March 02--Xi'an Cuisine, a faintly rank Chinatown hole-in-the-wall my North Shore relatives would never step foot in, is the type of restaurant I adore: a faintly rank Chinatown hole-in-the-wall my North Shore relatives would never step foot in.
It's a Chinese restaurant that has never seen a chicken kung pao'd or a cookie prognosticate fortunes. It does, however, have a TV broadcasting patriotic concerts to an audience of Chinese military officers. It serves lamb intestine soup and marinated chicken gizzards. It probably can't accommodate your gluten intolerance.
My God, I love this place.
Most other Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood aim to appease all and offend none, so they feature 200-plus dishes on the menu. Typically these restaurants cook Cantonese food, dishes like fried rice or sweet and sour pork that most Americans recognize as Chinese. (That term, by the way, is about as nonspecific as ordering North American food.)
Xi'an (pronounced she-ahn) Cuisine caters in the cooking of Shaanxi province in northern China, which broadly speaking, has lamb/mutton as the preferred protein with noodles and breads as vehicles.
In New York City, there's a similar restaurant food enthusiasts there clamor over, called Xi'an Famous Foods. It became "a thing" only after Anthony Bourdain sanctified the Queens food stall on his "No Reservations" TV show. Lines spilled out the door the day after the episode aired. It's no wonder why it became a phenomenon -- the style of food is unfussy, and more important, uncomplicated, with flavors clear-cut enough to not intimidate Shaanxi neophytes. There are dishes drenched in chili oil, flavors of cumin, vinegar and hot peppers, soupy noodles as wide as pappardelle, plus a Chinese rendition of pita stuffed with minced lamb.
Xi'an Cuisine, on the Old Chinatown side of Cermak Road, might not reach the critical mass that comes with a Bourdain endorsement. But it does curate, perhaps with less firecracker boldness as its New York counterpart, the greatest culinary hits of the Shaanxi canon. For six months now, inside a no-frills storefront anchored by Ikea-bought art, the Li family has served a taut, single-column menu of 19 appetizers, soups and entrees. Pithiness is underrated.
There's a terrific starter of warm sliced lamb ($7), tender as pot roast and whiffing of nutty sesame and chili oils. What arrives at the table resembling angry coleslaw is actually a bright, crunchy, palate-tingling salad of expertly julienned potatoes ($2). There's also a standard-issue interpretation of what's called sliced marinated beef ($6): collagen-rich beef shank cooked in five-spice braising liquid, chilled and sliced into salami-sized discs. These, and the entrees that follow, will cost you no more than $8.
To say there are 19 offerings on the menu is a bit generous. It's more milking 19 variations from a handful of themes. Take the four dishes with "lamb" and "soup" in their names. They all showcase a cloud-white broth, linear in its lambiness in a pork-to-tonkotsu soup sort of way. (You can tell it's legit bone broth -- the next morning it congealed into lamb jello.) In one version it's served with rustically ragged noodles ($8), pulled and stretched to a toothsome ideal every afternoon by chef Yuling Li. In another, there's lamb intestine ($6) -- nowhere as scary as it sounds -- essentially fattier pieces of a meat indistinguishable in texture and flavor from lamb (boy I'm doing a great job selling this, huh?).
The one worth your attention is yangrou paomo (listed as lamb soup with baked bread roll, $7), the soup to Xi'an what gumbo is to New Orleans. The lamb broth serves as backbone to a textural melange of crystal vermicelli, wood ear mushrooms and chewy bread cubes, like a northern Chinese version of soup and dumplings. I had this on the coldest day of the year, and whether real or placebo, it had a restorative effect, like lining my belly with pocket warmers.
If there's one dish that can transcend the neighborhood clientele and appeal to a broader non-Chinese base, I nominate the lamb with cumin in flat bread ($3). At New York's Xi'an Famous Foods, it's rightly marketed as Spicy Cumin Lamb Burger, and they sell a boatload. Chicago's Xi'an Cuisine makes its own flatbread, and this is the secret weapon. Pan-seared crisp and chewy with a give, the warm flatbreads serve as pita pockets for minced lamb spiced liberally with cumin and jalapeno. It's portable and habit-forming; a food truck serving just this is destined to be a runaway hit.
I increasingly put value on restaurants with concise menus. Being focused and uncompromising gives off a certain confidence, and there's less of a chance to screw up with a sprawling repertoire. You can order one of everything from Xi'an Cuisine and pay under $90. But just $30 will buy you a comprehensive overview and get you to a place of jeans-unbuttoning satiation.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
Xi'an Cuisine
225 W. Cermak Road
312-326-3171
xiancuisinechicago.com
Open: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Recommended dishes: Sliced marinated lamb, thin potato slices in sour and spicy sauce, lamb soup with baked bread roll, wide rice noodles in black vinegar and garlic sauce, lamb with cumin flat bread.
Check average for two: $25
