China Chef - Jewish American Suburban Chinese

I had dinner tonight at China Chef in Morton Grove. China Chef has been mentioned here in the past, but it didn't seem to have a thread of its own. I've been meaning to post about this place for a while, but this is the first time I have eaten there with camera in hand, so the time is finally right.

China Chef has been around since 1977 serving up what has become known as Jewish American Suburban Chinese food to the Morton Grove/Skokie area. Besides the (mostly Cantonese) Chinese menu, it also serves up some Filipino dishes that I have yet to explore. It's gotten mention here because it's one of the few area Chinese restaurants still serving up pressed almond duck. In fact, they serve not one, but two different versions...but I digress. Tonight was Sunday, a traditionally busy night for Chinese take out. Add to that the fact that it was Hanukkah, and they were hit with a double whammy. The place was hopping, with a line of people waiting to pick up their carry-out orders and most tables in the restaurant full. We didn't have to wait for a table, but there was a little delay getting seated while one of the four people working the counter for the take out orders could free themselves long enough to get us a table ad a couple of menus. I don't mean this as a complaint, I'm just commenting on what a madhouse it was.

We ordered a couple of standard dishes, General Tao's Chicken and Beef with Broccoli. China Chef has a "complete dinner" option where, for $3.95 extra, you get won ton soup, an egg roll and an egg foo young patty along with your entrée. It goes without saying, that we ordered the complete dinner.

Won Ton Soup


This is surprisingly good soup. The broth is full flavored, as are the won ton. Unlike the "Dough-only" versions served at many of these style of restaurant, these won ton had a nice (but small) meat filling that was flavored with ginger and garlic. The numerous small pieces of pork had a nice BBQ taste.

Egg Rolls


These were piping hot; fresh from the fryer. The filling has a slight peanut butter note, but also a nice blast of curry. Squeeze bottles of homemade sweet & sour and a nicely piquant mustard sauce are available on the table.

Beef With Broccoli


I can't say much about this dish. It was fine. Right down the middle of the road. Aunt Tillie from Nebraska would love it.

General Tao's Chicken


This was a very good version of the JASC classic. I ordered it extra spicy. The waiter joked that he would have to bring me extra glasses of water. I told him to pretend he was making it spicy for a Chinese guy; then immediately felt remorse, knowing full well that a Chinese guy would probably never order General Tao's Chicken. In any event what arrived was at most moderately spicy, as I expected. It was just right. The chicken was nicely crisp and not sogged out by the sauce. Onions and peppers (a blend of yellow, orange and green bell peppers) were nicely crisp.

Egg Foo Young


And what "complete dinner" would be complete without Egg Foo Young, again, a decent version.

China Chef is a solid place for this type of Chinese food. Total bill was just under $30.00 W/tip. Along with Burt's Place, China Chef has put Morton Grove on the map as a chow destination for me.

China Chef
5920 W. Lincoln Ave.
Morton Grove, IL
847-967-6050

I agree entirely. This is a good example of how something positive can come out of a restaurant modifying it's original ethnic cuisine to suit local tastes. 'Jewish Chinese food" as served here along with other longstanding favorites (Pekin House, New China, Won Kow, Orange Garden etc.) now exists as a cuisine unto itself (like Indian-Chinese ala Hot Wok), and should be evaluated accordingly .

China Chef in Morton Grove still has the best Mongolian Beef of any Chinese restaurant I have tried in the Chicagoland area...

HI,

I'm glad Steve finally posted on this place. I have wanted to comment on it for the longest time, but felt honor-bound for Steve to comment.

The evening Steve found China Chef was one that began with a phone call to me: "What is the best Chinese in Highland Park?" My usual answer to friends is to go to Chinatown. I promised to double-check with my friend Helen and call back. As quickly as I put down the phone, I forgot my mission. Thankfully when I did remember and called Steve back to apologize, he had already dined at China Chef. Ironically, I have taken Helen to China Chef who now considers it a favorable destination when there is no time for a trip to Chinatown.

China Chef's sweet and sour pork is the best version I have ever had. The pork has a very light coating almost tempura-like with a light fruity sauce not weighed down too heavily in cornstarch. Their whole roast chicken comes with lemon wedges, rice crisps and salt-and-pepper mixture for seasoning. It is the same presentation and taste one finds at LTH in Chinatown.

I have had some of the Filipino dishes. The lumpia, a meat filled eggroll, is not the classic slender cigar-shaped. By lumpia standards it is pretty husky though according to Helen it tasted right. There are other dishes we had, which I will cover later.

Great find Steve, glad you finally posted on this jewel!

Regards,

stevez wrote:China Chef is a solid place for this type of Chinese food. Total bill was just under $30.00 W/tip.

Steve,

Certainly in the upper tier for Chinese/American, surprisingly clear flavors and good quality ingredients. Broth in won ton soup had depth, egg roll crisp with a hint of peanut butter, pot stickers dense with meat and served with a light vinegar, and tasty for the asking chili oil.

Main courses are solid, Steve mentions General Tao's chicken above and the dinner 'upgrade' where one can add soup, egg roll and one egg fu young for, ......I forget the amount, but it's reasonable, makes for well priced meals.

While Kow Kow is the clear winner in the egg roll category, and I like the fact Kow Kow puts a quartered egg in the evening won ton soup, China Chef, which also offers Filipino food, is a clearly a contender in the Northwest Chinese/American restaurant race.

Enjoy,
Gary

stevez wrote:serving up what has become known as Jewish American Suburban Chinese food ...

Okay, I've just got to ask: A Jewish-American eatery on Rosh Hashanah serving up won tons containing "numerous small pieces of pork"?

Robin Garr wrote:Okay, I've just got to ask: A Jewish-American eatery on Rosh Hashanah serving up won tons containing "numerous small pieces of pork"?

A. Pork is considered kosher in a Chinese restaurant
B. Rosh Hashanah was last week

LOL, steve!

I've been going to China Chef since before I could walk, and it's the standard by which I measure most other Chinese places. I love the egg rolls, the homemade sweet & sour sauce (how to replicate that? Hmm....), the Mongolian beef, the pancit, the wonton soup.

The only other place I've found Mongolian beef that compares to China Chef's is a little carry-out only place in Mundelein called Jun Ho. It's flavorful and surprisingly spicy; probably not spicy enough for you hot lovers out there, but you don't even have to ask them to make it spicy, unlike China Chef. That's the one disappointment I have with China Chef is that they indicate something's spicy on the menu but it's completely not spicy....still tasty, but not spicy.

I have brought many friends to China Chef who had long given up on suburban Chinese places a long time ago and they love the place.

Jun Ho
789 S Midlothian Rd
Mundelein, IL
(847) 837-0088

lol you guys like this place? i think i'll be getting lunch from there soon then!!!

here's their menu:

http://www.mealsanddeals.com/chinachef/

note: i got the egg foo young lunch special and alas she told me it did not come with an egg roll so i ordered one... they have great egg rolls btw

abe_froeman wrote:I love the egg rolls, the homemade sweet & sour sauce (how to replicate that? Hmm...)

Most of you would be surprised to learn that before Burt occupied Burt's Place, there was a Chinese restaurant there! This was during Burt's "retirement" years in between his leaving Pequod's and starting the new place in it's curent location. Burt owned the building and rented it out to a string of other wannabe restaurateurs.

The chef/owner, whose name I will not mention here, was brilliant! He rekindled this nice Jewish boy's interest in Chinese food after a long childhood and adolescence of eating a lot of very ordinary Cantonese food almost every time we ate out.

He was on the verge of great success, steadily building a clientele over the course of about a year. Unfortunately, in addition to being a great chef, he was also an alcoholic suffering from clinical depression. He eventually spun out of control and that was when Burt decided to get back into the business and run the place himself. Just think, if this guy had been stable there might never have been a Burt's Place!

Anyway, the reason I mention all this is in response to abe froeman's comment about replicating China Chef's sweet & sour sauce. You see, the guy at this other Chinese place made a sweet and sour sauce by taking canned fruit cocktail and pureeing it in a blender! I'm not sure if he added anything else to make it more "Asian", but the fruit cocktail was the base and it made an outstanding sauce.

For those of you wondering, I know all this because I worked for him as a waiter! Every Jewish boy's dream right? Working as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant!

Just full of surprises ain't I?

Buddy

What the heck is Jewish American Suburban Chinese food? How does that differ from "Suburban American Chinese food"??? Pls advise.

Cantonese cuisine catering to the communities that Olde School is happy are not dining out on the High Holidays:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=15226

Seriously, there is no difference whatsoever. The equation that seems to be implied here between old North Shore Jewish communities, their tastes, and the immigrant-run restaurants they keep afloat with their patronage seems very outdated in my opinion, and sociologically inaccurate.

Santander wrote:Seriously, there is no difference whatsoever.

Santander,

I differ, American Chinese restaurants that appeal, at least in my experience, to a high percentage of Jewish, by which I mean reformed Jews such as myself, customers tend to serve food that is less sweet with more emphasis on crisp, texture and lighter, by degree, saucing. And, of course, make a big megillah out of not using MSG.

This, of course, is a sweeping generalization, take it for what you will.

Regards,
Gary

first 4 or 5 lunch items are beef dishes... don't know if that means anything

How many remember Shang Chai Kosher Chinese restaurant on California & Pratt? It was destroyed by a fire in 1989 and never reopened. Mizyon, another Kosher Chinese restaurant, located on Devon & Sacramento, recently closed.

And let us not forget the Pekin House on Devon. What ever happened to them?

toria wrote:And let us not forget the Pekin House on Devon. What ever happened to them?

Still open and serving the best eggrolls in town, although the other food is not worth eating anymore.

stevez wrote:

toria wrote:And let us not forget the Pekin House on Devon. What ever happened to them?

Still open and serving the best eggrolls in town, although the other food is not worth eating anymore.

possible correlation between jewish chinese and great eggrolls

G Wiv wrote:...American Chinese restaurants that appeal, at least in my experience, to a high percentage of Jewish, by which I mean reformed Jews such as myself...

Gary, is that reformed Jews, or Reform Jews?

I am a member of the latter sect, but no one has ever succeeded in reforming me.

A reference, for our non-Jewish friends.

toria wrote:What the heck is Jewish American Suburban Chinese food? How does that differ from "Suburban American Chinese food"??? Pls advise.

It's what we eat on Christmas while everyone else is groaning around a ham laden table

China Chef used to be near the corner of Harlem and Dempster, blocks from where I grew up. I went to school with one of Art's daughters. My parents still do lunch there regularly whenever they're doctoring or something in the old hood, though I haven't eaten there myself in years.

I will say, as a kid, I loved the yung choo wanton.

Seeing a posting on China Chef brings back lots of memories. I raised my kids in Morton Grove and one of our standby restaurants was Art Fong's China Chef. Art was a great guy and had amazingly consistent food. My only criticism was that the food was somewhat under seasoned.
I seem to recall that they opened before 1977. My younger son wasn't into Chinese food when he was five or six and always ordered a cheeseburger. That would have been in 1970 or 1971. Art used to tease him about it. My son finally started eating Chinese food and loving it.
With Art's passing, his wife, Joyce, is running the store on Lincoln Ave and the food is still the same fresh quality. Some things never change!

Grandpa Bob wrote:I seem to recall that they opened before 1977.

China Chef claims to have been open since 1977, so your earlier memories probably are from a different restaurant.

Maybe they've been at the Lincoln Avenue address since 1977, but my younger son was born in 1965, and would have been six in 1971. By 1977 he was 12 and enjoying Chinese food in all of its variations.

The reason that he order hamburgers at China Chef is that he had a bad experience at a Chinatown restaurant when he was four or five years old. He was eating some fish and a bone got stuck in his throat. I took him to the washroom and dislodged it, but he threw up. So that justifiably turned him off of Chinese food for a long, long time.

We used to frequent China Chef when it was in the shopping center located behind Kappy's on the NW corner of Dempster and Harlem. We started going there shortly after it opened.

Why don't you ask Joyce Fong the next time you visit China Chef when there original store opened?

GP Bob

After being invited by a few other LTH'ers, I finally made my first trek to China Chef for dinner recently and I enjoyed it immensely. I thought it was a delicious and satisfying meal that represented the genre extremely well. We were pretty straightforward with the ordering and the dishes were tasty, hot and well-prepared -- to order -- across the board . . .



Egg roll . . . better than Kow Kow's rendition? I thought so.



Fried Chicken Skin . . . aka Chick-arrones



Potstickers . . . quite possibly the best I've ever experienced.



BBQ Pork Fried Rice . . . very nice balance of rice to 'treasures' and the pork was delicious and not overly sweet.



Shrimp in Lobster Sauce . . . love the boat!



Mongolian Beef . . . as good a version as I can remember.



Chinese Broccoli in Oyster Sauce



Sweet & Sour Chicken . . . ordered this for the kids and enjoyed a couple of bites before the sweetness began to wear.



Salt & Pepper Shrimp, shell-on . . . great preparation, very delicious. I think I had 4 or 5 them.



Eggplant in Garlic Sauce



Lemon Chicken . . . didn't care for this one, as the lemon element just tasted too candied for me, even given the larger context.



Singapore Curry Noodles with Shrimp . . . mellow but distinctive. This tasty dish instantly brought to mind a moment I hadn't even thought about in probably 35 years. Like a beginner's guide to curry



Dessert of Almond and Fortune Cookies


This was the kind of Chinese food I grew up with and I felt, especially on that level, that it satisfied better than any other 'American' Chinese in the area that I can recall. Many of the dishes were as enjoyable as those I remember from years ago, and that was great to experience. As much as my tastes have changed over the years, this was a well-prepared blast from the past type of meal that reminded me of some of my earliest food 'adventures' and of some times gone by, that I'd nearly forgotten about. But it wasn't just a meal for my memories; this food tasted great, too. Talk about scratching an itch . . . this meal reached me in many ways.

=R=

China Chef
5920 W. Lincoln Ave.
Morton Grove, IL 60053
847 967-6050

Any restaurant that has fried chicken (or pork) skin on its menu is ok by me! Great pix, Ronnie!

NancyEsq wrote:Any restaurant that has fried chicken (or pork) skin on its menu is ok by me! Great pix, Ronnie!

I don't think the fried chicken skin is actually on the regular appetizer menu. It appears in the back of the menu as part of a larger "meal package", but the waiter doesn't blink if you order some a la carte. It's accompanied by a mellow vinegar (but I prefer hot mustard).

Best,
Michael

What impressed me most during a family outing at China Chef last night was the steamed Dover sole.

Filets expertly removed from a whole fish, very fresh, for 12 bucks. One of the better deals I've come across, fishwise.

For those who find this (standard Chinese/American) preparation a bit dull, I'm sure a couple of shots of the chili oil mentioned above would do the trick.

eatchicago wrote:

NancyEsq wrote:Any restaurant that has fried chicken (or pork) skin on its menu is ok by me! Great pix, Ronnie!

I don't think the fried chicken skin is actually on the regular appetizer menu. It appears in the back of the menu as part of a larger "meal package", but the waiter doesn't blink if you order some a la carte. It's accompanied by a mellow vinegar (but I prefer hot mustard).

Best,
Michael

When I ordered the chicken skins the other evening, they did not bat an eye upon my request. My friend Helen thought the vinegar would be improved if there was garlic in it, which is her favored dip for this.

Additionally, we ordered steamed oysterd with black bean sauce, a dish I usually associate with a trip to Chinatown. They also do a very good roast chicken accomopanied by rice crackers, lemon slices and at least upon my request: salt and pepper mixed together. Their preparation rivals the same dish often ordered at Little Three Happiness.

China Chef's location north of city is a very decent destination when getting to Chinatown sometimes seems unapproachable. They will see more of me this year because the Eden's repairs will make it a favorable choice.

Regards,

As noted in some of my posts above, my family has been going to China Chef since they opened at Dempster and Harlem.
I haven't been there for nearly a year, but the food has been very consistent and fresh. One dish I've been partial to was their Pansit Guisado. Art Fong introduced me to it and I highly recommend the dish.
My only complaint in recent years has been that the carpeting has been filthy. I know that one doesn't eat off the floor, but they might consider getting new carpeting. In addition, the bathrooms leave a lot to be desired. Perhaps Joyce has taken some steps to remedy these difficulties.
So any future eats from China Chef will be carry out.
Best,
Grandpa Bob