Mandarin Restaurant

Sam Wok! Where the hell did you go?

The other day I was driving by my favourite southside source of economical, slightly sleazy Chinese food and noticed the signage announcing the closure—and indeed the entire contents of Sam Wok were completely gone. No hot and sour soup. No lo mein with ginger and green onions. No rice roll long donut. The Internets are abuzz with rumours that SW is merely closed for renovations, that it’s relocating further south, or that the always-personable, highly efficient staff have simply called it a day. Anyone with the real scoop, feel free to speak up.

In the meantime, I had to go looking elsewhere for my Chinese food fix. I’ve long been aware of the Mandarin Restaurant, purveyors of Northern Chinese cuisine, near the U of A, but my only experience with the place about a year ago hadn’t been all that great. I’d called for delivery and asked for a selection of the house’s best dishes. I ended up with 50 bucks’ worth of rather undistinguished Chinese food, which my broad selection of hot sauces helped to enliven, but which I was thoroughly sick of by the time I finished it all two days later. I thought it safe at that juncture to cross the Mandarin off my list of go-to joints.

Come a frigid, soul-numbing Sunday night, though, I was ready to reassess my stance. Their webpage (www.mandarin-restaurant.ca) was covered with red starbursts proclaiming new management, no MSG, and lots of low-calorie food, and the menu was liberally dotted with the little red chili-pepper silhouettes that are universal menu shorthand for “hot and spicy.” It couldn’t possibly all be bland.

If the Mandarin’s dining room isn’t exactly glamourous, it easily surpasses the smudged, utilitarian décor of Sam Wok. A generic but clean restaurant interior with lots of wood paneling and a drop ceiling is spruced up with coloured lights, real potted plants, Chinese lanterns and wall hangings, and a really big oil painting of an eagle swooping through snowy conifers. The staff is nervously attentive and courteous—if they’d charged me and my co-diner for all the “thank-you”s, we probably couldn’t have afforded the meal. The courtesy was free, however, and the prices well within our budget. Straying from our habitual selections, we chose spring rolls (the menu said six for $6.50, but the bill said $7.50), black pepper beef with crispy greens ($11.95), tofu and assorted meat and vegetable hot pot ($10.95 on the menu, $11.95 on the bill), and rice for two ($3).

The spring rolls came first, served with plum sauce and a requested side of tasty chili paste. Stuffed with shredded veggies and fried golden, they were crisp, not too oily, and tasted like they had never seen the inside of a freezer. Next came the hot pot in an attractive ceramic serving dish. My co-diner poked through the hunks of fried tofu, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and bright greens looking for the eponymous meats, but found none. She asked the server for an explanation and found there had been a miscommunication regarding our order. Being good Canadians, we said we’d already started spooning it out and would be fine with the dish the way it was, but the gent who took our order came over and insisted it would only take a few moments to set things right. When the dish returned to our table, it had been topped up with white chunks of chicken, plump prawns, and pink-rinded slices of barbecued pork. The latter item was a little dry, but everything else was appropriately tender or crunchy.

The real test was the platter of pepper beef with crispy greens—would it honestly earn the little red chili it bore on the menu? The platter was heaped with slices of beef and strips of green pepper and onion in glistening brown sauce flecked with black pepper. Upon closer inspection, we noticed there were whole slices of jalapeno, fire-imbuing seeds intact, stir-fried in with the other veggies. Yessssssssss! The beef was a little chewy but the salty, garlicky onset of the sauce was followed quickly by a savoury capsicum tongue-burn that chased the winter chill and gave our foreheads a healthy sheen. 

I feel a need here to comment on the rice. I don’t always notice the quality of that ubiquitous starch when I dine Asian, since its role is mostly to absorb other flavours and pad out the meal. But the jasmine rice they served at the Mandarin was notably aromatic and flavourful on its own, the grains perfectly firm and articulated, as if they’d been individually cooked. And we were in no danger of running out.

A $40 tab, another salvo of thank-yous, and a few more apologies for mixing up our order later, we were back out on the wintry streets, girded against the cold and headed home with a generous bag of leftovers. This time, I don’t think I’ll have any problem whatsoever finishing them off.