|
Type: Chinese
Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 11:30 a.m.- 10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-10 p.m.
Good choices: Minced shrimp with pine nuts; wonton soup; bean curd skin roll; tri-Szechuan delight; shredded potato with chef's special sauce; dry sauteed string beans.
Credit cards: All major credit cards.
Access: Street-level entrance; all facilities on one floor.
|
PEKING CUISINE
870 Walnut Street, Newton
(617) 969-0888
Restaurant reviewed 06/17/98 by Adam Pertman
Expect to be surprised. From the moment you walk through the doors of Peking Cuisine, you'll know that this isn't just another suburban Chinese restaurant. OK, OK, so it's in a strip mall next to a pizza-delivery joint and a store that sells eyeglasses, but that's where the similarity ends.
There are no bright lights, dark furniture, or red-and-gold pseudo-artifacts to remind diners what kind of restaurant they've chosen. Instead, Peking Cuisine evokes the feel of a comfortable French bistro: decidedly subdued and even a touch elegant (if such a thing is possible in a strip mall).
White cloths are draped across the tables for dinner; thin lime lines of paint and a thin string of holiday lights accent the off-white and pastel green color scheme; a handful of porcelain plates, imprinted with delicate depictions of Chinese scenes, decorate the walls.
The ambience provides an appropriate setting for the cooking to come. Which is to say that if you're in the mood for heaps of Chinese food in thick or powerful sauces (just what the palate sometimes demands), head elsewhere.
The sauces here are light, the vegetables tender-crisp, and the flavors wonderfully subtle. And the large menu of mostly traditional, and consistently delicious, Szechuan and Hunan dishes contains some nice surprises.
We were particularly taken by an appetizer we'd never tried in a Chinese restaurant before - bean curd skin roll, for $4.95 - and by an equally unusual entree - shredded potato with chef's special sauce, for $7.95. The former was composed of marinated black mushrooms and bamboo shoots, wrapped in a wafer-thin tofu shell and then lightly sauteed; the latter, which looked like a plateful of julienned french fries before they'd been dunked in oil, had been tossed with shreds of scallions and bathed in a slightly tangy peppercorn sauce.
Both were delightful, partly because of their peculiarity but mainly because they were so well prepared. Indeed, with the exception of the fine but routine eggrolls (two for $3.50) and the crab rangoons (eight for $5.25 and never one of our favorites), all the food we sampled was first-rate.
Among the appetizers, other standouts included the fried chicken wings ($4.95), which were more tender and less greasy than most; the boneless spare ribs ($5.95), ditto on the tenderness and greasiness fronts; and the minced shrimp and vegetables with pine nuts and hoisin sauce ($7.95), a sweet, crunchy treat that you wrap in lettuce leaves and eat with your fingers.
It's always impressive when restaurants that use a broad variety of vegetables, as Asian ones generally do, are able to bring all those differing textures and densities to just the right state of crispness before serving. Peking Cuisine, which includes more vegetables in its main courses than most, accomplishes the task splendidly.
Every bite of broccoli, every snow mushroom, and every bamboo shoot in the House Special Sizzling Platter ($10.95) would have been pleasing on its own; mixed with jumbo shrimp and thin slices of tender beef and chicken in a mild ginger sauce, it was quite a find. Similarly, the chicken with pea pods ($8.25) offered a near-perfect rendition of its featured vegetable, crisp carrots, and chestnuts - along with tender slices of white meat - in a sauce that revealed only the essence of its garlic and rich stock base.
Even more satisfying was the Tri Szechuan Delight ($9.95), which started off with shrimp, beef, and chicken, added lightly cooked pieces of green and red pepper, and threw in some particularly tasty black mushrooms. Coating all these elements was a thin but spicy garlic sauce with a fire that revealed itself slowly, gently, more like a sneak attack than an invasion. That's a compliment, by the way.
The one soup we tried, wonton ($1.95 for a pint, $3.75 for a quart), provided another example of how well Peking Cuisine it's supposed to be delicate; most places don't make it right.makes traditional dishes. The dumplings themselves were less doughy than most and, while we love rich stocks, the unusually unsalty chicken base used here was deliberately, deliciously understated.
One item we ordered did break the pattern of delicacy.
It was the dry sauteed string beans ($7.95), a standard menu option but one that's difficult to get just right. That's because the beans are supposed to be overdone, but in a way that leaves them neither too limp nor too crisp. At Peking Cuisine, they looked like a picture in a cookbook, and tasted like the recipe was devised by a pro.
If we had one complaint, it was that the presentation of the dishes was lackluster for a restaurant that clearly wants to shine. In all other ways, though, the place already glows.
Tips & hits
