Lili Jia, owner and namesake of Lili’s Restaurant, photographed after making the Biang Biang noodle dish Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
The Biang Biang noodle dish at Lili’s Restaurant made with stewed pork and their signature hand-pulled noodles Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
The Biang Biang noodle dish at Lili’s Restaurant made with stewed pork and their signature hand-pulled noodles Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
Lili Jia, owner and namesake of Lili’s Restaurant, serves plates of their hand-pulled noodle dishes to Nicole Renée Matthews, left, and her son Alexander, 6, who were visiting from Connecticut, Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
Lili Jia, owner and namesake of Lili’s Restaurant, serves dumpling soup and Biang Biang noodles to Umass students Ivy Tou and Katrina Nguyen in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
Lili Jia, owner and namesake of Lili’s Restaurant, photographed after making the Biang Biang noodle dish Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
Lili Jia, owner and namesake of Lili’s Restaurant, photographed after making the Biang Biang noodle dish Friday afternoon in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
Lili’s Restaurant on Friday afternoon on Pleasant Street in downtown Amherst. STAFF PHOTO/DAN LITTLE
At Panda Garden in Williamsburg: Pair your proteins with what’s described as “stir-fried peapod stems,” a.k.a. pea shoots, a.k.a. dou miao, the sweetest and most complex of all Chinese greens. PHOTO BY ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
If you’re not in a spicy mood, Oriental Flavor in Amherst also does a great job with dim sum small plates like translucent “crystal shrimp dumplings” (har gow, a Cantonese dim sum favorite), PHOTO BY ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
At Ginger Garden in Amherst: ma po tofu is gloopy but great, richly and generously flavored. PHOTO BY ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
At Oriental Flavor in Amherst: cumin lamb, stir-fried with onions and peppers, has a totally unique range of intense flavors. PHOTO BY ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
At Panda Garden in Williamsburg: sliced pork with garlic sauce, served at room temperature. This is pork belly, about half meat and half fat, topped with a deeply caramelized garlic-chili sauce. PHOTO BY ROBIN GOLDSTEIN
In the mid-1950s, my mom, Sue, convinced her parents to try Chinese (or, really, Chinese-American) food for the first time. They lived in the Boston suburb of Sharon, and the restaurant was called China Villa. My mom had first been taken there by one of her high-school friends, and from her first bite, it was a revelation. The recipes and seasonings were bold and novel, and prices were so low that high-schoolers could afford to eat there sometimes on the few bucks they’d save from their allowances or after-school jobs.
My mom’s equally thrifty parents loved the place, and Chinese food soon became a regular tradition in her family, as it did in many others across the country.
The main fixtures on the menu at China Villa, like at the early Chinese restaurants around America, were chop suey, egg foo young, chow mein, and sweet-and-sour pork. These, along with some fried dishes like General Tso’s chicken and basic meat-and-vegetable stir-fries with soy sauce, were invented (or seriously modified) by Chinese immigrants in America to satisfy bland American tastes. It wasn’t authentic Chinese cuisine — even fortune cookies were actually Japanese — but it was authentic Chinese-American cuisine, its own thing, and it was cheap, delicious, and spectacularly successful.
This whole phenomenon was deeply threatening to competing white-run restaurants. Backlash soon came in the form of racist fearmongering about monosodium glutamate (MSG), a totally healthy form of glutamic acid that’s a basic ingredient in cooking all over Asia. The idea that MSG is harmful was debunked in the scientific literature long ago, but some anti-MSG xenophobia still lingers in the popular consciousness. I recommend avoiding any Chinese restaurant that advertises “no MSG” — they might as well hang a sign saying “less flavor.”
Over the past decade or two, American palates have been rapidly evolving in the direction of adventure and open-minded curiosity, and authentic Chinese food — dishes that people in China would actually eat — started springing up, sometimes at places with an ordinary Chinese-American menu and a second “gourmet” or “authentic” menu available only on request.
Although there will always be a place for General Tso’s in our culture, and we should never feel ashamed to order fried cream-cheese wontons (if you can still find them), I’m happy to report that authentic Chinese food has spread to western Massachusetts. There are several great places in our area where you can sit side-by-side with the Chinese students and families in the five-college area and sample the real flavors of their homelands.
Oriental Flavor, Amherst. I think I could eat in this downtown Amherst gem of a Chinese restaurant just about every day. That’s how deep and intense the flavors are here.
There is no one Chinese cuisine. There are hundreds, and they vary dramatically across regions of China, from the Muslim Uyghur cuisine of Xinjiang to the seafood of the South China Sea. The 21st-century authenticization of Chinese food across America has centered on one particular region: the Sichuan province, where hot, spicy, salty and sour flavors explode onto your palate, and fragrant ma la (Sichuan peppercorns) leave your whole mouth tingling with one of the world’s most uniquely wonderful gustatory sensations.
Oriental Flavor isn’t purely Sichuan, but this is where its greatest talents lie. Sichuan-style dry-braised beef comes to the table in a sizzling, steaming mini-wok, adorned with mushrooms, leeks, bamboo shoots, lotus roots, onions, and ma la. The beef slices are shaved as thin as possible so as to absorb the maximum flavor per square inch.
Cumin lamb, stir-fried with onions and peppers, has a totally different range of equally intense flavors. “Special spicy chicken” is a delicious Chongqing specialty of diced and breaded chicken chunks expertly fried with tons of bright red dried chilies.
Sour dishes are an underappreciated dimension of Sichuan cooking, and Oriental Flavor’s boiled fish fillet with pickled cabbage, soft tofu, vermicelli noodles, in milky-white broth works as a great counterpoint to the meats and chilies.
If you’re not in a spicy mood, this restaurant also does a great job with dim sum small plates like translucent “crystal shrimp dumplings” (hargow, a Cantonese dim sum favorite), pan-seared turnip cakes with sweet cured sausage and dried shrimp, or miniature steamed spare ribs in black-bean sauce.
Lili’s, Amherst. This bright, simple, friendly lunch (or dinner) counter slings authentic regional dishes from Xi’an, in China’s Shaanxi province. You can take out or eat at one of the few simple tables. The specialty here is hand-pulled noodles, which you can experience either dry-cooked as biangbiang, or immersed in noodle soup (best with stewed pork). Roujiamo, a classic Xi’an street food, is described “pork burger,” but it’s really more like a pulled-pork sandwich, with moist shreds of pork belly stuffed into a rich, slightly flaky bun. I also like their cold noodles, which get their bite from cucumbers and springy wheat glutens, crunch from bean sprouts, and refreshing acidity from rice vinegar.
Oriental Taste, Northampton. Easily the best Chinese restaurant in Northampton, this is a simply decorated space with high ceilings. I like the tables by the front windows, from which you can watch the bustle of Main Street.
The menu’s real firepower is found in a section called “Chef’s Special Dishes.” A great party dish that feeds two or three people is “spicy grilled whole fish,” which comes to the table bubbling in a giant metal tray with a burner under it, swimming in a red-colored broth with generous portions of cabbage, lotus, and other Chinese vegetables.
The kitchen makes great use of ma la, and you can’t go wrong with any menu item that includes the word “Sichuan.” Beef in hot and sour pickle broth and dry-braised dishes hit the spot, as does red-cooked pork, a Taiwanese specialty of rich, fatty belly meat slow-braised and deeply infused with flavors of soy sauce and five spice.
Oriental Taste is also one of the city’s best-value lunch options. Every “Chinese Lunch Special” rings in at under ten dollars, including soup and rice; pork or beef with wild chili. There are plenty of great vegetarian options on this list, including ma po tofu with Sichuan peppercorns and shredded potato with chili — China’s answer to hash browns.
Panda Garden, Williamsburg. A small strip mall along a rural stretch of Route 9 in Williamsburg makes an unlikely spot for excellent Chinese food. The room is warm, with the occasional lazy-susan round table, and the staff is chatty and welcoming.
There’s one important rule of ordering here: you need to ask for the semi-secret, bright yellow “gourmet menu,” a mash-up of authentic regional specialties that you might actually find in China. The chef hails from south China (Guangdong province and Hong Kong), so his kitchen is particularly adept at southern preparations.
My favorite starter is sliced pork with garlic sauce, served at room temperature. This is pork belly, about half meat and half fat, topped with a deeply caramelized garlic-chili sauce. Highlights among mains are silky pork-stuffed tofu in a thick brown sauce, glassy bean noodles with minced pork, and deeply flavorful clams with fermented black beans. Beef tendon in hot chili has rich ribbons of gelatinous, intensely flavorful meat hiding in a forest of green peppers that pack serious heat. Pair your proteins with what’s described as “stir-fried peapod stems,” a.k.a. pea shoots, a.k.a. dou miao, the sweetest and most complex of all Chinese greens.
Ginger Garden, Amherst. At this free-standing structure on Route 9, at the Amherst end of Hadley, you’ll find a variety of well-executed Sichuan in a big, open space that feels like the Chinese-American restaurants of old days. In a side room sits a sleek bar that’s straight out of an early-90s luxury cruise ship, and beyond that, a sushi bar. For starters, a salad of bright, springy wood-ear mushrooms in a complex dressing of vinegar, fresh red chilies, cilantro, and mouth-tingling Sichuan peppercorns. Ma po tofu is gloopy but great, richly and generously flavored. String beans, with little gathered bunches of deeply caramelized garlic, are a bombastic version of one of my favorite vegetable dishes in the world. 很好吃 — hen hao chi!
Robin Goldstein is the author of “The Menu: Restaurant Guide to Northampton, Amherst, and the Five-College Area.” He serves remotely on the agricultural economics faculty of the University of California, Davis. He can be reached at rgoldstein@ucdavis.edu.
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