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Good Food
Good FoodAsian Travels in the North End
By Zachary D. Lyons
Apr 25, 2002 -- When Northgate Mall opened in the mid-1950s, it was the first enclosed mall on earth. And it has been all downhill from there. I spent an evening scouring Northgate for restaurants. As this is the Northgate issue, I felt I owed it to my readers and my editors. The remodeled mall was less evil feeling than when I last visited some 10 years ago, but--make no mistake--it is still evil. And it still is thoroughly devoid of food I could recommend to you.I crossed the street to "Northgate North", also known as the Great Wall of Target. This hideous new structure promises "more shops" in big letters across its windows. Yet all but two of the 15 to 20 retail spaces remain empty. Target and Best Buys are the only tenants.
As I wandered the, er, street of Northgate, I began to lose hope. I found one corporate owned restaurant after another. Feeling I had tried hard enough, I moved a few blocks west to Oak Tree at North 100th Street and Aurora. Here I found respite. Here I found good food offered by local families with warmth and pride. Here I found neighborhood joints in a community to which I will feel just fine returning.
Tan Duc regular Cindy Englehart and friend Dale Klein enjoy a rainy afternoon at her favorite restaurant. Englehart has been eating at Tan Duc for 14 years. Zachary D. Lyons photo. |
The Huynh family opened Tan Duc Asian grocery at 100th Street and Aurora Avenue in 1985, and added a restaurant next door a few years later. From Saigon, the family is a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese. So is the kitchen staff and extensive menu, which excellently offers a terrific variety of both nations' foods. The building housing Tan Duc burned in 1994, and while it was being rebuilt, Tan Duc was temporarily located at 78th and Aurora, where their good friends, the Than Brothers, currently have a restaurant.
We went to Tan Duc for lunch. We had two noodle soups, something for which both cultures are well known. Tan Duc Noodle Soup is on the Chinese side, with egg noodles, prawns, BBQ pork and fried shrimp cake in a tasty chicken stock broth. Seafood Noodle Soup, on the other hand, is on the Vietnamese side, with rice noodles, prawns, squid, crab and fish balls in the chicken stock broth, accented brightly by fresh cilantro. We added to them fresh bean sprouts and green chile peppers. The Chinese soups are richer flavored, while the Vietnamese are defined by their fresh, crisp flavors.
This can be better illustrated by contrasting the Salt and Pepper Squid and the Fresh Spring Rolls we also tried. The squid, a Chinese standard, is an intensely flavored fried dish--one of my favorites--while the fresh rolls are uncooked, full of greens and sprouts and tofu. We enjoyed it all, and we enjoyed being able to experience the distinct qualities of the two schools of cuisine side by side. I look forward to my next visit.
Tan Duc, 10007 Aurora Ave N, 525-0511 or 525-2610, Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday, noon-9:30 p.m., no checks.
Gordon Hanks (left) with friends Anne Holderread and Jeff White at Doong Kong Lau. Zachary D. Lyons photo. |
It is restaurants like this that make me wish I had a larger budget, a bigger stomach, and endless time with which to try absolutely everything on the menu.
Henry and Cindy Chen opened Doong Kong Lau 12 years ago. But the food they serve is thousands of years old. Henry is Hakka, a unique Chinese ethnic group from Northwest China with its own dialect and its own cuisine. Uprooted even before the Yuen Dynasty, the Hakka have moved from place to place for centuries, but they have maintained their distinct culture. Henry Chen's parents left China for Taiwan when the communists came to power in 1949, then to Hawaii during the Nixon administration in 1975. In 1988, he followed his children to Seattle. He waited tables at Hunan Harbor (now China Harbor) for a year and a half and learned the business. Then, in 1990, he and his wife bought the old Pancake House on Aurora Avenue, and created a menu filled with popular Northern Chinese standards and unique-in-Seattle Hakka dishes.
The menu is huge, and we endeavored to try as much as we could anyway ... for you. The live tank had Alaskan Spot Prawns, the king of all shrimp, so we ordered some of them fried in a salty-spicy coating straight away. Once they cooled to an edible temperature, they were yummy. And I didn't have to go to the International District to get them.
For the rest of the meal, we tried Hakka cuisine. Hot Pots and Sizzling Platters are very Hakka, and we tried one of each. Tofu Casserole with Seafood Combination comes in a broth-filled bowl over a small flame, heaped with Napa cabbage, squid, scallops, fish, shrimp, and tofu stuffed with a wonderful pork-and-seasoning mixture. Different but delicious. Hakka Special Flavored Sauce Beef on Sizzling Platter filled our senses with its sounds, smells and appearance, and its rich flavor was a show stopper.
Cleanly fried Crispy Duck Hakka Style comes salty and crunchy, after having been marinated and steamed--it reaffirmed my love of Chinese duck dishes. Ample noodle dishes are offered as well. Ours noodles came topped with scallops and shrimp and a nice gravy. And vegetarians will feel at home here. We enjoyed the delectable Sauteed String Beans, Chinese long beans stir-fried with plenty of garlic.
For dessert we had excellent green tea and ginger ice cream, and mango pudding. The pudding and the ginger ice cream each had wonderful big chunks of their defining ingredients. Doong Kong Lau serves Dim Sum off the cart on Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., although you can order it off the menu weekday mornings. Their Dim Sum is both Hong Kong and Northern style.
We left full, content, and contemplating our return.
Doong Kong Lau Hakka Cuisine, 9710 Aurora Ave N, 526-8828, Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday & Sunday, 9 a.m.-10:30 p.m., no checks. Ample parking available.
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