Besides, you’ll enjoy your meal a lot more at home on your own couch in front of a new episode of “The Voice,” or whatever other guilty pleasure is calling.General Tso's (or Zuo's) chicken is the most famous Hunanese dish in the world. It’s not grim, but takeout is still the better option (they don’t deliver). Not to harp on the decor, but should you decide to dine in, be prepared for a mostly underwhelming, booze-less experience. But again, at $6.45, one feels guilty even raising these modest quibbles. The wontons are just OK, and they could be improved upon if they came with their own special dipping sauce. It’s an excellent companion, and seriously worth ordering as an entree if you don’t care for anything else on the menu. As far as the rest of the plate goes, the fried rice is simply outstanding: perfectly cooked with fresh veggies that still have a pleasant bite. It’s no inferno, but it’s enough to add some heat to the dish’s inherent and sometimes overwhelming sweetness. Also, you can name your spice level here, one through three. Because there’s enough of it pooled up in the chicken compartment of your to-go box to allow for extra dipping - a small, but welcome improvement over most General Tao dishes. But that’s not to say they’re stingy with the sauce, either. They merely drizzle the sauce lightly over the chicken, preserving the crispiness and honoring the work of the deep fryer. Here, they don’t toss the chicken in the sauce, coating all the pieces. The sauce still has the familiar sweetness, but it’s less viscous than what you’re used to, and the use of ginger, garlic, and hot chili peppers is more apparent, the flavors more assertive. The chicken is moist, tender, and actually chicken-y, with a crispy, deep-fried exterior. Unlike typical General Tao’s (or Tso’s), with its bland combination of overtly sweet, syrupy sauce and rubbery, dubious chicken parts, Mei Inn’s version tells an entirely different story. Even the price makes you feel guilty, like you’re stealing. You get all this food for the ridiculously low sum of $6.45. The combo is served with bite-sized crispy cream cheese wontons and a bounty of some of the best chicken fried rice you’ve ever eaten, much less out of a Styrofoam to-go box. The menu includes all the standard items you’re used to from places like this, but our weakness for the General Tao’s chicken combo is one that no egg foo young or moo shu pork can compete with. And it gives you something to look at if you have to wait a minute or two for your food. It gives the place a weird vibe, but it’s also charming and even kinda cute. in South Minneapolis with warm service, a devoted neighborhood following, and, oddly enough, a tiny gift shop replete with pan-Asian knickknacks, delicate paper fans, and porcelain figurines. If you haven’t been, Mei Inn is a divey Chinese American restaurant on 42nd St. Though what makes this iteration of the venerable lowbrow dish so unique is that it almost defies the guilty pleasure formula: delivering wave after wave of pleasure that nearly washes away the guilt. One of our favorite guilty pleasures around is the General Tao’s chicken from Mei Inn. Yet despite it being a nutritional black hole, you can’t help yourself from devouring your greasy, triple-sized portion in one sitting with maximum gusto. The quality of the ingredients is typically poor, the food itself is bad for you, and you pretty much feel guilty the second you pull the menu from the drawer. As far as guilty pleasures go, cheap takeout Chinese American food has to be one of the guiltiest of them all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |