Hong Kong eatery's winning recipe: low prices, high quality, easy parking
Type: Chinese
Hours: Daily, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Good choices: Fried scallops with lily bulbs; veal chops with black pepper sauce; eggplant with hot garlic sauce; three seafood delights with spicy salt.
MING'S CAFE
160 E. Berkeley Street, Boston
(617) 338-8830
Restaurant reviewed 03/16/98 by Linda Matchan
Imagine: A Chinese restaurant on the edge of an expanding Chinatown with its own parking lot. But that's not all that Ming's Cafe, which serves Hong Kong-style Chinese food, has going for it. It is well situated for takeout orders too, convenient for anyone driving near East Berkeley street on their way home. And the prices are staggeringly low, considering the quality and high standards. The most expensive items are $9.95; almost everything else, including seafood dishes, is in the $5.95-$7.95 range for very sizeable portions.
But most important, the food is spectacular. Only two months old, Ming's is owned by the same family that owns Ming's Supermarket, around the corner on Washington Street. The restaurant, located on the site of a former bank, is unassuming in appearance (early Chinese luncheonette might sum it up) with a lively family atmosphere.
A few words about the cuisine. This is authentic Hong Kong cuisine, a more sophisticated version of Cantonese cooking. It is heavy on seafood, with an emphasisis on light seasonings and sauces that enhance the natural flavors of the food. It is not the Chinese food most Americans have come to know and love. You won't find fried wontons here, or chop suey, or sweet and sour chicken. No moo shi on the premises. No fried spring rolls, not a one.
You can, however, order fried baby octopus with spicy salt, crispy fried squab, and fried cuttlefish with pickled mustard green. You can choose your own live eel out of a fish tank, or have your sea conch served with black bean sauce.
You can also get less exotic dishes, including a savory orange-flavored chicken dish for an amazingly reasonable $5.95; eggplant with garlic sauce ($4.95); and shrimp fried rice ($4.25.) And the staff is aware of the fact that American diners tend to have limited exposure to Hong Kong Chinese food. ``I think that is not for you; it's too Chinese,'' a waiter cautioned us when we asked for salted chicken with foon, suggesting a beef foon dish instead.
(One note: Be patient when you order. The menus don't explain what the dishes are, and some of the waiters don't speak English.)
One of the outstanding qualities of Ming's is that - even with its extensive menu - ingredients don't seem to repeat themselves. We've grown accustomed, in many Chinese restaurants, to seeing the standard sorts of vegetables. Peppers. Celery. Pea pods, sprouts, maybe straw mushrooms if you're lucky.
But at Ming's, a meal brings all sorts of surprises. We ordered stir fried bok choy ($4.50) and by mistake (our luck) we were served a delightful dish of pea tendrils. One of the eight delights with foon ($4.95) turned out to be, in addition to squid and crabmeat, some tasty broccoli rabe. The fried scallop with lily bulb ($7.95) was served with the best baby corns we've ever tasted. Wood ears showed up in the yu shi shrimp with heads dish ($7.95) (although oddly enough, the heads didn't).
Everything tasted freshly prepared, and service was speedy. Veal chop with black pepper sauce ($5.95) was mesmerizing; we were seduced by the tender veal ribs, with a black pepper bite that was almost, but not quite, hot. The stir-fried scallops were prepared in a delicate sauce, light and refreshing with crunchy vegetables. The dish of beef with foon noodles ($4.50) offered extremely tender meat.
What a feast! We sampled a lovely roast duck with foon soup (Number 109 on the menu, for reference), with a nice broth and four or five pieces of delicious duck ($3.50). The eggplant with hot garlic sauce ($4.50) was delightfully spicy. The squid and dry squid with pepper and black bean sauce ($5.95) was an excellent treatment of this dish - tender squid with reconstituted dry squid in a very, very savory black bean sauce. And then there was dish number 632: three seafood delights with spicy salt. It was wonderful: beautifully fried squid, scallops and shrimp, seasoned with spicy salt that was enhanced with a touch of hot pepper. We found that three of us could eat like emperors for $40. The fortune cookie message summed it up: ``There is beauty in simplicity.''
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