Post #319821 by pappythesailor on Thu, Jul 19, 2007 8:28 AM

Cafe Ramblings by Larry Lipson 7 Sep. 1973 Van Nuys, Calif.

Eng Land is Cantonese

Some 25 Years ago, Benny Eng opened a Chinese Restaurant on Pico Blvd. near Robertson on the west side of Los Angeles called Wan Q.
A quarter of a century back meant a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles was simply that--a Chinese restaurant! No frills, just good Cantonese Food purveyed in establishments offering various degrees of oriental trappings.
But somewhere along the way came the Polynesian explosion. Donn Beach probably began the whole thing with his Don the Beachcomber way back in the early thirties. Vic Bergeron picked up on the idea later when he changed the name of Hinky Dink's in Oakland to the now familiar name of Trader Vic's.
Benny Eng, caught in the Polynesian net, redid his place prettily with rattan, bamboo, tikis and waterfalls where today it stands as one of the few remaining that is as worthy a restaurant for its food as for its adventurous decor.
Like most Polynesian restaurants, Wan Q carries rumaki (a Don the Beachcomber invention) and the mai tai cocktail (one of Trader Vic's creations). However Wan Q, like the beer commercial says, is a lot more.
After or during a round or two from the extensive list of "tropi-cocktails", from whence you can easily become pie-eyed from a pi-yi, swizzled from a rum swizzle or catatonic from a zombie, there is a wonderful dipping-and-eating-of-appetizers ceremony. Besides the usual ketchup and mustard dipping sauce, Wan Q puts a marvelously piquant sweet and sour plum sauce on every table.
On Monday night, the fact that it was Labor Day didn't seem to affect the usual goings-on. The place was busy although not busting at the seams. Jimmy Gee, waiter extraordinary, and a 15-year employe (sic) at the restaurant, described every dish he brought with tremendous verve, his jollity catching on with us and making the whole experience extremely enjoyable. He delivered you gau (minced chicken, shrimp, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, wrapped in a half moon shape and deep fried in egg batter, $1.20) and called it Chinese ravioli--which I've also heard applied to Won Ton--and sui mui (chopped meat, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, spices, wrapped in noodle dough, topped in sesame seeds, steamed, served with brown sauce, $1.20) and called in Chinese Kreplach.
The witty, informative, knowledgeable and on-the-spot waiter served us barbecued spareribs ($2.20) of good flavor despite an apparent fattiness and chewiness and also bula maka ($1.95), as tender as the ribs weren't. The latter translates into thin strips of juicy beef tenderloin swimming in a tangy ginger sauce, sometimes served in kabob fashion on a bamboo spear.
Although we were Eng-ulfed (sic-pun!) in food, we opted for the jar du gai salad ($2.85) over wor wonton soup and our mmms and aahs could be heard throughout the dining room. Resembling an uncrispy version of of the crispy chicken salad of northern China, the jar du gai was beautifully light and palate-cleansing as a salad should be; a delicate harmony of shredded chicken, almond nuts, spices, chopped lettuce, long rice, chopped green onions and sesame seeds.
The effervescent, skillful, little Jimmy quickly bustled in with the first entree dish, scallops kow ($2.95); the delightfully soft crustaceans (ahem!) amid two different mushroom types, pea pods, and bamboo shoots in a creamy garlic sauce.
Incidentally, one more point in the smiling waiter's favor was his careful toweling of each clean plate before it was placed before us, a small but important chore rarely undertaken by either waiters, waitresses or busboys today.
Host Eng, who seemed slightly surprised that we requested chopsticks, figures about 35 per cent of his Wan Q clientele asks for them these days. (How surprised can you be when something happens better than one out of three times??--Pappy) They are not included in the place settings. He said 25 years ago, very few of his occidental patrons (Hey, we prefer the term European Americans!--pappy) would even dare to give chopsticks a try.
Eng took me on a quick tour of the kitchen, ("Hey, Jimmy! Move cats to freezer for five minutes.") a much larger facility than expected. He admitted to five enlargements of dining rooms and-or kitchen during his two and a half decades as Wan Q proprietor and said he currently has plans afoot for some interior decor (NOOOooo!) and structural changes.
'It looks like you have a lot of woks here," (Oh, brother.) I said as we traversed the spacious cooking area and a noticed a long row of the huge cooking pans so necessary in the preparation of Chinese food. "We have 11 of them," he smiled proudly, and when asked if that was a lot (Didn't we just establish this?), he said that the only Chinese restaurant he was aware of with more was the Golden Dragon in New Chinatown. ("That's it, we're outta here!")
Going whole hog (between $6 and $10 per person excluding drinks) like we did and ordering a la carte may be the best but not the most economical way to dine here. Complete dinners for two or more range from $3.50 to $6.95 per person and I was astonished to find on the back page of the menu and almost hidden chicken chow mein and prix fixe, (He got me; I had to look this up. It means "A complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price.") full course Cantonese meal for two at $2.75 a head.
If the word gets around about this there should soon be one heckuva queue at Wan Q.

(I haven't typed that much since college!)