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Chinese done right
That rice-as-main-ingredient is visible at Boulder's Golden Lotus restaurant. Large portions of meat, veggies, soup and noodle dishes are served with accompanying rice. I always try to eat my fill of rice and use the rest as flavoring agents for it but usually end up eating a huge amount of the other foods. Last time Jim and I visited the Lotus was no exception. We ordered more dishes than were necessary or modest and ate huge amounts of them with happy abandon, thinking not at all about protein, fat or carb count. Ah, what a happy meal. It was hard to decide on a soup—they've got a wide variety, including the usual wonton and hot and sour as well as more unusual ones, including one with seaweed. In the end we started with corn and chicken soup, which was made of a clear broth with slices of tender white-meat chicken and the sweet bite of corn kernels. It went down a treat and got us ready for the vegetarian chicken wraps that we had next—a tasty combination of finely chopped vegetables and soy "meat" served with crispy lettuce leaves. They were quite delicious and the texture was meaty; you won't miss not having chicken at all. After making short work of our starters we were a little daunted when the rest of the meal arrived. I had ordered enough for several extra people. I just couldn't help it, so much on the menu looked interesting. Plum duck, chicken on a bed of spinach, vegetable chow fun and fish with mushrooms were just too appealing to pass up. And for the most part we were not disappointed. The duck dish had chunks of duck in a thick, sweet sauce. It was a little too fatty for my taste and I ended up having to pull thick pieces of skin off the duck. I do love duck fat—it is probably the most flavorful and luscious fat in the world—but this was too much even for my fat-loving palate. The chicken with spinach was outstanding. A large pile of cooked but still-moist white meat chicken slices was mounded over an even larger pile of cooked and seasoned deep-green spinach. The combination, with a light, garlicky, clear sauce, was delicious. The chow fun, wide rice noodles cooked with assorted vegetables, was standard—neither particularly good nor bad. I ate it but didn't get excited about it. The fish, on the other hand, was worth a round of excitement. Small chunks of orange roughy were swimming in a rich brown sauce with bite-sized pieces of various mushrooms. Of course, in addition to the more interesting dishes, Golden Lotus also serves up the standard and ever popular sweet and sour pork, sesame chicken, beef with broccoli and fried rice. We sampled some of those on Christmas day when we went there with my sister and brothers-in-law (because what else do people who don't celebrate Christmas do that day?). Both of the guys prefer the familiar dishes and enjoyed the way they were done at Golden Lotus. But if that's all you've ever had at a Chinese restaurant, do yourself a favor and branch out—try something you've never had before. You might just love it. And if not, you can always go back to the more usual American Chinese specialties next time. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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Unless you live in New York, San Francisco and maybe a
handful of other cities in the U.S.—or have been to China—it's
likely that you've never eaten real Chinese food in a restaurant. We get an
Americanized version of Chinese food here, which is generally suited to our
taste—less spicy, saltier and made of familiar ingredients. And with meat
as a centerpiece, whereas in China it is more of a garnish, something to
complement the vegetables and ubiquitous rice. Forget about the popular and
nutritionally questionable high-protein, low-carb diet. As in most Asian
countries, rice is the main staple and is eaten in large quantities at every
meal.
