The tender eggplant melts in your mouth, and while the description “chili pepper sauce” makes you think “hot,” the sauce is more garlicky, and has a depth of flavor that makes me happy.

We decided to go with the Singapore Street Noodles with curry sauce, a dish recommended by our friend but not listed as vegetarian. A quick check with the chef, and we had tofu substituted for shrimp and chicken that normally comes with the dish. I always make the mistake of envisioning Thai coconut curries when I see curry on a Chinese-American menu, and am disappointingly awakened when the dish arrives with a curry that tastes like generic curry seasoning from a spice jar. P. F. Chang’s Singapore Street Noodles are such a curry, but one of the better Chinese-American curries I’ve had. In fact, I went straight for the noodles the next morning for breakfast (we had plenty of leftovers).

Even though I regularly discount Chinese-American cuisine, I would definitely choose to dine at P. F. Chang’s over other national chains that populate the suburbs. The food we had at P. F. Chang’s was good, and there are an impressive amount of vegetarian options – many more options than say…Chili’s or Applebee’s.

Other top vegetarian recommendations from our friend: Sichuan green beans, and vegetarian ma po tofu.

P. F. Chang's China Bistro, PA locations and NJ locations.

New Harmony

New Harmony is one of a handful of kosher vegan Chinese restaurants in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. I often get Kingdom of Vegetarians and Cherry Street Vegetarian (the other veggie Chinese restaurants) confused with each other, as I’ve visited both a few times, but not frequently, since I have to be in the mood for Chinese. I know for a fact that I’ve never been to New Harmony, so I gave it a try a while back.

It turns out that Kingdom of Vegetarians and New Harmony are owned by the same people and have the same menu, so perhaps there was no need for me to seek out New Harmony. Maybe someone who eats Chinese more frequently than I do can chime in about any differences.

First off, let me just say…nice touch with the spray painted sign on the awning! It truly did help me hone in on the place as I walked down the street searching. Once inside I was not surprised to find a typical, casual Chinese joint – nothing fancy. And New Harmony is no different than other vegetarian Chinese restaurants – mock meat everywhere! I normally get General Tso’s chicken when dining at Chinese places because I like the sweet and spicy sauce. Nostalgia told me to order sweet and sour pork – my favorite when I was a child. I loved the thick, syrupy, bright red sauce covering the fried nuggets of pork. I was sorely disappointed to find the sauce at New Harmony to be thin, watery, and not bright red. The fried balls of seitan/tofu/what-ever were fine, but it’s the sauce that makes sweet and sour pork. Waahh.

I had read raves about the jumbo fried shrimp with glazed walnuts, so my partner ordered this dish. Rave, indeed! The mock shrimp had an uncanny resemblance in texture and taste to the real thing, and the sauce was sweet and garlicky. When I became a vegetarian in high school, the only meat I did not give up for the first year was fried shrimp – I loved them so. We never really ate much seafood at home, and rarely dined out, so, after a year, I lost interest in shrimp, and that was that.

Now I’m craving fried shrimp, thanks to New Harmony. At least, I know were to get the next best thing. Sweet and sour mock pork? Not so much.

New Harmony, 135 N. 9th St., Philadelphia 19107(215)627-4520
Daily, 11:30am-11:30pm