Venturing Out for Chinese

After five days of being stuck at home following a major snow and ice storm and sub-freezing temperatures that prevented any meltage, I finally ventured out for lunch with my friend, Brenda, on a recent Friday afternoon. We had initially planned on visiting a bakery and sandwich shop in South Philadelphia, but reports of the parking and walking situation in that area being horrid due to the ice and snow caused us to scrap that plan in favor of lunch at a suburban restaurant with a parking lot. 

We are both very fond of Chinese food and decided to head over to Da Shin Bistro in western Media, Pennsylvania. It‘s an old favorite of Brenda’s and I had been there on a couple previous occasions with my wife. They’ve got both the look and menu of the style of old-school Chinese restaurants that I’ve waxed poetic about here on many occasions. 

Although the gentleman who seated us placed abbreviated lunch menus on our table, I requested their full menu, knowing that I’d be ordering an old stand-by that wasn’t among the lunch special offerings. 

The following photos are menu highlights and don’t include the lunch specials. The entire menu can be viewed here. While it’s largely a classic Americanized Chinese food menu, they also offer a limited selection of Thai and Japanese dishes. 

Brenda went the Thai route in choosing the shrimp pad Thai lunch special. It came with a choice of soup and she opted for wonton. I was craving my longtime favorite, sweet and sour shrimp, and also ordered an egg roll to start.

We both enjoyed cups of hot tea during the very short wait for the egg roll and wonton soup to arrive.

The soup was piping hot, but she enjoyed it once it cooled off a bit. My egg roll was standard fare, and that was a good thing. I wish I had a sawbuck for every one of these I’ve had over the years. The crust was just the way I like it and the filling included both pork and shrimp.

The wait was again a short one for our main courses to arrive, and Brenda’s shrimp pad Thai looked excellent, as it was based on her comments. In addition to the shrimp and noodles, it included a healthy pile of chopped peanuts. One of my food philosophies is that almost everything is better with nuts. 

The sweet and sour shrimp arrived with the sauce on the side. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I grew up eating this dish and it always came with the sauce poured over the shrimp, which is how I prefer it. I quickly rectified the situation by dumping all of it over the shrimp. I also poured the remaining duck sauce and hot mustard mixture that I used for my egg roll over the white rice that came on the side. 

Once again, they don’t call me Captain Condiment for nothing. 

This wasn’t among the best sweet and sour shrimp that I’ve had, although it was very in line with what I find at most Chinese restaurants nowadays. The shrimp were small, while the breading that encased them was thick – making it seem like I was eating mainly breading in sauce. Still, the flavor did hit my spot and I was very satisfied by the time I had my fill of it. 

The leftovers went into a classic Chinese takeout container. 

That should hold me over for a while as far as Chinese goes. I’ll be back with another cheesesteak post in addition to a report on what I ate on Super Bowl Sunday next week.