Crappy Chef

I point out Happy Chef enough as a great option for home-style Cantonese fare in Chinatown, that I feel quite obligated to report, that our meal last night was far, far from the restaurant I tout. Aside from complimentary soups starting and finishing the meal, I have nothing much good to say about our meal. It was on par with some of the worst meals I have eaten in the stretch of Chicago between Cermak and 18th Street.

As Leonard Pith-Garnell would have said years and years ago, tonight's bad meal began with exquisitely bad shrimps, bad lobster, bad fish, bad noodles and dreadful eggplant. First to arrive at the table were the salt-peper shrimps. Normally, these large, head-on shrimps are superior eating. Between the spices and the flash cooking, the shell and head is rendered entirely edible, and you get the fullest flavor of shrimp as you crunch on everything but the tiny tail. Last night's shrimps were so mushy that the contrast between shell and meat was uncomfortable. Yet, perhaps, the shrimps exceeded the lobster with ginger and green onion. I highly suspect that lobster was pre-cooked and maybe even frozen in advance because the meat tasted water-logged and slightly frosty, like they did not finish it. (Plus, the lobster was small to boot!) And actually it just kept on getting worse. The sliced fish on tofu in black-bean sauce also seemed oddly old. The black-bean sauce had penetrated the fish fillets like it had been in the sauce for a long time. Stir fried rice noodles were as salty as a mouthful of accidentally swallowed beach water. Eggplant logs did have a wonderful shower of garlic-dots, but those logs had completely absorbed all its cooking oil, all its garnishing oil, and about all the other oils in the kitchen before it arrived at the table. It did not have any of that carmelized sweetness that Chinese eggplants usually offer. Except for the eggplant, the other dishes are all things we have had done very well before.

The gray mystery soup they provide is still interesting, challenging and satisfying in its own bizarre way. Yesterday's soup featured the usual curls of chewy conch and bits of meat that seem like left-overs from the morning's dim sum as well as a bunch of skins, rhizomes, nuts and berries that I recognized from packages at Chinese grocery stores as "soup mix". The dessert soup was new, the sweet tapioca broth colored orange by the inclusion of sweet potato chunks. It was highly delicious, not too sweet but still dessert. For a moment, I was happy, and I reminded Ms. VI of one of my favorite rules for restaurateurs: leave them with a great dessert.

I have had too many great meals (See here or here; plus here's a report from Zim from a meal we had with him and his family) at Happy Chef to write them off. In fact, I have written before of poor meals. When on, Happy Chef serves a wide variety of homey Cantonese fare that is also a great bargain with the soups and add a lobster/add a crab deals. You know I'll be reporting back soon.

Happy Chef
2164 S. Archer Ave (Chinatown Mall)
Chicago, IL
312-808-3689