Going Solo at Wonton Gourmet & BBQ

Every time I've gone to Wonton Gourmet in Cleveland, Ohio, it has always been with a group of friends. And I will contend that eating with a larger group really does maximize the experience. You get to try tastes of a lot of different foods and experiment with the menu; order a few favorites as well as try a new dish or two. Since I was attending the birthday party of a friend tonight in downtown Cleveland, I decided for better or worse to see if I could manage to fill myself up for about the same price as I normally pay when I am out with a crowd.

I got there around 7 pm to discover that the restaurant was about half full. As usual, I was the only non-Asian customer. This might bother some diners; I actually find it encouraging. My premise is that if the majority of the restaurant's clientèle is Asian than the food must be fairly authentic. My entire drive up to Cleveland, I kept thinking of what I was going to order. When I finally got inside and sat down, I perused the wall menu and came up with my strategy: I would be picking some from the "favorites" column and one from the "never tried it before" column.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself slightly. Wonton Gourmet is one of those places that does authentic perfectly, but Americanized Chinese food not-so-great. So, if you're looking for a good Sweet and Sour Chicken, I'd pick another more Americanized Chinese restaurant. However, if you want truly authentic Hong Kong style Chinese dishes, THIS is the place to come. There were really three menus. Two were on the table and represented dishes that were always available. The wall menu originally consisted of yellow placards that hung on the walls and contained only Mandarin characters. An enterprising friend of mine actually took photos of the placards, placed them on Flickr and asked his readers to translate the cards. Another friend printed out the annotated (and translated) pictures, and whenever we wanted to order from the wall menu, we used those printouts to actually order our meal.

Apparently enough non-Mandarin speaking customers must have expressed interest in this "special" menu because within the year, all of the yellow placards came down and in their place are cards with a picture of the dish, the English name beneath it and the price. It is now almost ridiculously easy to walk into Wonton Gourmet and have access to all of the wonderful food they offer.

The food at Wonton Gourmet is not generally considered to be spicy. Some dishes will come out of the kitchen with a little bit more spice, but if you are looking to spice up your food, you will need to use this:


There was a jar of chili oil at every table (as well as soy sauce, but honestly, I've never once had to use it). I like spicy food and this was just the ticket to perk up some already wonderful dishes.

Wonton Gourmet serves their food "family style". When dining out alone, this hardly matters much. But in true Chinese style, you placed your entire order at the beginning and as food was finished in the kitchen, it was immediately served to the table. Thus the order in which it came out was not necessarily the same order in which it was ordered.

First up, a true Wonton Gourmet delicacy: Turnip cakes.


I am here to tell you that these were simply amazing. Without a doubt the best I have ever had, anywhere. Crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside with just a bit of chewy texture from the turnips. If I had known that turnips could taste this good, I would've been eating these from the time I could chew solid foods. As good as they are by themselves, if you marry a bit of chili oil with them, they go from amazing to sublime. Here is how I prefer to eat them:


So simple, yet so good. If it's been a while since I've eaten at Wonton Gourmet, this is the dish I start craving. And how fortunate for me that by dining solo tonight, I got to eat all three cakes.

Another favorite starter are the chive potstickers. Again, the combination of textures and flavors made them a must-have dish at every meal. The sweetness from the shrimp and pork balanced against the sharpness from the chives and the saltiness from the dipping sauce provides a real epicurean treat.


Another shot showing the underside of an individual potsticker:


I also enjoy these with a bit of the chili oil as well. They also have non-chive potstickers on the menu, too, if chives aren't your thing. I've tried those as well and they are certainly executed at the same level, but the chives are what put these over the top.

Finally, for my main course, I had the Three Flavor Shrimp Dumpling Soup with Noodles (whew, what a mouthful):


And a close-up photo:


This soup was loaded with ramen-esque style noodles, three different kinds of shrimp dumplings, fresh crunchy greens, and an amazing seafood broth that enticed you to taste it as soon as it was brought to the table. Everything here was exquisitely fresh and the various kinds of shrimp dumplings helped to maintain your interest in this soup from start to finish. Honestly I really could've made a meal just out of the soup. I ended up taking home about half of the soup and about 1/3 of the turnip cakes and potstickers.

So how did the check turn out after all of this amazing food? The bill came to $14.85. This is right about how much I spend when I go out with my friends. It's true that I didn't get to taste as many dishes by myself as when I go with a group, but getting two meals of this caliber for under $15 is a major bargain.

I cannot recommend Wonton Gourmet enough. Here you have essentially what would be a mom and pop restaurant serving something so very unique and relatively inexpensive. I know that Cleveland has a lot to offer to its residents and I know I can enjoy a good meal at Lola, Lolita, The Greenhouse Tavern, Fire, Momocho, (I could go on and on) etc.; this restaurant has shown consistently wonderful results time and time again. And now with the language barrier nearly non-existent, there is nothing stopping you from ordering and enjoying truly wonderful Hong Kong-style Chinese cuisine.

Consistency, Thy Name Is Wonton Gourmet

The final stop on my Cleveland weekend adventure was a mid-afternoon lunch at the ever fabulous and always delicious Wonton Gourmet and BBQ. I have written about this wonderful Cleveland eatery several times before and I will continue to write about it because I think it is an important part of our ethnic Asian community. If I can inspire just one person who reads this blog entry to give them a try, then I feel I have accomplished something important. Seven of us met up in the early afternoon hours after my shopping trip with friends to several local farmer's markets and to a side trip to Mr. Brisket and Pincus Bakery. With all of that travel and shopping, we were famished!

Within minutes of us sitting down and ordering, food started showing up like crazy. Of course we ordered some all-time favorites. But we did have a chance to order some new dishes as well. I photographed everything, but will gloss over some of the dishes I've talked about in other entries. First up, a shot of what I think have to be the best chive potstickers in Cleveland:


This time around we also included an order of the regular potstickers, too. Which, to be fair, are the chive potstickers minus the chives. So, pork and shrimp.


Both versions were tasty and moist. I still prefer the chive myself because of the extra sharpness from the chives. Next up, the "Nancy" shot of the interior (trust me, holding the dumpling with one hand and taking a non-blurry photo with the other isn't an easy task):


And, of course, the ever ubiquitous turnip cakes:


All of these items were outstanding. A dip in a little of the accompanying sauces or a little chili oil and the flavors are out of this world.

Next up we decided to add something that has shown up a couple of times on our table. I briefly talked about it in my last entry on Wonton Gourmet, the fried crueller in a steamed rice noodle:


This interesting dish is a play on textures. The unsweetened crueller inside the rice noodle has been fried crispy, just like a donut. It is then wrapped in a rice noodle and steamed to perfection. The rice noodle actually protects the crueller inside and it doesn't get soggy in the least. It is served with a savory soy-based sauce that adds the extra bit of salt required to make this a well-balanced dish.

Our final appetizer of the day is one that I have heard many people recommend, but I had yet to try it. The cold jellyfish and pickled vegetables appetizer


is an amazingly interesting dish. This is a completely cold dish consisting of jellyfish sliced into long thin "noodles", pickled vegetables also cut into longer thin strips, and a wonderful sesame oil dressing which ties the entire dish together. The jellyfish actually has a crunch to it that is matched by the pickled vegetables. I'll admit that when I first tried just the jellyfish by itself, it had a strange textural element to it (notice I said "strange", not "bad"). But it wasn't until I ate the dish as a whole that I really understood what the point of this preparation was. This particular preparation is almost like an Asian "slaw". The crunchy pickled vegetables and the crunchy jellyfish are tied together with a sesame oil dressing. Eaten together, it made all the difference in the world, and I think I would actually order this again if I had the choice.

Now that our appetizers were out of the way, our entrees soon began to follow. First up was the beef chow fun:


I've had this dish at several restaurants besides Wonton and have always loved it when done well. Wonton's version had a lovely "beefy" taste to it and wasn't oily at all. This would be an excellent dish to order for someone who is dipping their toes into the Asian culinary swimming pool, as it were. Beef, rice noodles, soy sauce and bean sprouts are stir fried together until it achieves a nice glaze. I had several helpings of this dish.

Next up was a dish that I got to experience when I attended the Chinese New Years celebration at Wonton that some good friends of mine set up earlier this year, the Hong Kong style pork chops:


While the homemade barbeque sauce on this dish has always impressed me, I do find that the fried pork chops vary between being tender and tough. Sometimes the meat just melts in your mouth, other times you kind of have to gnaw your way through it. The sauce alone over rice is reason enough to order this dish. I can take or leave the pork.

Since I had first heard about bitter melon on the original Japanese production of Iron Chef over a decade ago, I have always wanted to try a dish that had this uniquely Asian ingredient. Today I had my chance as we ordered this Bitter Melon, Egg, and Shrimp dish:


As the name suggests, it is indeed bitter. I learned from Debbie that this particular version was about a medium level of bitterness. She's had preparations where the bitter melon was far stronger. While the scrambled eggs and shrimp were cooked perfectly, I could only eat a small amount of this dish. I'm not going to say it was bad because bitter melon is a new flavor to me. Who knows? Perhaps having this a few more times will allow me to have a greater appreciation for the flavor. Just like jellyfish noodles and sea cucumber, I'm glad I had the opportunity to try this unique flavor.

Finally, we ordered a green for the table, this time a special that was recommended to us by our server, yam leaves with shrimp paste. Unfortunately, the green looks kind of washed out by my photo, but I can assure you in real life they were bright green when brought to the table:


These were also okay. Not great. Not bad. I think my favorite preparation of greens at Wonton Gourmet is with garlic. It seems to be the only way that consistently enhances the flavor of the green rather than mask it. This was the first time I had the experience of eating yam leaves and honestly, it reminded me mostly of eating cooked spinach in texture and flavor.

The final thing that consistently amazes me is how little you pay for the amazing feast that we always seem to get when we go as a group. For all of this food, with tax and tip, it only came to $14.30 per person! And there were leftovers! I know that walking into an unfamiliar environment can be a little daunting for some people. But with pictures of the dishes with English translations on the walls, it couldn't be simpler to order and know exactly what you are going to get. As I've done in the past and as I'm sure I'll do in the future, I really recommend you give Wonton Gourmet & BBQ a try for yourself and see just how good they really are.