House of Chow: Domicile of Delish

I have long considered myself to be a Connoisseur of chinese takeout. It is one of the many small gifts one acquires after living in NYC, the way that people from LA claim to have a sixth sense about mexican food, or perhaps the way Cincinnatians might be able to nose out a good three-way from a strip mall away. Some of the skills involved are simple. Recon: Is there anyone in the restaurant? Has there ever been? If not, perhaps you should move on. What's around the restaurant? Do you like those places? Details: When you enter, is it the sort of place you would like to stay for those long, hungry minutes before your food is ready? Have they put any effort into making your time in the restaurant, however brief, enjoyable? Intangibles: There's something about the names of restaurants. My least favorite chinese restaurants have been: Jade Garden, Ming Garden, Main Garden and Dragon Garden. I would love to say that there is some reason for a correlation between bad food and the naming of restaurants, but I'm content to say, if the name sounds a little off-putting, perhaps you should avoid.

And then there's the House of Chao on Whalley Ave. I felt ambivalent about the place from the get-go. Was this a good name or an awful one? It is next the best brunch place in New Haven, but you can't really see inside....I entered in the middle of the day and there was just one other person there perusing a menu. The place looked more like a bistro than a take-out Chinese place, which again gave me pause. This really was like no other Chinese place I had ever been. What got me to enter the place was a recommendation made in passing. What intrigued me was the person waiting for the waiter, who was perusing a novel that seemed large and out of place in a restaurant. Apparently, the customer's intense time with the menu was mostly a show; she only wanted one thing: dumplings. "Has the chef prepared the dumplings for the day?"

"No, he's still working on them." "Fine, I'll come back in an hour or so."

Chef...prepared?

I would come to appreciate all of this in time. As I do whenever I am testing out a restaurant, I got something I truly love: General Tso's chicken. For the record, I have tasted the highs and the lows of this dish. It is surprisingly easy to make at home, and to pack it with enough tang to wrench your jaw out of place. It is also possible to but General Tso's chicken and find it packed with greyish meat, which you can't stomach. It is also possible to return to said purveyor, when a little inebriated and purchase that same dish and get half-way to sobriety before feeling the shame of what you have done, but I digress.

This was the best General Tso's Chicken I have ever had. The same with every dish I had there. Not a trace of grease, made with fresh ingredients, balanced so that the spices did not overpower the dish, and the side items were not simple present to be brushed off. Just the memory of the food makes concentrating on writing a little difficult.

The downsides: it is a little difficult to get to without a car. I bike like I have a death wish, but I'm not foolish enough to tango with the traffic patterns on Whalley. It's as though a group of people have developed the technique of driving by faith, so they don't bother to use turn signals, or look when they want to make a U-turn across three lanes of traffic. Also, the service is slow, man reading Dickens novels instead of taking your order-slow. But the food is so worth it that, that last criticism barely deserves notice. Go in, chow down!

Next time: Recollections of Rudy's.